Agenda

This virtual event is a preparation for the major Dismantling Eugenics conference, marking the anti-centennial of the Second International Eugenics Congress. It traces the internationalisation of eugenics from the movement’s founder Frances Galton at University College London, through to Henry Osborn’s opening speech at the Second Congress. It explores the repercussions of ideas generated and promoted at the Congress, how their influence has been felt throughout the world and continues to this day. The virtual event considers how to address the legacies of eugenics, and promote an alternative anti-Eugenics way of life, in different nations and regional spheres today.

The hosts will open the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening day’s theme: Legacies of Eugenics.

*You can watch Jim’s film “Crip Camp” on Netflix!

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution2020 | R | 1h 48m | Documentary FilmsA groundbreaking summer camp galvanizes a group of teens with disabilities to help build a movement, forging a new path toward greater equality.

The third panel looks at Eugenics across the Americas, chaired by Miroslava Chavez-Garcia (author of ‘Migrant Writing: Letter Writing across the US-Mexico Borderlands’), with participation from Erika Dyck, Susan Antebi, Natalie Lira and Paul Vanouse.

Milton Reynolds draws to a conclusion the day’s proceedings, by asking the different chairs for their key takeaways from this critical moment in challenging eugenics globally.

Abenaki and French-Canadian artist, educator and basket-maker Judy Dow, shares her tapestries of the Second International Eugenics Congress eugenics tree, and the counterpart Witness Tree tapestries, and explains the global, local and personal significance of this moment, and the philosophy behind the tapestries. At a time when the world has been brought to a standstill by pandemic, this presentation looks at this moment globally as one of ‘passing through the narrows’, asking what it means to travel through this portal, what baggage we take with us, and who is considered worthy to experience the benefits on the other side. This journey requires us to face questions about how we confront eugenics today yet it also offers hope. As the tapestries demonstrate, like a tree, Anti-Eugenics draws from sources and transforms them into unity of mind and heart.

Aktion T4 and the Role of the State keynote session  – Olivia Marks Woldman and Rosemarie Garland Thomson surface the history of Aktion T4, it’s repercussions, and what lessons can be learnt from this dark chapter of history for our world today

Aktion T4 and the Role of the State panel session – Olivia and Rosemarie are joined by Stephen Unwin, Saskia Baron and Tom Haward to explore questions and topics posed by the different citizen assembly community groups

Explore the powerful poetry of rising poets Makai Brown, Yanina Chicas, Jaxsyn Claymore, Wahpe Clifford, Maia Sanaa Eaton, Mikayla Johnson, Belise Nishimwe, Pte San Win Little Whiteman, and Autumn White Eyes

Join Indigenous artist Cannupa Hanska Luger for a cinematic journey centered on 21st Century Indigeneity, critical cultural analysis, and dedication and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages. 

A Film by Joselyn Kaxhyêk Borrero [Tlingit/Dakl’áweidi (Eagle/Killerwhale) clan] naming and honoring 100 Indigenous Women. This micro-commission – originally produced for the Park Avenue Armory’s “100 Years | 100 Women” project – is a video tribute to Indigenous Women artists, scholars, and activists, who, as they navigate the current world health crisis, continue to be dedicated to women’s empowerment and the pursuit of gender and racial equality. “100 Indigenous Women” is produced in collaboration with the Kasibahagua Taíno Cultural Society and Roberto Múkaro Borrero.

In this video, Nicholas Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax̂ multi-disciplinary artist and musician from Alaska, explores the tension of living on colonized land.

U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo digs into the deep, unresolved issues facing North American Indigenous peoples with Rick West, Founding Director of the National Museum of the American Indian & Director Emeritus, Autry Museum of the American West.

Oren Lyons [Haudenosaunee], internationally esteemed Elder organizer and orator, links the necessity to redress historical injustices in order to seriously mitigate global warming. Grappling with the toxic “survival of the fittest” assumptions of the Western settler colonial mentality is central.

Focusing on the Indigenous experience, Pawnee attorney and activist Walter Echo-Hawk will examine how racism gave rise to the eugenics movement, and how for Indigenous people today an antidote might be found in the implementation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

This side meeting convenes a group of invited Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other artists and culture bearers of color who are leading cultural strategy efforts to dismantle white supremacy in the arts and culture sector.

Robert Lee (University of Cambridge, UK), historian of Indigenous dispossession, discusses Indigenous lands and “Land Grant” universities, including Cornell and Rutgers, that profited from the Morrill Acts (1862, 1890).

Loretta Ross, a veteran organizer against the Klan and for reproductive justice, calls for us to pull together all who have been fragmented by the violent policies and politics of eugenics and dysgenics. Ross envisions dealing with the toxic legacies of the past with an affirming, loving relationship building-process of calling in across apparent chasms and punching up.

Meet Rebirth Garments, a clothing line founded by Sky Cubacub specializing in gender non-conforming wearables and accessories centering on Non-binary, Trans, Disabled and Mad Queers of all sizes and ages.

Excerpts from “THE AIMS AND METHODS OF EUGENICAL SOCIETIES” by Leonard Darwin, October 7, 1921

Response and Reflection: DEAR YOU by Glenis Redmond

Artist note: Glenis Redmond is a BIPOC writer and I want to acknowledge that I am in no way attempting to appropriate that part of her lived experience and culture. I chose DEAR YOU because it spoke to me about the intersectionality of oppression and erasure and the unbreakable spirit that lives within us across generations. Glenis Redmond also identifies as a member of the disability community. As a disabled woman, I see that, feel that and hear that in her visceral and powerful words and am so honored to speak them in fervent opposition to Leonard Darwin’s chillingly ignorant and inhuman dissertation.

