An archive of letter correspondences concerning Birthright Inc., a eugenics organization, presenting at the American Association on Mental Deficiency conference in 1944.
While these letters are contained in the Mansfield Training School archives, located at Connecticut State Library, they do not pertain to the school itself. Despite that, they are essential to understanding the influence of eugenics on institutions concerned with people living with developmental disabilities at the time.
In 1944, Neil A. Dayton was the superintendent of Mansfield Training School, which was a state-run facility for people with developmental disabilities, located in Mansfield, Connecticut. It was active from 1860 until 1993. Dayton was also the secretary and treasurer of the American Association on Mental Deficiency, now known as the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. AAIDD is an American non-profit organization founded in 1876, it is the oldest organization for professionals who work with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It promotes the advancement of an inclusive society and enhances the skills of professionals through advocacy, research and training.
While Dayton was the secretary of the AAMD, he fielded letters regarding their annual convention. There was controversy regarding the non-profit, Birthright Inc., presenting at the conference. They proposed to put up an exhibit regarding sterilizations at the American Association on Mental Deficiency.
Birthright was a eugenics organization founded by a woman named Marion Olden. In their mission, they stated, “…Our commitment to protect the right of the helpless child as being of greater importance than the right to parenthood by an unqualified person.” Birthright recently changed their name from The Sterilization League of New Jersey, in an effort to soften the language of their rhetoric; an attempt to distance themselves from Nazi Germany. Birthright, Inc. also reframed the language of their mission to reflect protecting children and to ensure they were born and raised under proper conditions, rather than explicitly claiming their ideology of selectively breeding humans. Their policy and practice, however, remained the same. They lobbied for multiple bills in New Jersey state government to implement sterilization policy. Thankfully, they were never successful in these attempts.
While the organization attempted to shift its mission, Olden was steadfast in her eugenics goals. She claimed the notion that all people are created equal was a false belief that was inhibiting the improvement of society. Instead, she distorted the notion of equality and stated, “Mental deficiency has become so prevalent that it constitutes the chief obstacle to social betterment.” In 1938, Olden travelled to Nazi Germany, collaborated with Falk Rutke on a German film entitled, “The Fatal Chain of Hereditary Disease,” to promote eugenic sterilization. While horrified with Germany’s views on racial purity at the time, it didn’t prevent her from collaborating and contributing to Nazi propaganda; she wrote English captions for the film.
By 1944, Olden had gained notoriety and the board members of the AAMD, who were all superintendents of training schools throughout the country, had mixed feelings about her approach. Some were aware of her propagandist work and found it to be sensationalized and political. Lloyd N. Yepsen, the chairman of the committee on education and training, voted a resounding NO. He had seen the exhibit at other conferences, including at the American Medical Association convention and he was unimpressed, he thought their prestige may be entirely unwarranted. He also sent a letter to Dr. E. Arthur Whitney, the President-elect of the organization and the superintendent at Elwyn Training School in Elwyn, PA. He said, “You see, I know the group backing of this organization and I don’t think much of them as you may judge. May we ought to let them damn themselves and let it go at that.”
Yepsen was in the minority, though. Few of the letters indicate dissent against Birthright, Inc. And while we don’t know from the letters as to whether Birthright did, in fact, get the green light to present at the convention, based on the responses of the board members, it likely was.
Examine the letters correspondences below, which also includes Marion Olden’s proposal and a copy of the sterilization law in Connecticut. Additionally, the archive contained a folder of documents from the Human Betterment Foundation, a eugenics organization out of Pasadena, California. They are attached in a separate slideshow below.
Below are the documents from the Human Betterment Foundation
Mansfield Training School Records, Sterilization. Series 3. RG170_001. Box 28, Folder 6. Connecticut State Library.