eugenics Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

And you thought “Lucifer” was an unfortunate name…

July 18, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Yes, Virginia, there are worse names for your radical journal than Lucifer the Light-Bearer, although that may not be immediately clear. When Lucifer changed its name and format, becoming the American Journal of Eugenics, it was considered by many a step in the right direction, towards a more staid, respectable image that would appeal to more Americans. Bolton Hall, for example, wrote in to express his approval of the changes. The masthead of the new journal was, like that of Lucifer, quite striking. What do think, shall I have some t-shirts made? I’m afraid, however, that the American Journal of […]

Oscar C. McColloch, The Tribe of Ishmael (1888)

March 30, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

Fans of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie or Ron Sakolsky and James Koehnline’s Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture will be familiar with the story of the Tribe of Ben Ishmael, a nomadic, mixed-race group that may have had Muslim origins and were eventually the target of a 1907 “eugenic” program of forced sterilization in Indiana. In 1923, Arthur H. Estabrook published an account of the family. The Eugenics Archive also has online a number of pictures of Ishmaelite homes and such. None of this material is uncontroversial. On the genealogy sites, members of the Ishmael family […]