The title of this sharing comes from the following quote by Glenis Redmond: “How do you qualify a life? By the people who sow into you. And I am an orchard because so many have sown into me.”

Thank you for your orchard, Glenis Redmond.

Image Description: A petite white woman with short, straight brown hair sitting in an overstuffed gray/green chair. She is wearing a black V-neck dress and is looking directly into the camera.

The documentary A DANGEROUS IDEA reveals how biologically determined politics has disenfranchised women and people of color, provided a rationale for state sanctioned crimes committed against America’s most vulnerable citizens, and gains new traction under the Trump administration.

How we look: Eugenics, the Second Congress, Immigration, and changing today’s demographics” This panel looks at the integral role the eugenics movement more broadly, and the Second Congress in particular, played in shaping the demographics of the country – through the targeted selection and exclusion of certain communities. The first half of this panel session, led by Dan Okrent, with Alan Kraut and Mark Tseng-Putterman, looks at the context of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act and the lobbying around that act. It considers the part played by the Congress in justifying such an act, and its implications leading up to the Second World War and the denial of entry to certain groups escaping Nazi persecution. The second half of the session is led by Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, joined by Lina-Maria Murillo, Celeste Menchaca and Gianna May Sanchez. It explores the long history of eugenic rhetoric and practice on the Southern border, and asks what can be learnt from this as we reflect on the humanitarian disaster on the Mexican/US border today.

Panel 1 | “How we remember: what happened at the Second Congress, and its core themes”
Renowned American Museum of Natural History curator Rob DeSalle, is joined by historian and author of ‘The Guarded Gate’, Dan Okrent, and public health scientist and historian, Mike Yudell. Together they unpack what exactly took place at the Second Congress, its four core themes and aims, and its degree of success in achieving these aims.

Panel 2 | “How we look: Eugenics, the Second Congress, Immigration, and changing today’s demographics”
This panel looks at the integral role the eugenics movement more broadly, and the Second Congress in particular, played in shaping the demographics of the country – through the targeted selection and exclusion of certain communities. The first half of this panel session, led by Dan Okrent, with Alan Kraut and Mark Tseng-Putterman, looks at the context of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act and the lobbying around that act. It considers the part played by the Congress in justifying such an act, and its implications leading up to the Second World War and the denial of entry to certain groups escaping Nazi persecution. The second half of the session is led by Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, joined by Lina-Maria Murillo, Celeste Menchaca and Gianna May Sanchez. It explores the long history of eugenic rhetoric and practice on the Southern border, and asks what can be learnt from this as we reflect on the humanitarian disaster on the Mexican/US border today.

A round table conversation that explores the complex relationship between between race, ancestry, genomics, and health, featuring genomics and health researcher Charles Rotimi and historian of science Evelynn Hammonds, moderated by AMNH curator Rob DeSalle.

Please note: due to filming constraints, the speaker introductions in this program (approximately the first 3 minutes) do not include ASL interpretation. However, once the conversation between all speakers is underway, the full program is interpreted in ASL.

Three short documentaries share intimate and powerful portraits of Indigenous people at the forefront of change and cultural empowerment in the face of immense challenges. These films have audio descriptions.

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By us, about us! New, immersive documentary films from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities made by filmmakers from within the community, presented in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival.

The American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival features documentary films, shorts, and other media that increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of peoples and cultures around the world. In the spirit of the Mead Festival and in conjunction with the Dismantling Eugenics conference, the Museum engaged preeminent film curators from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities to create a series of film screenings and round-table conversations that “pass the mic” and provide a platform for voices from within marginalized communities to tell their own stories. Jason Ryle (ImagineNative Film Festival), Mahen Bonetti (African Film Festival), and Lawrence Carter-Long (Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund/Cinema Shift).

Join a post-screening conversation with Indigenous scholars and leaders, Dr. Joely Proudfit, Naomi Johnson, and Jason Ryle, as they explore how three short films reflect connections between eugenics and the issues facing Indigenous communities in North America today

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By us, about us! New, immersive documentary films from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities made by filmmakers from within the community, presented in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival.

The American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival features documentary films, shorts, and other media that increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of peoples and cultures around the world. In the spirit of the Mead Festival and in conjunction with the Dismantling Eugenics conference, the Museum engaged preeminent film curators from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities to create a series of film screenings and round-table conversations that “pass the mic” and provide a platform for voices from within marginalized communities to tell their own stories. Jason Ryle (ImagineNative Film Festival), Mahen Bonetti (African Film Festival), and Lawrence Carter-Long (Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund/Cinema Shift).

Eugenics and Family keynote session – In ‘My Baby Box: Personally confronting the legacy of eugenics in England’, Debbie Challis maps out her own personal story of loss and life, and how she was able to better understand and confront these through recognising the history of eugenics. Moderated by Indy Bhullar.

Monologues written and performed by Ryan J. Haddad

Eugenics and Family panel session – Debbie and Indy are joined by Tracey Loughran and Sakina Ballard to explore questions and topics posed by the different citizen assembly community groups around reproductive justice

The host will open and close the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening days theme of Legacies of Eugenics. 

Explore the powerful poetry of rising poets Makai Brown, Yanina Chicas, Jaxsyn Claymore, Wahpe Clifford, Maia Sanaa Eaton, Mikayla Johnson, Belise Nishimwe, Pte San Win Little Whiteman, and Autumn White Eyes

Sofiya Cheyenne shares and personally responds to an article detailing the extraordinary denizens of Coney Island (New York side) side-shows in the 1900s.

