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Eugenic States

Prize Winning Babies

A newspaper featuring the photographs of several infants and toddlers that participated in a recent Iowa State Fair. The headline reads: “Some Prize Winning Babies at the State Fair.” There are three rows of black-and-white images with five in each row for a total of fifteen children. All of the children are light-skinned. The first image of the first row features a young girl with dark, bob-length hair. She is sitting on a chair with a frilly, white dress on. She frowns at the camera. Under her image is the caption: Marvel Graham, Prairie City, Ia. Second rural girl, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is another young girl in a white top. Her hair is dark and reaches her ears in an almost bowl-like cut. She does not smile, but her mouth is slightly open as she faces the camera. She is sitting on a wooden chair. The caption under her photograph reads: Margaret Smith, Minburn, Ia. Second rural girl, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is another girl, with light brown-ish hair that reaches just above her ears. She is slightly grimacing and is looking to the bottom left of the camera. She is wearing a polka-dot dress with frills on the collar and sleeves and seems to be wearing a locket as well. She is sitting on the same wooden chair as in the other photos so far and has her hands placed in her lap. There appears to be a thin bracelet on her left wrist. The caption for her reads: Mary Huston, Des Moines, First city girl, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is of a girl with short, blonde hair. She grins at the camera, and two front teeth are visible with a slight gap in the middle. She is wearing a black top and sitting on the wooden chair. The caption is: Ruth Bradley, Madrid, Ia, Sweepstakes girl, improvement class. The final photograph of this row is a young boy who is looking at the camera with a confused expression. His mouth is slightly open in a frown. He has short, straight blonde hair and is wearing a light-colored shirt with a small pocket with large buttons on the front, bottom right of it. He is sitting in the chair. The caption is: Robert Hall, Des Moines, First city boy, 24 to 36 months. In the second row, the first image is of a baby girl. She is wearing a frilly, light-colored outfit and has light-colored, short hair that only covers the crown of her head. She looks to the right of the camera and her mouth is slightly open. She is sitting in the chair and seems to have a small bracelet on her left wrist. The caption reads: Patricia Fleming, Diagonal, Ia. First rural girl, 12 to 24 months. The next photograph is of a slightly older toddler girl. She looks directly at the camera with a confused expression. Her hair curls slightly around her face and she is wearing a frilly outfit. Her hands are clasped slightly in front of her. Her caption reads: Bernadine Casebolt, Berwick, Ia. First rural girl, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is of a baby girl who looks at the camera, distressed, in a 3/4 profile facing left. Her mouth is slightly open and she is almost bald, though she may have a tiny bit of light-colored hair on her head. She is wearing a slightly frilly frock and sits on the chair. Her caption reads: Patricia Meneough, Grimes, Ia. Second rural girl, 12 to 24 months. The next photograph is of a baby boy. He is facing the camera with his mouth slightly open. A few baby teeth are visible. He is wearing a loose light-colored shirt and is mostly bald, except for, potentially, a small amount of hair. He is sitting in the chair and his right hand is reaching forward slightly to grab something. His caption is: Hayden Smith, Des Moines, Third city boy, 12 to 24 months. The final photograph of this row is a young boy, who is looking distressed. He looks to the bottom right of the camera and seems very sad. His hair is very neat and parted on the side. It seems to be light brown or blonde. He is wearing a sailor-type outfit with a dark ascot. His shoulders slump slightly as he sits in teh wooden chair. The caption: Walter Erwin, Earlham, Ia. First town boy, 12 to 24 months. In the third row, the first picture is of a toddler boy. He is slightly angled toward the camera with his left ear more visible as the right side of his face is slightly turned away. His mouth is open but he looks directly at the camera. He is wearing a collared, light-colored shirt and his hands are on his lap in front of him. He appears to be holding something in his hands as he sits on the wooden chair. He has light-colored hair that is neat and parted to the right side of his head. The caption is: William Price, Earlham, Ia. First town boy, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is of a slightly chubby boy. He looks at the camera with his mouth open. His top two front teeth are visible. His hair is blonde and in a bowl cut. He is wearing a light-colored shirt with a collar and is sitting on the chair. The caption is: Robert Vifquain, Ames, Ia. Fourth town boy, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is of a toddler girl that is looking at the camera with a 3/4 profile, facing left. Her mouth is open. She is wearing a light-colored shirt and has short, brown hair. The caption is: Dorothy Boyd, Des Moines, First city girl, 12 to 24 months. The next photograph is of a young girl who is directly facing the camera, but her body is angled to the right. She is wearing a white dress and has large, inquisitive eyes. She has short brown hair in a bowl-cut. The caption: Helen Clouse, Des Moines, Fourth city girl, 12 to 24 months. The final image is of a toddler boy who is looking at the camera. He has a slight smirk on his face. His hair is short and seems to be either dark blonde or light brown. He is wearing a sailor-type shirt with a dark ascot. His caption is: William