In a recent article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch focusing on Virginia's past "ardor for eugenics," the names Harvey E. Jordan and Joseph S. DeJarnette figured prominently.

"At the heart of the eugenics movement were beliefs that human stock could be improved by selective breeding -- encouraging reproduction among the 'best' people and reducing it among 'defective' or 'socially inadequate' people by such steps as compulsory sterilization or institutionalization. Branding a person 'feebleminded' could mean he was mentally ill or retarded, immoral or alcoholic.

U.Va., perceived by many Southerners as the region's flagship university, became a hotbed of eugenics teaching.

It traditionally was an academy for Virginia's aristocracy, whose interest in family lineage went hand in hand with this 'science' of improving the human stock. The university was much smaller then; in 1935 it had 2,360 students, compared with 18,000 today.

Key educators were highly respected and enthusiastic supporters of eugenics. These white men and other key Virginia advocates embraced theories about genetic inheritance of most human traits, including racial superiority, that also fit their cultural views.

The university became 'an epicenter of eugenical thought,' [Gregory M.] Dorr writes, 'closely linked with the national movement, the Virginia antimiscegenation movement and tied to the state mental health professionals who promoted eugenic sterilization.'

One of U.Va.'s leading eugenicists was Dr. Harvey E. Jordan, hired in 1907 and promoted in 1939 to dean of medicine.

Jordan was connected to many national eugenics groups and leaders. In Virginia, he joined the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America, a Richmond-based group set up to preserve 'the supremacy of the white race in the United States of America without racial prejudice or hatred.' The clubs pushed for Virginia's Racial Integrity Act" (Peter Hardin, Richmond Times Dispatch, November 26, 2000).

Harvey E. Jordan was the author of "Eugenics: the Rearing of the Human Thoroughbred" [Cleveland Medical Journal, XI (December 1912), pp. 875-?] and the namesake for a hematology research laboratory at the University of Virginia School of Medicine dedicated in 1963 (UVa Medical Alumni Newsletter, December 1963-January 1964).

Another eugenicist was Dr. Joseph S. DeJarnette, director of Western State Hospital.

"The U.S. rate [of sterilization] didn't seem to satisfy Dr. Joseph DeJarnette, director of Western State Hospital in Virginia, when he drew this comparison in 1938:

'Germany in six years has sterilized about 80,000 of her unfit while the United States with approximately twice the population has only sterilized about 27,869 to January 1, 1938, in the past 20 years....

'The fact that there are 12,000,000 defectives in the United States should arouse our best endeavors to push this procedure to the maximum'" (Peter Hardin, Richmond Times Dispatch, November 26, 2000).

"Neither Virginia nor any of the 29 other states that conducted eugenical sterilizations ever compensated, apologized or memorialized the more than 60,000 eugenics victims, The Associated Press Reported on March 19.

....

"Experts on the eugenics movement say Virginia's law, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, had a dramatic impact in Germany, where Adolf Hitler's 1933 Law for the Prevention of Offspring with hereditary Diseases contained language that echoed the Virginia statute. The Nazis forcibly sterilized 2 million people and carried the racial purity policy a step further by murdering millions in the Holocaust.

At the Nuremberg war crimes trials after World War II, the Virginia law as cited by attorneys for accused Nazis as the precedent for the Nazi race cleansing programs.

The 1929 Supreme Court ruling on Virginia's eugenics law still stands as the constitutional standard on involuntary sterilization, prompting a federal judge in 1984 to throw out a class-action lawsuit filed by Virginia's eugenics victims.

Virginia named its DeJarnette Center, a children's psychiatric hospital in Staunton, after one of the state's most zealous eugenicists, Dr. Joseph S. DeJarnette, director of Western State Hospital for 50 years.

'Leave it to Virginia to name a hospital after someone who systematically tortured vulnerable people,' said [Valerie L.] Marsh, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the national Alliance for the mentally ill. 'I'm embarrassed and ashamed.'

Reed Boatright, spokesman for the state mental health department, said Wednesday the agency and [Gov.] Gilmore are considering renaming the DeJarnette Center because of DeJarnette's association with the eugenics movement" (Bill Baskervill, The Virginia Pilot [Online], March 30, 2000).

Over the past few years, there have been multiple controversies surrounding groups' attempts to celebrate the present by honoring the past.

As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. considers spotlighting Virginia's past ardor for eugenics as it launches an exhibit in 2004 on racial science in Nazi Germany (Peter Hardin, Richmond Times Dispatch, November 26, 2000), do you believe the hematology research laboratory at the University of Virginia School of Medicine should be named for Dr. Harvey E. Jordan? Do you believe that DeJarnette Center should keep it's name?

Do you think our increased knowledge about heros past and present make it more or less difficult to celebrate and honor individuals of consequence?

What do you think about the articles in the Richmond-Times Dispatch and the Pilot Online?

Please send your comments to george@loper.org and the most representative will be posted with full attribution.