Between the late 19^th and early 20^th century several actuarial trends seemed to suggest that the African American population was in steep decline. Black and white social commentators posited a number of concerns for this decline including poverty, insufficient housing, and the prevalence of serious disease. For Black physicians, however, the declining birth rate presented cause for real anxiety. Their discussions, unfolding largely in the pages of the National Medical Association’s flagship journal, indicate that African American women were often targeted as both the cause and solution to wider racial anxieties over the quality and number of African American children. This talk will consider how concerns about Black women’s reproduction shaped Black intellectual engagement with the eugenics movement-the global biosocial movement of human improvement. African Americans marshaled eugenics in order to promote varying reproductive agendas that would provide an avenue for racial uplift while challenging the anti-Black racism present within mainstream eugenics. 

Michell Chresfield, Assistant Professor, Department of Africana Studies and Research Center

Michell Chresfield is an assistant professor of African American history in the Africana Studies and Research Center where her research and teaching focuses on Black and Indigenous histories, the history of science and medicine, and the history of racial formation and identity making in twentieth century America. She received her Bachelor’s degree in American Studies from the University of Notre Dame in 2008 and a Ph.D from Vanderbilt University in 2016.

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