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Eugenics
Charles Davenport

Charles Benedict Davenport (June 1, 1866–February 18, 1944) was a prominent United States eugenicist and biologist. He was one of the leaders of the American eugenics movement, which was directly involved in the compulsory sterilization of around 60,000 "unfit to live" Americans and strongly influenced the Holocaust in Europe. ¹

Biography

Davenport was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to Amzi Benedict Davenport, an abolitionist of puritan stock, and his wife Jane Joralemon Dimon (of English, Dutch and Italian ancestry). He attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D in biology in 1892 and married Gertrude Crotty, a zoology graduate, in 1894.

Later on, Davenport became a professor of zoology at Harvard. He became one of the most prominent American biologists of his time, pioneering new quantitative standards of taxonomy. Davenport had a tremendous respect for the biometrics approach to evolution pioneered by Francis Galton and Karl Pearson, and was involved in Pearson's journal, Biometrika. However, after the re-discovery of Gregor Mendel's laws of heredity, he moved on to become a prominent supporter of Mendelism.

In 1898, Davenport became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, ² where he founded the Eugenics Record Office in 1910. He began to study human heredity, and much of his effort was later turned to promoting eugenics.

Davenport founded the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations (IFEO) in 1925, with Eugen Fischer as chairman of the Commission on Bastardization and Miscegenation (1927). Davenport aspired to found a World Institute for Miscegenations, and "was working on a 'world map' of the 'mixed-race areas, ³ which he introduced for the first time at a meeting of the IFEO in Munich in 1928." ⁴ Together with his assistant Morris Steggerda, Davenport attempted to develop a comprehensive quantitative approach to human miscegenation. The results of their research was presented in the book Race Crossing in Jamaica (1929), which attempted to provide statistical evidence for biological and cultural degradation following interbreeding between white and black populations. Today it is considered a work of scientific racism, and was criticized in its time for drawing conclusions which stretched far beyond (and sometimes counter to) the data it presented. ⁵ The entire eugenics movement was criticized for being supposedly based on racism and classist assumptions set out to prove the unfitness of wide sections of the American population which Davenport and his followers considered "degenerate", using methods criticized even by British eugenicists as unscientific. ⁶ After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Davenport maintained connections with various Nazi institutions and publications, both before and during World War II. For example, Davenport held editorial positions at two influential German journals, both of which were founded in 1935, and in 1939 he wrote a contribution to the Festschrift for Otto Reche, who became an important figure in the plan to "remove" those populations considered "inferior" in Wartheland (German Ost). ⁷ He died of pneumonia in 1944.

Eugenics creed

As quoted in the NAS Biographical Memoir of Charles Benedict Davenport by Oscar Riddle, the Eugenics creed is as follows:

• "I believe in striving to raise the human race to the highest plane of social organization, of cooperative work and of effective endeavor."
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• "I believe that I am the trustee of the germ plasm that I carry; that this has been passed on to me through thousands of generations before me; and that I betray the trust if (that germ plasm being good) I so act as to jeopardize it, with its excellent possibilities, or, from motives of personal convenience, to unduly limit offspring."
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• "I believe that, having made our choice in marriage carefully, we, the married pair, should seek to have 4 to 6 children in order that our carefully selected germ plasm shall be reproduced in adequate degree and that this preferred stock shall not be swamped by that less carefully selected."
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• "I believe in such a selection of immigrants as shall not tend to adulterate our national germ plasm with socially unfit traits."
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• "I believe in repressing my instincts when to follow them would injure the next generation."

Selected works

This selection of work done by or with Charles Davenport is representative of his publications. It is believed that an examination of the titles is sufficient to get an accurate idea of Davenport's views as well as the depth of his scientific methodology.

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