The Texas Historian, Volume 51, Number 3, January 1991 Page: 13
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What effect did the misuse of
Darwin's scientific theory of natural
selection have on American society?
When Darwin published The Ori-
gin of Species in 1859, slavery was still
legal in the United States. Although
religious and ethical arguments
against slavery surfaced, and aboli-
tionists like William Lloyd Garrison
and John Brown spoke out against it,
proslavery Southerners, using Darwin
and Spencer, countered that the strong
were meant to rule the weak.
Some people used the theory to
justify their treatment of slaves.
Those who were against slavery,
though, didn't understand why
their fellow human beings were
being treated in such a manner;
so Darwin's theory was used to
explain this cruel treatment.
With the end of the Civil War in
1865, amendments to the Constitu-
tion were ratified that gave full civil
rights to the freed slaves: the Thir-
teenth banned slavery; the Fourteenth
protected citizenship for the ex-slaves;
and the Fifteenth granted them the
right to vote. During the period fol-
lowing the war, however, secret soci-
eties such as the Ku Klux Klan preyed
upon unsuspecting blacks in the
South. Using threats ofinjuryordeath,
the Klan and others intimidated
thousands of blacks. In time the courts
and the legislature followed suit when
they refused to support the amend-
ments and wrote racial discrimination
into the laws of the land.
An example of how the Civil War
Amendments were re-interpreted is
the case ofPlessy v. Ferguson. In 1892,
Homer Plessy, a black man, took a seat
in a white coach on a train in defiance
of a Louisiana law requiring that
railroads in the state carry blacks and
whites in separate cars. When Plessy
refused to move to a black coach, he
was arrested, tried, and found guilty
by Judge John H. Ferguson. Plessy
appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court,
which in 1896, upheld the decision
on the grounds the "separate but
equal" facilities were constitutional.
At the time of the decision Justice
John Marshall Harlan attacked the
ruling on the grounds that the court
was racist in its reasoning for he wrote
that the other members of the court
were "smuggling Social Darwinism
into the Constitution." Yet, the Su-
preme Court's ruling remained theCharles Darwin.
law of the land until 1954. During
those intervening years segregation
was firmly entrenched in the Ameri-
can South.
It was not until 1954 when Linda
Brown's father, Oliver Brown, suc-
cessfully challenged the Plessy vs.
Ferguson ruling in Brown vs. Board of
Education that these ideas of Social
Darwinism were changed. The Brown
case launched an all-out attack on
racism. After years of turmoil and
violent struggle segregationwas finally
put to rest when new laws were written
prohibiting discrimination in em-
ployment, housing, transportation,
and other areas. With the passage of
the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act in 1965 the United
States took an official position on
racial equality. Reason had finally
talked back to racism.
Charles Darwin, then, had been apawn in the metamorphosis of racism
as a doctrine. For more than a century
his scientific theory of natural selec-
tion had been used erroneously to
justify racism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
John Morton Blum, Key Issues in the
Afro-American Experience, 1971.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species,
1986.
W. E. B. DuBois, AgainstRacism, 1985.
Loren Eiseley, Darwin's Century, 1961.
M. I. Finley, Ancient Slavery & Modern
Ideology, 1980.
George M. Fredrickson, The Black Im-
age in the White Mind, 1972.
Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin,
1977.January 1991 / 13
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Texas State Historical Association. The Texas Historian, Volume 51, Number 3, January 1991, periodical, January 1991; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth391294/m1/15/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.