Residents Event Calendar

The topic for this month is “Eugenics in the Culture Wars of the 1920s,” and our speaker is Southgate resident, John McClymer. Eugenicists contemplated, and to a large extent achieved, a state far more powerful and intrusive than that created by the Founders. Consider a brief list of the movement’s successes in the 1920s.

1. State after state adopted variants of Virginia’s Racial Purity Law.
2. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 established U.S. immigration quotas until 1965.
3. Public school systems everywhere began “tracking” students based upon I.Q. tests developed in accord with Eugenics principles.
4. By the 1920s, Eugenics was well established as a branch of Biology.

Eugenics, in short, had real consequences that only began to alarm when the enormities committed in its name by Nazi Germany became known. John McClymer is Professor of History at Assumption College since 1970.