Sofiya’s source material:

Coney Island – Freaks & Shows

The material is copyrighted (c) 1997 by Jeffrey Stanton

Excerpt:

“While P.T. Barnum elevated the ballyhoo of exhibiting side show circus freaks to an art, it was the arrival of Samuel W. Gumpertz at Coney that brought the freak show to the seashore. Gumpertz, a successful Missouri showman, came to the island at the behest of Senator Reynold’s to build and manage a Midget City called Lilliputia for Dreamland’s 1904 opening season. He invited 300 midgets scattered across the continent at various World’s Fairs and circus sideshows to be the permanent residents of an experimental community. The most famous of the residents were the Count and Countess Magri. The countess had achieved her fame years earlier during her first marriage to the beloved midget, General Tom Thumb.

Lilliputia was built to half scale to resemble 15th century Nuremberg Germany. The midgets had their own parliament, own Midget Fire Department that responded hourly to false alarms, and their own beach complete with midget lifeguards. While they entertained patrons during the day, they had their own lives and community when the park was closed…”

Cultural and literary historian, Sander Gilman, discusses how discriminatory perceptions of postures and bodies perpetuated eugenic ideas and ableist notions of what is “healthy.” We will learn that being directed to correct our posture is a detrimental & eugenic attempt to improve humankind. 

Rana Hogarth, author of “Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840,” will speak about anti-Black racism in the production of scientific knowledge in the early twentieth century.

Aurora Levins Morales shares a self-created audio and visual portrait exploring the multiple legacies of “eugenicide” in her family. 

Cara Reedy, of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, will moderate a conversation with leaders of two major philanthropic institutions, as they grapple with their eugenic legacies. Featuring: Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation and John Palfrey of the MacArthur Foundation. 

The Pioneer Fund, founded in 1937 and still in operation, has sought to promote “race betterment” for “white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.” N. Ordover, the author of “American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism,” discusses TPF’s ongoing impact.

Poet and Revolutionary  Tiny Gray Garcia aka PovertySkola performs an excerpt of “Sterile,” a “poemologue” theatre series based on Houseless, Disabled ancestors

“Show up Unapologetically” is a synthesis of performance poetry and an avant-garde poetry short film.

This presentation will use passages from Fitzgerald’s writings and the “The Great Gatsby” to show how writers and artists of the era incorporated eugenics politics and references into their work. 

Focusing on disability justice, IQ testing, and the legacy of a Great Depression-era experiment, Susan Schweik, author of “The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public,” will discuss how anti-eugenics projects sometimes fail to recognize their own underlying eugenic assumptions.

Chicago-based lawyer Ajitha Reddy discusses the ongoing influence of eugenics-originated intelligence testing in legal practices and case law.

Panel 3 | “How we learn: Looking at why it was a natural history museum that twice played host to the epicentre of international eugenics”

Subhadra Das, former curator of the Galton Collection, Miranda Lowe, Principal Curator of Natural History Museum, London, Meredith Perruzi, director of the National Deaf Life Museum, and the renowned disability studies scholar, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson take us on an exhibit tour to the Hall of the Age of Man, to help frame a discussion around the role cultural institutions such as the AMNH have played in the eugenics movement, and the role that such institutions now play or should be playing in this anti-Eugenic moment today and in the future.

Panel 4 | “How we reckon: A look at reckonings around the different characters of the Second and Third Congress, and what we/they can learn from this”
The names, memories and influences of eugenicists still occupy our public places and university and state buildings, and their ideologies and practices still influence many fields of study and policy. This panel will focus on several institutions, fields of study, policy initiatives, and advocacy efforts that have begun to grapple with the legacies of eugenicists who were present at the Second and Third Congress. Chaired by Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society, the panel will feature a collective discussion among speakers who have been directly involved in such reckonings. They will share the lessons learnt from these experiences, and make practical suggestions for reckoning processes in other similarly placed arenas.

Speakers for Panel 4 include:

•David McIntosh and Rena Heinrich: Madison Grant and California’s State Parks
•Rep. Thomas Stevens: Henry Perkins, the Eugenics Survey, and Vermont’s recent apology
•Zachary Utz and Christopher Donohue: The eugenic legacies of Robert Cook, “expert” for the US Senate and National Institutes of Health during the 1960s
•Alexandra Minna Stern: Current reckonings in Michigan, Indiana, and California

For more than a century we have witnessed the ongoing pathologizing, criminalization, and experimentation of Queer & Trans bodies. Movement leaders Isa Noyola of MIJENTE, Kenyon Farrow of Partners for Dignity & Rights, and Sebastian Margaret of the Disability Project—with Susan Raffo of Healing History Project as moderator—will speak about the consequences of this eugenic history and challenge the institutions and ideologies that have perpetuated violence to this day, including public health institutions, and prisons. 

The Tretter Transgender Oral History Project

The Tretter Transgender Oral History Project (TTOHP) is committed to collecting, preserving, and making available oral histories of gender transgression, broadly understood through a trans framework.

The first phase (2015-2018) of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project was led by poet and activist Andrea Jenkins—who became the first Black transgender woman to serve in office in the US after she was elected, in 2017, to the Minneapolis City Council. This phase of the project sought to document the life stories and experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming people, with a focus on people living in the upper Midwest as well as those often excluded from the historical record, including trans people of color and trans elders.

