Eugenics and Deaf People in 20th Century America
Trigger warning: allusion to The Holocaust.
Most Americans know Alexander Graham Bell as the person who is credited with inventing the telephone. What some don’t know is that Bell was a scientist and researcher, interested not only in sound, but engineering, aeronautics, animal husbandry, biology, and genetics. In fact, he specifically was interested in how genetics could improve the human race. At the time, this study was known as eugenics.
The aim of most eugenics movements was to affect reproductive practice through the application of theories of heredity. Eugenic practice sometimes aimed to prevent life (sterilization, contraception, segregation, abortion in some instances); it aimed to bring about fitter life (environmental reforms, puériculture focused on the training and rearing of children, public health); it aimed to generate more life (pronatalist interventions, treatment of infertility, “eutelegenesis”). And at its most extreme, it ended life (the so-called euthanasia of the disabled, the non-treatment of neonates). Eugenics always had an evaluative logic at its core. Some human life was of more value — to the state, the nation, the race, future generations — than other human life, and thus its advocates sought to implement these practices differentially.
— [The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics]
You can see that eugenics was a broad area of study and research, involving such things as infertility treatment and environmental reform. The study of eugenics was undertaken by some of the most learned people, in a time that vaccination and other medical advances were also showing hope of reducing human illness, disability, and suffering.
In 1940s Germany, eugenics took a horrifying turn. Since that time, the word eugenics has been fraught with a dark and terrible connotation, understandably so.
Before that time, eugenics was simply science, an emerging form of genetics, informed by science and the mores of the day. Alexander Graham Bell was a member of the the Committee on Eugenics, based in the United States, along with Stanford president David Starr Jordan, and acclaimed botanist Luther Burbank. Their work led to the formation of the American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality.
Due to his involvement in the Committee on Eugenics, Bell is sometimes accused of leading or participating in a eugenics movement against deaf people. This assertion is patently false.
Bell was interested in the study of genetics, and how to improve people’s lives through genetics. His mother was deaf, and he married a deaf woman (with whom he had four children — so much for the claim that Bell thought that deaf people shouldn’t procreate), so he was keenly aware of the issues of deafness. He also believed that many deaf people could learn how to listen and speak.
At the turn of the 20th century, there was apparently a rumor pervading the Deaf community that Bell, as member of the Committee on Eugenics, was advocating for a prohibition of marriage between deaf people, to prevent them from creating more deaf children.
This rumor was not true.
In fact, Dr. James L. Smith, superintendent of the Minnesota Institute for Defectives, wrote to Bell, with the belief that Bell was the Chair of the Committee on Eugenics (he wasn’t the chair, he was just a member). Smith had heard this rumor, that the Committee was poised to propose legislation making it illegal for deaf people to marry.[1]
From the NAD Committee chair in 1908: “Dr. Bell informed me that he was not the Chairman of the committee, though a member, and in closing his letter, he said, regarding the subject-matter of the communication: ‘In order that you may know my attitude towards the subject of your communication, I may say that I have always deprecated legislative interference with the marriages of the deaf.’ ”
Bell had never proposed systematic repression of deaf people from marrying one another, and was, in fact, against meddling in the affairs of who married whom.
Bell informed Smith that the Chairman of the Committee on Eugenics was Dr. David Starr Jordan, of Stanford University, so Smith then wrote to Jordan:
“Dear Sir: Some time ago the press dispatches stated that the Committee of which you are Chairman had decided to propose legislation forbidding the intermarriage of the deaf along with that of certain other classes.
This report has aroused intense feeling among the deaf as a class. At the Convention of the National Association of the Deaf, held at Norfolk last July, a committee was appointed to confer with your committee in the matter. As Chairman of that committee, I should like to know, before proceeding further, if the press report is true, and if the Committee on Eugenics has taken, or intends to take, any action looking to the inclusion of the deaf among undesirable classes whom it is proposed to bar from matrimonial alliances.
