The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Texas

The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Texas - Hardcover

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The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Texas
  • The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Texas
The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Texas - Hardcover

The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Texas - Hardcover

by Michael Phillips , Betsy Friauf
$66.51
$66.51

Book Overview

by Michael Phillips (Author), Betsy Friauf (Author)

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, 32 states passed laws allowing involuntary sterilization on those deemed biologically "unfit" convicted criminals, the disabled, the poor, and people of color. Texas, despite a history of violent racism, was not one of them. In The Purifying Knife, Michael Phillips and Betsy Friauf explore this curious instance of the Lone Star State's exceptionalism. The first history of the eugenics movement in Texas, it is a narrative that intersects with debates over race, immigration, abortion, the role of women in society, homosexuality, medical ethics, and the politics of disability in the state--debates resonating today in Texas and beyond.

From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, Americans embraced eugenics. Yet the Texas legislature ultimately rejected nine of ten laws advocated by the state's eugenicists and their predecessors. Phillips and Friauf trace this unlikely resistance to a variety of influences: wealthy cotton growers concerned that the anti-immigrant politics of the eugenics movement would deprive them of a source of easily exploitable labor; a populist distrust of higher education and the academic elites who enthusiastically supported the eugenics movement; and the forces of anti-Darwinist fundamentalism and pre-millennial dispensationalism in the 1920s, among others. The Purifying Knife also details how eugenical ideas survived long past their decline in the 1940s and have entered a disturbing afterlife in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

A thoroughgoing look into a rare case where the eugenics movement "failed" in spite of its power in the United States and around the world--while still wielding a toxic influence--Phillips and Friauf's work offers insight into the history of the LGBTQ community, abortion, and immigration policies in Texas, and persuasively argues that the long arc of eugenics history has helped shaped contemporary politics in the Lone Star State.
Number of Pages: 298
Dimensions: 0.81 x 9 x 6 IN
Publication Date: June 03, 2025
ISBN9780806195360
Author Michael Phillips , Betsy Friauf
PublisherUniversity of Oklahoma Press
GenreHistory and Education
FormatHardcover
PublishedJune 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages298
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

History Nonfiction Social Science

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About Michael Phillips

Michael Phillips was a farmer, writer, carpenter, orchard consultant, and speaker. He lived with his wife, Nancy, and daughter, Grace, on Heartsong Farm in northern New Hampshire, growing apples and a variety of medicinal herbs. Michael is the author of The Apple Grower (Chelsea Green, 2005) and The Holistic Orchard (2011), and teamed up with Nancy to write The Herbalist's Way (2005). His Lost Nation Orchard is part of the Holistic Orchard Network, and Michael also led the community orchard movement at www.GrowOrganicApples.com.

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