Reed, Berwick, Ia. Third rural boy, 24 to 36 months. A newspaper featuring the photographs of several infants and toddlers that participated in a recent Iowa State Fair. The headline reads: “Some Prize Winning Babies at the State Fair.” There are three rows of black-and-white images with five in each row for a total of fifteen children. All of the children are light-skinned. The first image of the first row features a young girl with dark, bob-length hair. She is sitting on a chair with a frilly, white dress on. She frowns at the camera. Under her image is the caption: Marvel Graham, Prairie City, Ia. Second rural girl, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is another young girl in a white top. Her hair is dark and reaches her ears in an almost bowl-like cut. She does not smile, but her mouth is slightly open as she faces the camera. She is sitting on a wooden chair. The caption under her photograph reads: Margaret Smith, Minburn, Ia. Second rural girl, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is another girl, with light brown-ish hair that reaches just above her ears. She is slightly grimacing and is looking to the bottom left of the camera. She is wearing a polka-dot dress with frills on the collar and sleeves and seems to be wearing a locket as well. She is sitting on the same wooden chair as in the other photos so far and has her hands placed in her lap. There appears to be a thin bracelet on her left wrist. The caption for her reads: Mary Huston, Des Moines, First city girl, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is of a girl with short, blonde hair. She grins at the camera, and two front teeth are visible with a slight gap in the middle. She is wearing a black top and sitting on the wooden chair. The caption is: Ruth Bradley, Madrid, Ia, Sweepstakes girl, improvement class. The final photograph of this row is a young boy who is looking at the camera with a confused expression. His mouth is slightly open in a frown. He has short, straight blonde hair and is wearing a light-colored shirt with a small pocket with large buttons on the front, bottom right of it. He is sitting in the chair. The caption is: Robert Hall, Des Moines, First city boy, 24 to 36 months. In the second row, the first image is of a baby girl. She is wearing a frilly, light-colored outfit and has light-colored, short hair that only covers the crown of her head. She looks to the right of the camera and her mouth is slightly open. She is sitting in the chair and seems to have a small bracelet on her left wrist. The caption reads: Patricia Fleming, Diagonal, Ia. First rural girl, 12 to 24 months. The next photograph is of a slightly older toddler girl. She looks directly at the camera with a confused expression. Her hair curls slightly around her face and she is wearing a frilly outfit. Her hands are clasped slightly in front of her. Her caption reads: Bernadine Casebolt, Berwick, Ia. First rural girl, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is of a baby girl who looks at the camera, distressed, in a 3/4 profile facing left. Her mouth is slightly open and she is almost bald, though she may have a tiny bit of light-colored hair on her head. She is wearing a slightly frilly frock and sits on the chair. Her caption reads: Patricia Meneough, Grimes, Ia. Second rural girl, 12 to 24 months. The next photograph is of a baby boy. He is facing the camera with his mouth slightly open. A few baby teeth are visible. He is wearing a loose light-colored shirt and is mostly bald, except for, potentially, a small amount of hair. He is sitting in the chair and his right hand is reaching forward slightly to grab something. His caption is: Hayden Smith, Des Moines, Third city boy, 12 to 24 months. The final photograph of this row is a young boy, who is looking distressed. He looks to the bottom right of the camera and seems very sad. His hair is very neat and parted on the side. It seems to be light brown or blonde. He is wearing a sailor-type outfit with a dark ascot. His shoulders slump slightly as he sits in teh wooden chair. The caption: Walter Erwin, Earlham, Ia. First town boy, 12 to 24 months. In the third row, the first picture is of a toddler boy. He is slightly angled toward the camera with his left ear more visible as the right side of his face is slightly turned away. His mouth is open but he looks directly at the camera. He is wearing a collared, light-colored shirt and his hands are on his lap in front of him. He appears to be holding something in his hands as he sits on the wooden chair. He has light-colored hair that is neat and parted to the right side of his head. The caption is: William Price, Earlham, Ia. First town boy, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is of a slightly chubby boy. He looks at the camera with his mouth open. His top two front teeth are visible. His hair is blonde and in a bowl cut. He is wearing a light-colored shirt with a collar and is sitting on the chair. The caption is: Robert Vifquain, Ames, Ia. Fourth town boy, 24 to 36 months. The next photograph is of a toddler girl that is looking at the camera with a 3/4 profile, facing left. Her mouth is open. She is wearing a light-colored shirt and has short, brown hair. The caption is: Dorothy Boyd, Des Moines, First city girl, 12 to 24 months. The next photograph is of a young girl who is directly facing the camera, but her body is angled to the right. She is wearing a white dress and has large, inquisitive eyes. She has short brown hair in a bowl-cut. The caption: Helen Clouse, Des Moines, Fourth city girl, 12 to 24 months. The final image is of a toddler boy who is looking at the camera. He has a slight smirk on his face. His hair is short and seems to be either dark blonde or light brown. He is wearing a sailor-type shirt with a dark ascot. His caption is: William Reed, Berwick, Ia. Third rural boy, 24 to 36 months.