The second phase (2019-2021) of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project is led by trans studies scholar Myrl Beam. This phase of work seeks to document histories of trans activist movements and politics in the US, and is grounded in the belief that trans movements for justice are about more than rights: they are about survival, and about creating a new, more fabulous, more livable, and more expansive world––one not structured by racialized gender norms. The oral histories collected during this phase document the transformative power of trans movements, and the stories of trans activists who are building them.

Transcripts
Transcripts is a new podcast that puts the transgender movement in context. Using oral histories from the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota, hosts Andrea Jenkins and Myrl Beam introduce listeners to the trans activists who are changing our world.

Experience writing and art through Aurora Levins Morales’ queer, disabled, and radical lens.

Tammy Johnson performs a belly dance piece based on a poem written by Leroy F. Moore about self definition and the external gaze.

Kenya’s official submission to the 2021 Academy Awards for Best International Film examines how a rural community’s values have been disrupted by colonialism and religion. This film has audio descriptions.

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By us, about us! New, immersive documentary films from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities made by filmmakers from within the community, presented in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival.

The American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival features documentary films, shorts, and other media that increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of peoples and cultures around the world. In the spirit of the Mead Festival and in conjunction with the Dismantling Eugenics conference, the Museum engaged preeminent film curators from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities to create a series of film screenings and round-table conversations that “pass the mic” and provide a platform for voices from within marginalized communities to tell their own stories. Jason Ryle (ImagineNative Film Festival), Mahen Bonetti (African Film Festival), and Lawrence Carter-Long (Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund/Cinema Shift).

Directors Maia von Lekow and Christopher King have a wide-ranging conversation with Judy Kibinge (Founder of East African Documentary Film Fund) that touches on the twin legacies of eugenics and colonialism, exploring land rights, and the collision of traditional and colonial practices.

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By us, about us! New, immersive documentary films from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities made by filmmakers from within the community, presented in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival.

The American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival features documentary films, shorts, and other media that increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of peoples and cultures around the world. In the spirit of the Mead Festival and in conjunction with the Dismantling Eugenics conference, the Museum engaged preeminent film curators from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities to create a series of film screenings and round-table conversations that “pass the mic” and provide a platform for voices from within marginalized communities to tell their own stories. Jason Ryle (ImagineNative Film Festival), Mahen Bonetti (African Film Festival), and Lawrence Carter-Long (Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund/Cinema Shift).

Eugenics and Racial Diversity keynote session – ‘In ‘Make Me Better: Eugenics and the idea of human improvement’ Angela Saini explores how we retain the notion that we are not enough as we are, that both individuals and groups need to be improved to serve the state – and how that basic ideology still drives science today. Moderated by Kurt Barling.

Eugenics and Racial Diversity panel session – Angela and Kurt are joined by Marius Turda and Subhadra Das  to explore questions and topics posed by the different citizen assembly community groups around racial diversity

Explore the powerful poetry of rising poets Makai Brown, Yanina Chicas, Jaxsyn Claymore, Wahpe Clifford, Maia Sanaa Eaton, Mikayla Johnson, Belise Nishimwe, Pte San Win Little Whiteman, and Autumn White Eyes

The host will open and close the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening days theme of Non-Eugenic Futures. 

The maintenance of settler-colonial states requires a comprehensive, nimble, and timeless approach that prioritizes, normalizes and obscures ableism and eugenics. Uncovering tangled hierarchies that connect enslavement, circuses, hospitals, zoos, prisons, shelters, and more, help us discover the many shapes and illogics these forces take and reveal opportunities for intra-community, cross-community, and cross-movement healing and solidarity. Talila Lewis will recontextualize ableism as a form of oppression that is experienced by all marginalized people and offer a unique perspective on the deep interconnectedness of struggles for liberation of all oppressed people and communities.

Diana Elizabeth Jordan dramatizes the incomparable pain and immeasurable strength of a mother who desperately looks for her children, kidnapped and exploited by the circus.

Diana’s source material:

In the Early 1900s, Albino African-American Brothers Were Stolen From Their Virginia Home to Be Circus Performers. This is Their Story.

Excerpt from article above: Talk to any person of color over age 60 in my part of Virginia and they know the story by heart: Black children reared during the postwar baby boom rarely left home without being admonished by their mothers, “Y’all stay together now or you might be kidnapped, just like Eko and Iko.”

Eko and Iko were the sideshow stage names of George and Willie Muse, the grandsons of former slaves. They were born at the turn of the century to parents who sharecropped tobacco, like everyone else in the rural enclave of Truevine, Virginia.

George and Willie were just six and nine, as the elders tell the story, when a circus promoter crept onto the tobacco field where they were working and enticed them with a rare piece of candy. In the time it took to fetch a hoe from the shed, the boys vanished.

They were kidnapped in a dusty corner of southern Virginia named for the only thing that gave these Reconstruction-era blacks any semblance of hope—the biblical promise of a better life in the hereafter. “I am the true vine, and My father is the vinedresser,” Jesus said in the Gospel of John. “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

For the next 13 years, their mother, Harriett, watched and worried. And she waited for signs of fruit.”

Join activist Maria R. Palacios as she poetically narrates the love and the power of disabled people in the midst of ableist oppression

Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, moderates a conversation featuring leaders of New York City cultural institutions that rose to prominence in the Progressive Era—a time rooted in eugenicist ideology. Featured guests: Max Hollein, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Cristián Samper, President of the Wildlife Conservation Fund; and Ellen Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History.

Excerpt from “Beloved” by Toni Morrison
“A Love Note for Future Generations” by Naima Penniman
“Beyond the Great Dividing” by Naima Penniman
Background music by Be Steadwell and Yakuzee Beatz

Join accomplished writer and scholar Lateef McLeod for a reading of poetry created through the lens of a black, disabled artist.

