“The Golden Door” (Beginnings-1938)

The Rise of Eugenics in America

By the early 1900s, many white protestant Americans came to fear they were about to be outnumbered and outbred by immigrants and their offspring. They embraced a new pseudo-science born in Britain, called eugenics. It falsely claimed you could eliminate everything from poverty and prostitution to disabilities if you stopped the individuals they dismissed as “socially defective” from reproducing.