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Whiteness and Interracial Relationships Officials in Iowa, like in other states, participated in race betterment programs that upheld white supremacist ideals. At the time, the majority of the state’s population were what we would consider to be “white” today. However, in the past, eugenicists did not see these individuals as fulfilling their ideal, who was someone of western European-descent, middle-class, able-bodied, and from a Protestant background. Eugenicists argued that people from eastern and southern Europe were a lesser-degree white person and inferior compared to “more pure” individuals. Eugenicists also claimed that other factors such as physical and mental disabilities, poverty, non-heterosexual sexualities, and criminality could be inherited and therefore, people with these identities could threaten the purity of the race if they had children. To convey this information, eugenicists used a wide range of methods, including seemingly innocuous Better Baby Contests at local fairs.

Iowa hosted their first Baby Better Contest in 1911 at the Iowa State Fair. Iowa newspapers credited Dr. Margaret V. Clark with developing and promoting the contest. At a Des Moines women’s club, Clark reportedly declared that “children should be scientifically ‘scored’ as well as horses, cattle, sheep, dogs and various sorts of grain.” Iowa public health reformers found this idea of rating infants as you would livestock appealing because it could, theoretically, define “perfect” and “imperfect” children based on their upbringing, environment, and family background. Contests could, in part, be used to offer educational support for mothers on childrearing. It could also be used to showcase the perceived beauty of white children, sharing the idea that it was possible to create a better race through better breeding among people. Judges scored babies based on their physical fitness, appearance, and perceived mental abilities. Black children were excluded from participation. These assessments reinforced the image within society that only specific types of white babies could be perfect. Better Baby Contests supported eugenic ideas while masking as a benevolent program, demonstrating that not all forms of racial betterment programs were “violent” like eugenic sterilization.

In addition to excluding Black families from participating, these contests depicted interracial marriage as problematic, and offspring from this union were inferior. Records from the Iowa Board of Eugenics showed that public health institutions understood interracial sex and relationships as signs of an individual’s unfit mental health and poor morals. These intimate details about a patient’s sexual life or their mixed-race families served as evidence to justify an individual’s sterilization. In 1951, the Iowa Board of Eugenics referred a fourteen-year-old white girl described as a “tall, friendly girl, having light brown hair” for a sterilization procedure. The girl was an inmate at a training school for girls because of “delinquent and incorrigible behavior,” although the patient file never described any troubling behavior from her. Instead, the Board of Eugenics cited her mother’s promiscuity and relationships with non-white men as part of the reason why the patient needed to be sterilized and sent to another institution that would treat her as if she were “mentally deficient.” The patient’s file talked about how her mother exhibited “amoral sexual behavior and a disregard for the training and care of her children.” Part of this description came from the note that the mother was “immoral” because she “had a negro child in 1947” out of wedlock. Similarly, the Eugenics Board explained that the girl, like her mother, also had sexual experience with “white and colored” boys. (Iowa Board of Eugenics Records, State Archives, R.G. 37, Box 30, Case 1359) Patient records like these showed that the Eugenics Board determined that romantic and sexual relationships across racial lines were evidence of an individual’s poor morals and cognitive deficiencies. The Eugenics Board therefore aimed to preserve the “purity” of the white race by preventing mixed-race relationships and the birth of mixed-race children.

Cases presented before the Eugenics Board illustrated that people of color in Iowa experienced racial discrimination that influenced their referral for sterilization. Some patient records referred to people of color in racist language. Other patient files showed that many kinds of state employees could refer individuals for sterilization using race as a form of justification. In one case, the Eugenics Board discussed a fourteen-year-old Black girl. Her patient file noted that she performed poorly in school and was involved in “several quarrels” with some of the girls in her class. School officials expelled her for this behavior and the school’s psychologist determined that she should be sterilized and sent to a girls’ training school because she said,
“I don’t feel the [Name Redacted] will benefit a great deal by any more formal public education, but on the other hand, I do not believe that she should be allowed to roam the streets. If she is, it is obvious what will happen to her. She lacks judgement and the ability to make the finer moral distinctions. The result will be that she will become delinquent in one way or another. Her home background is not adequate and apparently does not provide the proper training or supervision. … It is my recommendation that this matter be carried through as soon as it is physically possible, because the longer this girl remains in the general public the greater her chances are for delinquency.” (Iowa Board of Eugenics Records, State Archives, R.G. 37, Box 30, Case 813)
This case showed that African American youth were not allowed to have behavioral issues and risked school officials referring them to the Eugenics Board for minor problems. Another Black man’s patient file noted that although he was an “average” intelligence for his race and was pleasant, he was referred to the Board for not sleeping well and being tired at work. (Iowa Board of Eugenics Records, State Archives, R.G. 37, Box 30, Case 464) Cases like these showed that African Americans could be sterilized for small details in their personal lives.

Eugenicists in Iowa tried to protect their perceived ideals of the white race by controlling who from the local population could have children. Although some forms of eugenicist thoughts were more overtly violent than others, Better Baby contests and eugenic sterilization in Iowa were both tools to support beliefs that racial order could be controlled.