Darkness

Gives shape to the light

As light

Shapes the darkness

Death

Gives shape to life

– Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

2020 will be remembered forever as a major turning point towards justice – a time when darkness and light collided, where life and death fell out of balance, when a call for new awakening sounded around the globe.  Souvenirs d’Autres Mondes (Memories of Other Worlds) is a visual meditation led by voices in Wolof, Totonaco, English, French and Spanish, a gentle call for transformation through new intimacy with self, others, nature and celestial realities outside of our own understanding.

My work celebrates those never meant to survive the ravages of slavery, genocide and the legacy of colonization that continues today. What I make honors the complexities of this human experience and so invites participants to acknowledge our shared legacies of pain and our capacity for joy. Using the body, image, sound, remembrance of the past, and a spirited acknowledgement of the truth, it celebrates solidarity and new possibilities for wholeness.

Human Zoo: Science’s Dirty Secret – ‘Scientific’ Racism

A hundred years ago, long before television and mass tourism, there was only one way to see the world.  Huge fairs were staged in every great city, bringing the world to the public.  From Italian gondolas, to African elephants.  But it wasn’t just animals and objects that were exhibited.  Live human beings were put on display.  These were human zoos.   These exhibitions were not meant just as entertainment, they were masterminded by scientists, and designed to demonstrate the superiority of the white race.   The displays often emphasized the cultural differences between Europeans of Western civilization and non-European peoples or other Europeans with a lifestyle deemed primitive. Some of them placed indigenous Africans in a continuum somewhere between the great apes and the White man. Ethnological expositions have since been criticized and ascertained as highly degrading and racist.

Economic historian Thomas C. Leonard will reexamine those reformers whose top-down agenda informed the Progressive Era redress of massive Gilded-Age inequity. They presided over the management of the administrative state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism—while sorting out “the unfit” from the industrial wage economy.

American legal historian Paul Lombardo will explore how advertising in the age of eugenics reflected and reproduced the political and ideological messages of the movement by promising health and happiness. 

This conversation will seek to reimagine the constructs of beauty beyond the binary, while challenging an archaic and dangerous narrative of beauty, rooted in eugenics, that has been used to pathologize and criminalize communities—especially queer & trans, intersex, sex workers, migrants and refugees, and people with disabilities. Featuring movement organizers and culture changemakers Patty Berne of Sins Invalid, Alok V. Menon author of Beyond the Gender Binary, and Sean Saifa Wall of the Intersex Justice Project—with Kareem Khubchandani, author of “Ishtyle; Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife,” as the moderator.

A live sharing of new project.

In the Name Of: The Mother Tree

Imagine our world as a sanctuary—a brilliant, bioluminescent, biome for Black thriving. In this world, water is an infinite source of prismatic liberation.  Fueled by concepts of “generative apocalypse,” and Black feminist metaphysics, “In The Name Of: The Mother Tree” is a theatrical ceremony composed of procession, ritual, dance, music, and story.  The ceremony centers a congregation of “watercarriers,” who, after a catastrophic rupture, activate a polyphonic practice of prismatic world-making and communal repair in the wake of a new day.

The host will open and close the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening days theme of Legacies of Eugenics. 

In this episode of Black Disabled Men Talk (4/2020),  Leroy Moore,  Keith Jones, Ottis Smith, and Lateef McLeod, four Black Disabled Activists/Artists, discuss what is Black Ableism, what is the difference of being disabled versus politically disabled, but we start out with our thoughts of Chuck D firing Flavor Flav from Public Enemy.  Video is captioned by Cheryl Green.

Join Keith Jones for a hip hop exploration of the black, disabled experience.

Preview exclusive clips of a work-in-progress film about a new experimental treatment for dwarfism that may erase the community it aims to serve, as part of a conversation about the film with director Julie Wymann and film curator and disability rights activist Lawrence Carter-Long.

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By us, about us! New, immersive documentary films from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities made by filmmakers from within the community, presented in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival.

The American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival features documentary films, shorts, and other media that increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of peoples and cultures around the world. In the spirit of the Mead Festival and in conjunction with the Dismantling Eugenics conference, the Museum engaged preeminent film curators from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities to create a series of film screenings and round-table conversations that “pass the mic” and provide a platform for voices from within marginalized communities to tell their own stories. Jason Ryle (ImagineNative Film Festival), Mahen Bonetti (African Film Festival), and Lawrence Carter-Long (Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund/Cinema Shift).

Eugenics and Human and Comparative Hereditary keynote session – Adam Pearson explores the ethical complications around genetic advancements, when seen through a eugenic lens. Moderated by David King

Explore the powerful poetry of rising poets Makai Brown, Yanina Chicas, Jaxsyn Claymore, Wahpe Clifford, Maia Sanaa Eaton, Mikayla Johnson, Belise Nishimwe, Pte San Win Little Whiteman, and Autumn White Eyes

The host will open and close the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening days theme of Reckoning with Eugenics. 

Lydia X. Z. Brown will speak to the intersections of reckoning with oppressive systems and cultural and medical institutions that have perpetuated eugenic legacies . While also exploring the liberatory practices and movements that confront, and transform these systems and institutions to incite new futures. 

Disability Dance Works, LLC presents:

Where Good Souls Fear

Choreographer and Performer: Alice Sheppard

Script: Alice Sheppard

Conversation Partners: Lindsay Eales, Laurel Lawson, and Danielle Peers

Lighting, Video and Projection Design: Michael Maag

Music and Sound Design: Dan Wool

Where Good Souls Fear was supported in part by residencies at:

Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Geneva, New York

The Dance Artist in Residence Programme, The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Banff,

Alberta Canada.

