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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011
HISTORY
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Kansas practiced eugenics only 50 years ago
STATE HOME FOR FEEBLE-MINDED.
FROM "KANSAS: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF STATE HISTORY, EMBRACING EVENTS, INSTITUTIONS, INDUSTRIES, COUNTIES, CITIES, TOWNS, PROMINENT PERSONS, ETC" for Idiotic and Imbecile Youth, University campus, established 1881.
IAN CUMMINGS
Kansas was once a leader in the forced sterilization of the mentally disabled, and the University supported it from the beginning.
icummings@kansan.com
The last known case of the practice in Kansas occurred 50 years ago, according to a database created by Lutz Kaelber, associate professor of sociology at the University of Vermont.
At least 2,851 people were castrated or otherwise sterilized in Kansas hospitals between 1913 and 1961. Compulsory sterilization gradually fell out of favor and the Kansas legislature repealed the law authorizing it in 1965.
The Kansas State Asylum for the Education of Idiotic and Imbecile Youth opened in North College Hall on the University campus Sept. 1, 1881. Ten-year-old Belle Abott of Johnson County entered the asylum as its first student six days later.
asylum in a political battle with representatives from elsewhere in the state.
FIGURE 28 The influence of heredity is demonstrated by the "good" and the "bad" Kallikaka.
"It was a coup to get one of these institutions in your town," Michael Wehmeyer, a professor in special
education, said.
The asylum was originally conceived as a boarding school with goals of education and rehabilitation. Over the years, the school's function turned to employing students in farm labor or simply institutionalizing them, according to a 1965 issue of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.
The asylum's move to Winfield was viewed at the time as a loss by the University. Lawrence lost the
"It was one of those politically desirable things; it would mean jobs, prestige. Back then, it wasn't quackery, it was cutting edge,
Within six years, the asylum had moved to Winfield, where superintendent F. Hoyt Pilcher performed 58 castrations and 150 sterilizations of patients. According to the database, many of those people were mentally ill rather than mentally disabled. Abott died at the Winfield hospital at age 29.
Wehmeyer
like bioscience is now."
With 30,000 sterilizations across the country in 30 states, Kansas ranked sixth nationally. The Kansas Legislature passed a law in 1913 allowing for the sterilization of "habitual criminals, idiots, epileptics, imbeciles, and insane." These procedures were widely accepted at the time and promoted through the philosophy of eugenics, which teaches that societies can be improved by selective breeding. The law was amended in 1917 to remove courts from the process and make it easier for health boards to have people sterilized. Even so, widespread uncertainty about the law kept the number of sterilizations in the dozens until the Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell clearly approved of it.
"It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them stare for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind," he wrote. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
"That's the funny part of this," Wehmeyer said. "What seems like clean-cut violations of basic human rights was part of a progressive agenda. It made for some strange bedfellows."
In the 1920s, Kansas families competed in eugenics-inspired fitness contests at state fairs. Wehmeyer displayed in his office a prize medal from a "Fitter Families Contest" presented by the American Eugenics Society.
"Then you've got wholesale sterilizations," Wehmeyer said. Instead of dozens of sterilizations each year in Kansas, there were hundreds. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' views reflected those that many considered, then and now, to be politically progressive.
Holmes wrote the opinion of the court.
"Yea, I have a goodly heritage," the medal read in part.
experimental studies of heredity and environment two 6
Wehmeyer said he bought the medal on Ebay. The image of the medal also appears in "The Child," a book written by Florence Sherbon, a University professor of home economics and a Fitter Families proponent.
Wehmeyer said that the eugenics movement was driven by a complex intersection of movements. Psychology and the science of genetics were emerging together, and the industrial revolution inspired people to believe that science could solve all of their problems. The progressive movement, which was powerful in Kansas, encouraged people to work for the improvement of society. Some progressives, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist William Allen White, for whom the University School of Journalism was named, fought against the eugenics movement, but its popularity carried it through the 1940s.
The "good" and the "bad" Kallikaks demonstrate the influence of heredity.
FROM "GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY"
The eugenics movement fell out of favor and the number of sterilizations performed each year dropped drastically following World War II. This was partly because the philosophy of eugenics was similar to the rhetoric associated with the Holocaust, Wehmeyer said. Courts now consider forced sterilization to be clearly unconstitutional.
Wehmeyer said pointing the finger at a few policy makers and physicians of the past would be "the easy thing to do."
"There was widespread adoption and acceptance of eugenics," he said. "In the 1950s, it was hard to find anyone who wasn't."
Wehmeyer said it was hard to imagine such things happening
again. Attitudes about disability have changed and states have added legal protections for disabled people. But he doesn't discount the danger of abuse whenever some people are identified as defective.
"When you think of people as different, you run a risk," he said.
Edited by Jennifer DiDonato
'BLACK GOLD' BIZ IN BRAZIL
JESSICA JANASZ/KANSAN
Matt Williams, a senior in aerospace engineering from Kansas City, speaks to engineering students about the Brazil trip he and 13 others took in August. This is the second presentation done about the trip, which lasted 11 days and included research and visits to oil and manufacturing companies.
CAMPUS
Malott evacuated due to chemical smell
Malott Hall was evacuated yesterday after reports of a chemical smell, which could have indicated a hazardous chemical spill.
The fire alarm for the building, which houses the chemistry department, activated about 10 a.m., forcing more than 50 students out of their classrooms and into the cold.
Malott Hall reopened at 11:14 a.m. No hazardous materials were found in the building. According to KU campus alerts, the smell may have come from workers sealing floors.
A ladder truck, multiple police cars, a hazardous waste unit and an ambulance were on hand to secure the area and take care of the situation.
abundance of precaution," KU spokeswoman Jill Jess said.
"We evacuate the building from an
Jess asked that students avoid the area around Malott Hall to avoid adding additional congestion to the situation.
Mason Lantz, a graduate student from Fairfield, Iowa, said he didn't mind the inconvenience.
"I am hoping it takes about five more minutes and my class gets canceled," he said after the incident. "I am glad I brought my jacket."
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Adam Strunk