Yours respectfully,
J. L. Smith.
Faribault, Minn, January 25, 1908.”
Jordan wrote back:
“Mr. J. L. Smith, Faribault, Minn.
Dear Sir: The Committee on Eugenics has not recommended and has never thought of recommending the prohibition of the intermarriage of the deaf. If deafness has been caused by accident or disease it is not in any degree inheritable. For people born absolutely deaf there is the likelihood of its having an hereditary tendency, but this is a matter in which the people interested are concerned, and not a subject, I think, for statute.
I had never heard of the matter to which you refer until Mr. Alexander G. Bell, one of the committee, wrote that he had received letters criticizing him for making such a proposition. Neither he, nor I, nor any member of the Committee on Eugenics is responsible for it. I am told that the idea originated with some committee on charities.
Very truly yours,
David Starr Jordan, President.
Stanford University, Cal., February 11, 1908.”
Jordan also wrote to another NAD member, at the same time:
“Dear Sir: The report of the Committee on Eugenics was sent some time ago to Mr. W. M. Hays of the Bureau of Agriculture at Washington, D.C. I presume that he will print it somewhere, but at present I have no copies. The committee of the preceding year, of which, I believe, Mr. Bell was Chairman, had no meetings, made no report and did nothing of any kind whatsoever. There is, therefore, no foundation for the statement [regarding the segregation of the deaf]. No allusion regarding the deaf is contained in the report of the committee of the past year. In brief, I have not heard that any person connected with either committee had made any such recommendation. As to the rest, it seems to belong to the sphere of yellow journalism.”
This satisfied the NAD, that the Committee on Eugenics has no interest in restricting the marriage of deaf people to one another. In fact, after this exchange, the NAD concluded:
“The letter of Dr. Jordan above effectually disposes of the matter so far as the Committee on Eugenics is concerned, and the deaf of the country have no ground to look for interference with their matrimonial rights. I have communicated the results of my correspondence with Dr. Bell and Dr. Jordan to all my colleagues on the committee, and have advised them that no further action is called for on their part.
Yours respectfully,
J. L. Smith, Chairman. Faribault, Minn., February 22, 1908.
Mr. H. R. Smoak: I move that the report be accepted. Seconded by Mr. H. Long and passed.”
To summarize, as early as 1908, the NAD was satisfied that Bell and other scientists studying eugenics had no interest whatsoever in preventing deaf people from marrying one another and producing children.
Now, let’s fast-forward to 1920, in Detroit. NAD is having its annual convention. As reported in the 1921 Biennial Report of the Maryland School for the Deaf, recounting the activities of that meeting:
“Whereas, Statistics and observation have shown that the liability to deaf offspring is increased to a marked extent by (1) the intermarriage of the congenitally deaf, and (2) the marriage of the congenitally deaf into families having deaf relatives… Resolved, That the National Association of the Deaf go on record as viewing such marriages with disapproval and earnestly urge the deaf to avoid such unions if possible.” [2]
This history makes it clear that Alexander Graham Bell did not target deaf people in his role as a eugenics researcher.
It is also clear that the NAD did, in fact, support eugenics-informed behavior for deaf people, actively discouraging them from marrying other deaf people, or other people with deafness in their families, so that they would be less likely to have deaf offspring.
I hope this historical account helps to clarify the role of both Alexander Graham Bell and of the National Association for the Deaf with regards to the eugenics movement in the early 20th century in the United States.
Followup:
Some readers have shared this essay, and called into question the validity or veracity of its comments. Some even went so far as to say that there weren’t references to primary source materials (I hope you’re all able to see the links included above, but if you feel that something that should be cited is not, please do let me know).
I wrote a followup on some of this criticism, which I republish below.