The Making of “Where Good Souls Fear” features:

Choreographer and Performer: Alice Sheppard

Script: Dahkil Hausif and Alice Sheppard

Film Editor: Jenny Ramirez

Street & VR Cinematography: Ramulas Burgess and Dahkil Hausif

Music: Dan Wool

ASL Interpretation: Kimberly Cantwell, RISE Interpreting, Inc. and Candace Davider

Audio Description and Captions: Cheryl Green

Performance Footage

Performance Space New York: Where Good Souls Fear” by Alice Sheppard was presented as

part of I wanna be with you everywhere: a collaboration between Arika, Performance Space

New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as part of Performance Space’s “No”

Series. Footage: Mehmet S. Yildirim

Scripps College: Where Good Souls Fear was presented at Scripps College. Courtesy of

Scripps Presents. Footage: Alex MacInnis

Rehearsal Footage

The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Rehearsal Footage: Danielle Peers

The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Showing Footage: Halley Willcox

Street and Virtual Reality Footage

Dahkil Hausif and Bayyina Black for the Other System

Copyright: Disability Dance Works, LLC

Cal Hunt explores the infinite dimensions of blackness through movement.

Filmed in the midst of powerful marches against police violence last summer, Loud Silence is a megaphone of a film made by Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray and dancer activists from D.R.E.A.M. (Dance Rules Everything Around Me) Ring.

Rising Phoenix tells the extraordinary story of the Paralympic Games. From the rubble of World War II to the third biggest sporting event on the planet, the Paralympics sparked a global movement which continues to change the way the world thinks about disability, diversity & human potential.

With a liberatory lens, this talk will address the inseparability of US eugenics from Christianity.   Reverend Jennifer Bailey, of the Faith Matters Network, will explore the unholy alliance between white supremacy and white Christianity to uphold eugenic practices while also revealing the Black folk religion in Christian traditions that has been a site of resistance of these legacies. 

The esteemed journalist Mary Carter Bishop shares her experiences speaking with thirty survivors of Virginia’s eugenics movement, most of whom were only elementary-age children of impoverished families when they were abducted and abused. 

The host will open and close the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening days theme of Legacies of Eugenics. 

Join prominent scholars & leaders, N. Ordover, Mab Segrest, and Miroslava Chavez-Garcia in a conversation imagining the possibilities of how to confront historical eugenic institutions and ideologies from population control and psychiatric institutions.  Exploring what justice frameworks and movements, including the climate justice movement, Reproductive Justice, Black Lives Matter movement; and how the Not One More Detention Centers & LGBTGNCI and Pro-Abortion Campaigns are shifting the political and cultural landscape to dismantle archaic ideas towards new futures.

Octavia’s Parables

About the Podcast Series

Diving deeply into the literary works of Octavia E. Butler

Beginning with The Parable of the Sower, podcast hosts Toshi Reagon and adrienne maree brown are examining each of Octavia E Butler’s published works, chapter by chapter. The podcast summarizes the storyline, places it in a strategic context for those intending to change the world, and provides questions to help bring Butler’s ideas to life.

Toshi and adrienne have selected Parable of the Sower Episode 7 for you to explore as part of this Convening.

For more episodes: https://www.readingoctavia.com/

Octavia E. Butler was a Black science fiction writer who won the Hugo, the Nebula, and the MacArthur genius award in her lifetime. Posthumously, her work has landed on the NY Times bestseller list. She wrote twelve novels, mostly imagined in trilogies, and a collection of short stories. Hailing from Pasadena, CA, Butler spent her later years outside Seattle, WA. Her work gives us incredible young Black protagonists who are shaping the world around them, contending for new futures for the species.

Toshi and adrienne encourage all of their listeners to purchase Octavia’s work directly and dive into yourself! This link is preferred by the Octavia E Butler estate.

Illuminating the recent anti-eugenics win in California, of a reparations program to repair the decades-long state-sanctioned harm inflicted on survivors of reproductive abuse, this discussion will spotlight the production of “No Mas Bebes,” a feature film about the sterilization of Mexican mothers in Los Angeles in the sixties and seventies.  Reproductive Justice organizers, from California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, will speak about the powerful campaign and what it will take to reckon with the past in order to create non-eugenic futures.

Larry Hama, Louise Simonson, Christopher Priest—key past staffers at Marvel Comics—reflect on the ways in which the company has transformed a world of Anglo-American superheroes to a universe of differences.

No Más Bebés tells the story of a little-known but landmark event in reproductive justice, when a small group of Mexican immigrant women sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Marginalized and fearful, many of these mothers spoke no English, and charged that they had been coerced into tubal ligation — having their tubes tied — by doctors during the late stages of labor. Often the procedure was performed after asking the mothers under duress. The mothers’ cause was eventually taken up by a young Chicana lawyer armed with hospital records secretly gathered by a whistle-blowing doctor. In their landmark 1975 civil rights lawsuit, Madrigal v. Quilligan, they argued that a woman’s right to bear a child is guaranteed under the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. The filmmakers spent five years tracking down sterilized mothers and witnesses. Most were reluctant at first to come forward, but ultimately agreed to tell their story. Set against a debate over the impact of Latino immigration and overpopulation, and the birth of a movement for Chicana rights and reproductive choice, No Más Bebés revisits a powerful story that still resonates today.

