The Dark Side of Progress: Indiana in the Age of Eugenics
(Room JW Grand Ballroom 7)
06 Jul 18
1:30 PM
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2:45 PM
The Progressive era is often cited as a time of unparalleled professional and scientific reform in the United States, all at a time in which the nation was dealing with massive urbanization, industrialization, and migration forces that were transforming it. But there is a dark side to this era, one in which the theory of eugenics came to dominate how Americans viewed race, ethnicity, public health, and law. Indiana was at the forefront of both the positive and negative eugenic-Progressive revolution, and the first state in the nation to pass a eugenic sterilization law. Indiana’s codification of eugenic thought helped pave the way for further Progressive legislation, including strict Prohibition statutes, as well as for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The state’s struggle to unburden itself from eugenics took nearly 70 years, with legacies that remain to the present.