I’m intimately familiar with Bell’s 1884 scientific paper “Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race”, which was written approximately 30 years prior to his 1908 correspondence cited in my essay, and about 35 years before the NAD’s official stance against intermarriage and procreation of deaf people. The lion’s share of Bell’s 1884 paper is tables, charts, and graphs about genetics and speculation on heritability of traits. Chapter VI is wildly criticized in Deaf militant organizations as a polemic against a deaf race. In fact, it is simply an observation of the characteristics of a developing race, and what would either encourage or discourage its proliferation.
Bell never advocated against marriage or intermarriage of deaf people, nor did he support atrocities such as sterilization, abortion, or murder of deaf people — although many people seem to conflate the word “eugenics” with the horrors wrought by people such as Josef Mengele.
(From Bell, Alexander G. “Marriage.” Science, vol. 17, no. 424, 1891, pp. 160–163.)
At the turn of the 20th century, when Bell was doing this research and working with deaf people, deafness was a great hardship, both for deaf people themselves, and for their families — including Bell’s family, as his mother and wife were both deaf. There was no nationwide manual language for deaf people in the United States — manual communication differed wildly from institution to institution, and in most cases, from home to home (because at that time, many people thought that deaf children were not educable, and so were not schooled). The reality of the time was that most deaf people could only communicate with the people in their families through home sign “languages” (which were not full languages), or through more robust sign systems taught at individual small schools or in villages throughout the nation (most of which were also not considered full languages). ASL didn’t begin to gain traction until ASD drew students from Maine, New Hampshire, and Martha’s Vineyard, and adapted those regional sign languages, along with French Sign Language, to create a truly robust and complete American Sign Language.
Many well-to-do American families sent their deaf children to Europe, to learn manual languages that had already evolved into robust communication systems, or to learn oral languages. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1860s that most deaf schools in the US were using ASL, and it was rarely used outside of those institutions. Of course, this achievement was short-lived — the Milan Conference of 1880 was the beginning of a dismantling of this positive growth and development. (Many people don’t know, though, that AG Bell was not, in fact, a delegate to the Milan Conference. There were more than seven nations represented at the Milan Conference, and a total of four delegates from only two nations, the US and Britain, were against giving preference to oral instruction over manual instruction of deaf children. There were five US delegates and 55 British delegates. All other delegates from all other nations represented voted to prioritize spoken languages over signed languages.)
It wasn’t until Stokoe arrived at Gallaudet in the 1950s that standardization on ASL, and its recognition as a complete language, was recognized, and it began to regain its rightful status as a complete manual language.
Today, Deaf culture and easy access to American Sign Language means that deafness is not a hardship. Deaf people can live perfectly fulfilling lives within the Deaf Community, deciding how much they wish to engage with hearing people, if at all. In the time before the early 20th century, on the other hand, deafness was a hardship — documented time and time again by deaf advocates as well as NAD leaders of the time. Except for the fortunate few in deaf communities, being deaf was isolating, and the perceptions typical Americans had of deaf people were negative. Bell worked to dispel those myths — in fact, in the very essay of his I mentioned earlier, Bell said that it was learned people’s obligation to dispel the fallacies about deaf people who don’t speak, that signing “excite surprise and even sometimes alarm in ignorant minds,” and it was the learned people’s responsibility to educate the common people otherwise.
Bell was one of the first and most well-respected men to assert that deaf people were not mentally impaired in any way, but instead had the same capacity for intellect as hearing people. In fact, “As early as 1872 he began a crusade for recognizing the intellectual possibilities of deaf children.” (Osborne, Harold Smith. Biographical Memoir of Alexander Graham Bell, 1847–1922. Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 1943. Print.)
On the other hand, Edward Milner Gallaudet, son of Thomas Gallaudet, and a contemporary of Bell, had what now might seem to be surprising thoughts. I will leave them here without comment.
(From Gallaudet, Edward M. “The Intermarriage of the Deaf, and Their Education.” Science, vol. 16, no. 408, 1890, pp. 295–299.)
