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1 Ga. J. S. Legal Hist. 53 (1991)
Breeding Better Georgians

handle is hein.journals/jslh1 and id is 63 raw text is: Breeding Better Georgians BY EDWARD J. LARSON* I n 1937 Georgia became the last American state to enact an eugenic sterilization statute. The measure passed in the flood of progressive legislation known locally as the Little New Deal, as Georgia sought to catch up with the rest of the nation in its political response to the Great Depression. In doing so, Georgia became the thirty-second state to mandate the sexual sterilization of certain individuals deemed to be eugenically unfit. Georgia eventually used the law to sterilize over 3,300 persons, the fifth highest total for any state. The other state sterilization laws had all been adopted within the preceding three decades, creating the impression that they represented the wave of the future. But in acting when it did, Georgia ignored the beacons' warning that the wave was about to break.' Because of its timing, passage of the Georgia sterilization law offers a particularly revealing episode in the politics of eugenics. Several historians have traced the origins of the eugenics movement in the scientific theories and progressive politics of the early twentieth century and analyzed its decline during mid-century as scientific developments and Nazi abuses eroded its support. On the specific issue of compulsory sterili- zation, existing analyses have focused on the roots of the pre- World War I laws, finding them initiated by reform-minded experts and backed by progressive politicians.2 Historians have devoted less attention to the adoption of later sterilization laws, although some suggest their roots may have rotted. In the definitive history of eugenic science, for example, Daniel J. Kevles quoted geneticist Hermann J. Mul- ler, who claimed that by 1935 eugenics had become 'hope- lessly perverted' into a pseudoscientific facade for 'advocates * Assistant Professor of Law and History, University of Georgia GEORGIA JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN LEGAL HISTORY VOL. I, No. I, SPRING/SUMMER 1991

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