Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

In the first half of the 20th century, the theory of eugenics grows in popularity. Eugenics is first developed by scientist Francis Galton, who argues that scientists should supervise reproduction in society so as to encourage the birth of healthy, fit children. Eugenics has two branches: positive eugenics, which aims to encourage reproduction so as to pass down beneficial genetic traits, and negative eugenics, which seeks to forbid individuals who hold supposedly detrimental genetic profiles from reproducing and passing on their genes. Some, such as Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, take negative eugenics to the extreme, killing infants who he believes will grow up to be handicapped. In many cases, eugenicists are openly racist, believing black and poor people to have inherently “inferior” (215) genes.

The eugenicist Margaret Sanger becomes especially interested in limiting the population growth rates of black people—particularly in Harlem, a predominantly black neighborhood in New York City. Sanger puts together a journal named “The Negro Number” featuring contributions from prominent black thinkers such as W.E.B. DuBois. The articles in the journal argue that the black people who reproduce the most are those who are “least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly” (197).