A movement that began in the late 19th century that promoted “controlled breeding” and hierarchy in the human family based on the assumption that only white, Anglo-Saxons had desirable heritable characteristics. In some states, eugenics laws were passed that resulted in forced sterilizations, typically of poor and non-white persons. The eugenics movement fell out of favor in the U.S. when it was implemented in Nazi Germany by Adolph Hitler.
