The Origins Of Hate September 2003 Bar
Talk Interview The
American Lawyer 09-02-2003 Edwin Black, award-winning author of The New York
Times best-seller IBM and the Holocaust, has just published
War Against the Weak (Four Walls Eight Windows), a
history of the American eugenics movements and its ties to the Nazi
regime. In the early twentieth century, writes Black, advocates of
eugenics in America tried to create a white master Nordic race and,
in the process, end the procreation of southern Italians,
brown-haired Irish, Jews, blacks, Mexicans, and Indians, as well as
the disabled and people with vision problems. Their tactics included
compulsory sterilization, marriage restrictions, even mass
involuntary confinement in colonies for those deemed unfit. Some
60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized under laws in 27 states,
according to Black, with thousands more unjustly interred in mental
hospitals. Additionally, numerous marriages were annulled and
thousands were prevented from marrying and having children.
America's campaign was then exported around the world, including to
Nazi Germany, where it became the basis for Hitler's master race
theories and the scientific cover for his genocidal hatred. Black's
investigation deployed a team of several dozen researchers who
scoured scores of archives in four countries, unearthing some 50,000
documents. Black's research chronicles the pivotal involvement of
many prominent members of the legal community. National editor Dirk
Olin recently asked Black to expound on the lawyers and legal
infrastructure that contributed to this dark chapter in American
history.
Q. You say that American lawyers and judges
were key to the eugenics enterprise. Who were the key figures, and
what did they do? A. In the 1920s Harry Olson, chief
judge of the Municipal Court of Chicago, was also president of the
Eugenics Research Association and used his court as a eugenics
propaganda machine. Judge Olson's court employed America's most
rabid race eugenics agitator, Harry Laughlin, as a special eugenical
researcher, and then disseminated Laughlin's research in official
court legislative guides across the United States and, indeed, the
world. Thanks to the Chicago municipal court's legislative guides,
eugenics proliferated quickly across America. One such book,
Laughlin's 1922 Eugenical Sterilization in the United States,
published and copyrighted by the Municipal Court of Chicago, became
the nation's bedrock guide to racist legislation to biologically
eliminate the "unfit." The court dispatched the guide to every state
legislator and most county officials in the nation. Woodrow Wilson
signed a forced sterilization bill in New Jersey that called for a
kangaroo court-like hearing with sham due process. Edwin Katzen-
Ellenbogen, one of New Jersey's chief eugenic legal advisers, later
became a convicted war criminal doctor in the Buchenwald
concentration camp. Madison Grant, an attorney trustee for the
American Museum of Natural History, was an acknowledged influence on
Nazi race dogma; Grant even received fan mail from Adolf Hitler, who
praised Grant's book, Passing of the Great Race, as his "bible."
Grant made the American Museum of Natural History a sponsor of the
world eugenics movements by sponsoring its international congresses
on its premises. Q. Were Wilson, Olson, and Grant
anomalies? A. Not at all. In order to better identify
undesirables and the unfit for persecution, a racist mental
measurement test was administered to minorities proving they were
"morons." The attorney who financed this project was Charles Gould,
founder of Gould & Wilkie. The dean of Columbia Law School,
Harlan Fisk Stone--who later became a U.S. Supreme Court
justice--helped leaders of the ophthalmology profession craft
legislation that would identify, round up, prohibit the marriage of,
and forcibly sterilize anyone related to anyone with a vision
problem. Stone used law school staff to help write legislation that
would stand up to a legal challenge. A Columbia law professor, J.P.
Chamberlain, even published a 1923 article in the [ABA] Journal
calling for legislation to forcibly segregate into "colonies" those
deemed "defective," and forbid their marriages. Similar efforts
could be found in almost every state bar association, court system,
and legislature. Q. Did these statutes lead to the
challenges that brought us the infamous decision by Oliver Wendell
Holmes? A. Actually, the famous Buck v. Bell case arose
from a collusive lawsuit. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court
for the express purpose of installing compulsory sterilization of
the unfit as the law of the land. Attorneys representing both the
commonwealth of Virginia and Carrie Buck colluded to create the
appearance of an independent adversarial lawsuit. Buck, her mother,
and her young daughter were all unjustly classified as
"feebleminded." Once endorsed by Holmes, the floodgates opened, and
jurisdictions rushed in to enforce existing dormant legislation and
enact new laws. Nazi Germany followed suit, and at Nuremberg, their
chief eugenicists defended themselves by quoting Holmes. That was
the part of his opinion that concluded, "Three generations of
imbeciles are enough." Unfortunately, the Nazis agreed.
Q. You spoke of marriage nullification and prohibition?
Give me specifics. A. Marriage prohibition laws existed
in numerous states, and an innovation in Virginia, sometimes called
"the one-drop rule," prohibited marriage between a white and a
person with even one drop of nonwhite blood in their ancestry. This
served as the model for the Nuremberg laws. In practice, Virginia's
racist and eugenicist registrar, Walter Plecker, went on a one-man
crusade to nullify marriages to pure whites of those even suspected
of one drop of Indian, Asian, Negro, or other nonwhite blood.
Plecker worked in tandem with prosecutors. Marriage infractions were
felonies in Virginia and remained felonies until overturned by the
Supreme Court in 1966. Q. How was ophthalmology used as
a legal surrogate for race targeting? A. Doctors were
among the most extreme agitators. For example, the leadership of the
ophthalmology profession--including the section on ophthalmology of
the American Medical Association--crusaded to identify all those
with vision problems and their extended families, and then prohibit
their marriage, confine them to concentration camps, and forcibly
sterilize them. The first step in this crusade was enacting marriage
prohibition legislation that top ophthalmology leaders concocted
with the full knowledge of its national membership and with the
assistance of Columbia's dean Stone. On April 5, 1921, a New York
state senator sympathetic to the eugenics cause introduced Bill
Number 1597. It would have amended the state's domestic relations
law with a measure proposed by eminent eye surgeon and eugenics
crusader Lucien Howe. The amendment required "the town clerk upon
the application for a marriage license to ascertain as to any visual
defects in either of such applicants, or in a blood relative of
either party...." The clerk or any taxpayer could then apply to the
local county judge, who would appoint either two physicians, one an
ophthalmologist and the other a eugenic doctor, or one person who
could fulfill both roles. Based on their testimony, the clerk was
then empowered to prohibit the marriage. The law did not pass, even
though ophthalmologists tried again and again. Q. What
has been done about the victims? A. Not much. Five
state governors have apologized in the last year or so, but in many
cases, a misguided--and in some cases--obstructionist effort to hide
the facts has centered on doctor-patient privacy protections. The
law firms and legal institutions involved have remained silent.
Thompson Hine, the firm that merged with Gould & Wilkie,
declined to even give me a standard bio on their founder Charles
Gould, let alone answer any questions. State legal advisers are
worried over lawsuits, and are hiding behind patient
confidentiality. All such claims are specious. The same twisted
rationales of doctor-patient privacy were recently used in Germany
to deny Holocaust researchers access to Mengele's Auschwitz files. I
successfully challenged several state attorneys who tried to limit
my access. All of them backed down.
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