Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is required reading in high school and college classes, and those who read past the first chapter know that the book is based in part on his sociological research in Georgia and elsewhere. Moreover, it has recently been demonstrated by Earl Wright II and Aldon Morris that Du Bois, through his pioneering Atlanta Conferences “for the study of the Negro Problems” (1898–1914), founded the first American school of sociology. But scholars have paid little attention to how Du Bois employed evolutionary ideas in his early sociological writings from 1897 to 1903. In this paper, I will demonstrate that Du Bois was interested in evolution in college, and was introduced to evolutionary debates in his Harvard classes; that both he and Alexander Crummell, one of his early mentors, sometimes echoed Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary language; that Du Bois viewed African-American institutions and African-American leadership as social evolutionary responses to a hostile environment; and that his sociological analysis of crime and poverty in The Philadelphia Negro (1899) depended on the idea of a mismatch between a social group and its environment. Thus, despite his later criticisms of Spencer’s “biological analogy” and “Social Darwinism,” Du Bois’s early sociology was developed in dialogue with the philosophy of evolution.
 

 
     At the turn of the twentieth century,  Historically Black Colleges and Universities stood as symbols of racial pride for black America. They were also places where intense missions dedicated to uplift ideology were weaved into tradition collegiate cirriculum.  This paper will look at the development of HBCUs in terms of fusing eugenic application and respectability in teaching ‘fitness’ through proper manners and morals. It will also examine eugenic courses at HBCUS through institutions such as Fisk University, Howard University and Tuskegee Institute. From W.E.B.Du Bois’s “Talented Tenth” theories to Booker T. Washington’s definition of "New Negroes," the black intelligentsia embraced various forms of eugenic science as a means in which to create not just scholars, but future exemplars who would continue the tradition of race uplift work.  By tracing the endorsement of eugenic theory by affluent black leaders and institutions, this work will challenge the afro-centered perspective that blacks were always acted upon during the peak years of American eugenic reform.

 John MacEachran was the only Canadian student to complete a Ph.D. under Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. Although Wundt is considered the nominal founder of experimental psychology, MacEachran completed a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1909. MacEachran could probably have obtained a position at any number of prominent institutions in the US or Canada but he agreed to found a philosophy and psychology department at the newly created University of Alberta in Canada. He would have remained a minor academic were it not for the fact that he chaired the Eugenics Board in the Province of Alberta from 1929 to 1965, a remarkable stretch during which he signed off on the sterilization orders of more than 4,000 candidates for sterilization, in excess of 2,000 were sterilized during his tenure. Alberta was one of two Canadian provinces that conducted organized sterilizations of its captive populations in provincial mental health hospitals. MacEachran was a private man, he left very little by way of papers or evidence of his intellectual progress through the 20th century (he lived until 1971). Since his death he has been severely criticized for his devotion to the sterilization program in Alberta and for the manner in which this work was carried out – largely in silence and out of public view with minimal oversight. In this paper I reconstruct MacEachran’s life and career in the light of his work for the Eugenics Board using published and unpublished sources. I argue that his life in Alberta isolated his 19thcentury sensibilities.

The first time that cytogenetic techniques were applied to athletes was in the 1966 European Championship in Budapest, and for the first time to Olympic athletes in the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. For this purpose, in 1966 the Genetics and Human Biology Program was createdin close collaboration with the Local Olympic Organizing Committee.Although Mexican geneticist Alfonso León de Garay led the project, the head of the Program was Mexican geneticist Rodolfo Félix Estrada. The main objective of the Program was to study the genetic and anthropological components which determine an Olympic athlete’s abilities. This investigation included 1,265 games participants and covered family studies, cytological investigations, research on single genes, and analysis of finger and palm prints. The studies were carried out by independent teams, working in close collaboration with each other: the karyotyping technique used was that of Barbara Honeyman Heath and Lindsay Carter, both of whom carried out most of the work along with Johanna Faulhaber and Mexican geneticists Olga Olvera and Rosario Rodríguez. Another team headed by physician Alejo Romero studied the distribution of blood groups; biologists María Teresa García and Virginia Tiburcio carried out the study on genetic markers associated with enzymatic factors and sensitivity to phenylthiocarbamide. Other personnel participated with Ursula Mittwoch of the Galton Laboratory in the sex determination of the athletes using sexual chromatin and buccal smear tests. In terms of influence beyond Mexico, this project was very important as a site of transnational collaboration.