Drawing from primary source material, Haunted Files: The Eugenics Record Office reimagines the Eugenics Record Office, transporting visitors to the epicenter of American eugenics research and propaganda. Here, eugenicists channeled Progressive Era ideals of rational thought, social progress, statistics, and state management towards the pursuit of “race betterment” and the defense of Anglo-American racial purity.

“MONOLOGUE MISSION”

“Built on Immigrants, Settled for Disaster”

By Elliot Babilonia (he/him)

Read by J.D. Mollison

“America, The (not so) Great”

By Nicaulis Mercedes (she/her)

Read by Kyla Garcia

“The Haunted Files”

By Judy Tate & THE LATE Michael Slade

Dir. by Melissa Maxwell

•STARRING ANTU YACOB & STINA NIELSEN
•Producer & Sound Designer: Simone Barros
•Videographer, Audio Engineer & Editor: Zachary Betonte
•TECHNICAL PRODUCER: YOUNG PARK
In 1904, a young black infant named Hazel is left on a doorstep. She is taken in by a family from whom she later runs away. Thus begins an odyssey of arrests, institutionalization, and medical intervention — all in an effort to cure her of “immorality.” Characters are real people from the files of the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor.

Post-Show Conversation: “Good Genes” and America’s Quest for Racial Purity” with Jack Tchen (he/him) and Leora Fuller (she/her) the original curators of The Haunted Files exhibition, in conversation with Judy Tate, Producing Artistic Director of the American Slavery Project

The host will open and close the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening days theme of Non-Eugenic Futures. 

Explore the powerful poetry of rising poets Makai Brown, Yanina Chicas, Jaxsyn Claymore, Wahpe Clifford, Maia Sanaa Eaton, Mikayla Johnson, Belise Nishimwe, Pte San Win Little Whiteman, and Autumn White Eyes

From education and policing to healthcare, technologies have the potential to hide, speed, and deepen discrimination. Ruha Benjamin, author of “Race After Technology,” will present on the “New Jim Code,” challenging the ways technologies can heighten racial heirarchies and produce premature death.

Featuring Leaders in Healing Justice, embodied practice and organizing and/or cultural work to transform intergenerational trauma;  Erica Woodland, Adaku Utah, & Kai Cheng Thom, and moderated by Francisca P. Coronado.  Healing Eugenic Memory Towards Transformative Futures will uncover the work of memory to heal from historical trauma, and collective grief and dissociation from these eugenic legacies. Exploring questions of: What is the role of healing and memory to disrupt, heal from and dismantle eugenic violence? How can we imagine working with our communities as survivors of transphobia, ableist & white supremacy as an extension of eugenic violence?

Jessica Kolopenuk, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, will speak on the relationships between the processes of colonialism, science, and crucial spaces for Indigenous-led interventions in the genomic sciences, decolonial science policy and bioethics.

In Future Ancestral Technologies,  an ongoing series based in myth, science fiction, and Indigenous futurism, Luger challenges us to imagine a future where humans restore their bonds with the earth and each other by reclaiming and recontextualizing the technology of his ancestors and placing the past and the future in dialogue.

Organizers of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide, Priyanka Bhatt & Stephanie Guilloud, speak on the recent win for the #ShutDownIrwin Campaign (an ICE Detention Center in South GA known for egregious abuses, including sterilization). Featuring Wendy Dowe, a survivor of abuse at the detention center, telling her powerful story. They will discuss the legacies of eugenics in prisons and detention centers in the Global South, and what we can build for our futures, moderated by Cara Page of Changing Frequencies.

This conversation tells the successful story of the Shut Down Irwin Campaign, spurred on by Nurse Dawn Wooten the whistleblower and the detained immigrants who came forward to expose the egregious violations, including sterilizatoin abuse, happening at the Irwin County Detention Center.  We hear from Wendy Dowe, a survivor of this eugenic abuse, and organizers Stephanie Guilloud and Priyanka Bhatt of Project South who are in coalition with southern organizations on the Shut Down Irwin Campaign, and have been working to abolish Southern detention centers and prisons for decades.

A STOP MOTION film reckoning with our past and a SLOW MOTION film envisioning our future. 

In this piece, Abdu Ali explores existence through Baltimore club music and a cosmically afro-futurist video.

“Don’t waste my blood sweat”
A Black Deaf human seeks himself in society today witnessing both Black and Deaf & Black Deaf communities be oppressed-“No More Trouble” by Erykah Badu, a tribute to Bob Marley. This is the story of a Black Deaf human seeking himself to hold his community today as he sees, he witnesses and he feels his Black and Deaf communities being oppressed. Looking back as a teenager…He almost died from the cross fire of a Gang related shooting. While in middle of the shooting, he saw the person in the car who was shooting. The shooting must have happened already but he didn’t hear it or understand what he was feeling. Then the same day as Deaf person said he was not Deaf enough because his sign language was TOO BLACK. How does one keep his love for the community going? #PurpleFireCrow is born.

Kiss Louder

Kiss Louder is about loving yourself, a dedication to all those who are Deaf who wasn’t allowed to be Deaf

Choreographer: Antoine Hunter

Dancers: Antoine Hunter, Zahna Simon

Dancing While Deaf: From a Deaf perspective: Achieving what others perceive as impossible through the Arts!

125th & FREEdom

Created, directed and choreographed by Ebony Noelle Golden, 125th & FREEdom is an immersive, audience participatory cultural experience which asks: If Harriet Tubman were alive today how would she free Black people? New Yorkers will become one with Golden’s battle-weary tribe of nomads led by Tubman’s descendant on an epic journey to a land of promised liberation. Composed of 16 movements and featuring a New Orleans-style brass band, the choreopoetic performance took place at 11 sites as pop-up installations across the corridor of 125th Street from the East River to the Hudson River each Saturday in June 2020. 125th& FREEdom sees a victorious, but battle-weary tribe of nomads led by Tubman’s descendant on an epic journey to a land of promised liberation. Fusing song and poetry with choreography based on historic and current Black social dances, the piece will be an immersive, participatory cultural experience that is equal parts ritual performance, processional and protest.

Psalm of the Mismeasured and the Unfit

Psalm for the Mismeasured and Unfit, a performance installation on the medical industrial complex at the 43rd annual Scholar and Feminist Conference, Subverting Surveillance: Strategies to End State Violence

Curator, Writer & Producer: Cara Page

Curatorial Asst. & Researcher:  Nicola Glen Douglas

Choreographer/Director and Creative Collaborator: Ebony Noelle Golden

Performers/ensemble: Vesta Walker, Jaime Dzandu, Audrey Hailes, Jehan Roberson, Sara Abdullah

Some of us no longer fight with guns.  We are children of the sun. With revolution in mind, this is a visual ceremony.  Here, I ask what it means for the hunted to haunt.  I ask how the ghosted ghost with unavoidable light.  Perplexing and obtuse.  On purpose and never on cue.  SPECTER OF SUNLIGHT// is a telling and a witnessing of how Black women multiply themselves to be many in the collective work and ritual of liberation.  In intimate and impactful ways.  Waking the earth beneath them.  You hear?  They are working on this side and the others.   This work is a work that invites the “allness” of us.  Legions of light-bringers that surround.  Teeth glinted.  A miracle in their eyes.  This moment, I dedicate to my dear, too soon departed, sister of the heart Elandria Williams who took her last breath strategizing Black liberation.  

Ebony Noelle Golden discusses her impactful and inspiring work with Jonathan McCrory, Artistic Director of the National Black Theatre

Featuring movement leaders, scholars and practitioners who are deconstructing and dismantling eugenics through new practices and traditions that are audacious and change setting. Dawn Wooten, LPN, also known as the ICE Whistleblower of the Irwin County Detention Center, Dr. Michelle Morse of Equal Health, Merle McGee Chief Equity Engagement Officer of Planned Parenthood of Greater NY, Sahar Aziz, Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, and moderator, Tamika Middleton of Winds of Change Consulting & JustGeorgia, will speak to movement building strategies and community led interventions that dare to interrupt the erasure of those most impacted by eugenics.

The host will open and close the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening days theme of Legacies of Eugenics. 

Confronting the role of technology, big data, and surveillance, this conversation will address the implications of medical and policing technologies, public health surveillance used to vilify communities.  Exploring how and why we must challenge and dismantle these systems to interrupt dangerous eugenic narratives and violence.  Featuring movement organizers Hamid Khan of Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, Bita Amani of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, and Courtni Andrews of Equal Health—with Brian Tate of Tate Strategies as moderator. 

CODED BIAS explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all. 

San Francisco’s 2019 Poet Laureate Kim Shuck reads a supplication for all of the blessings of nature.

Welcome to Assembly for the Future, with our host Alex K and First Speaker Alice Wong. Disabled oracles have existed throughout time. What will they say in 2029, when some disabilities have disappeared due to technology and cures? Listen to the tale from Alice Wong, the Last Disabled Oracle, and the wisdom she shares from her ancestors. This Assembly took place on 6 August 2020 as part of BLEED Festival, commissioned, by the City of Melbourne through Arts House as part of BLEED 2020. Assembly for the Future is the first project of The Things We Did Next, co-created by Alex Kelly & David Pledger and produced by Not Yet It’s Difficult & Something Somewhere INC.

The host will open and close the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening days theme of Non-Eugenic Futures. 

Author and activist adrienne maree brown speaks on political strategies, healing, Octavia Butler, and the roles of love and liberation in building non-eugenic futures, with Cara Page of Changing Frequencies.

This conversation, between Dr, Alexandra  Stern, author of “Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America,” and Dr. Dana-Ain Davis, author of “Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth,” will focus on community led interventions  including; Stern’s work at the Sterilization & Social Justice Lab and Dr. Davis’ work against Black infant and maternal mortality rooted in Reproductive Justice. 

Synthesis of the week’s offerings by Convening Co-Director Dr. Jack Tchen and Grassroots Organizing Director Cara Page

Join bisexual artist/activist Juba Kalamka for an electronic hip-hop exploration of Black experiences of disability, sex work, policing and mental health.

In this video, members of the Radical Visibility Collective celebrate their bodies through fashion and dancing. Collection is designed in collaboration between Sky Cubacub of Rebirth Garments, Compton Q and Vogds. The Music is a custom album inspired by Sky Cubacub’s “Radical Visibility: a Queercrip Dress Reform Movement Manifesto”, using Audio Description to describe the models, their outfits and the way they dance in their own words. Vogds is the executive producer of the album collaboratively made by Chicago music artists.

Tomorrow We Inherit the Earth is an investigation into histories of popular resistance, guerrilla warfare and anti-imperialism in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia that are then re-interpreted into an archive of an imagined revolution in a post-utopian and post-human world. In this series, Islam is used as vehicle to propel the futurist imagination, looking into its occult practices, mysticism and the evolution of its politicization.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs,  a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist, spreads the liberatory gospel on our tongue and dreams for non-eugenic futures. She gives us a meditation on love and liberation and the ancestral possibilities of surfacing legacy, reckoning and futures to bulid new portals of freedom that does not devalue, harm, sort or sift our communities but instead holds us in collective care, safety and possibility