1960s

The growth and expansion of the civil rights movement was also accompanied by increased resistance and a challenging of long-standing legal conventions and academic thought surrounding race.  Various activist movements that arose during the 1960s sought to challenge legal constructions of race, as well as the role of government in upholding racially-discriminatory laws pertaining to reproduction and family formation. For example, in 1967, the Supreme Court found anti-miscegenation laws to be unconstitutional according to the 14th Amendment in Loving v. Virginia.. Additionally, the American Indian Movement, which would go on to contest the disproportionate sterilization of Native women in the 1970s, was founded in Minneapolis in 1968. The American Indian Movement’s mission was centered around a multi-issue coalition that called out federal policy for contributing to poor housing and living conditions in Native communities. 

Within academia, eugenic ideologies managed to find continuity under the study of demography. The impulses of negative eugenics, which sought to limit reproduction among those labeled “unfit,” found a home in the field of demography, which pointed to “unrestricted’ population growth as the cause of environmental disasters . For example, in 1968, Paul Ehrlich, professor at Stanford University, published The Population Bomb, in which he argues that without intervention, overpopulation would threaten the world with famine and societal upheaval. Ehrlich called for sterilization and the elimination of foreign aid for certain “Third World” countries. He would later go on to found the organization Zero Population Growth, currently known as Population Connection, in the same year.  Demography becomes a language through which to articulate fears of “uncontrolled” reproduction among racialized and pathologized individuals. These fears would later find a home in the environmentalist movements of the 1970s, which saw a curbing of population growth as the solution to environmental challenges. The medical sphere also saw the expansion of sterilization as a legally sanctioned procedure. Jessin v. County of Shasta rules that consensual sterilizations should not be prohibited by law. This case has been credited with expanding doctors’ confidence in sterilization as a voluntary treatment. 

Urban landscapes across the country, such as New Haven’s, were restructured via urban renewal projects. New Haven’s urban renewal programs were a part of the national War on Poverty and formed part of a wave of urban renewal initiatives facilitated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  1969 marked the end of Richard Lee’s term as Mayor of New Haven. Lee had served since 1954 and was responsible for the implementation of urban renewal programs that led to the relocation of up to 25% of the city’s residents and the closing of numerous small businesses. In New Haven, the building of the interstate highway interrupted processes of community building and led to the fragmentation of existing town centers, such as Oak Street.

The 1960s also saw a nationwide restructuring of mental health care starting with the Community Health Act, which President Kennedy enacted into law in 1963. This piece of legislation was intended to work towards deinstitutionalization and directed federal funding toward community-based mental health centers. While this top-down move away from institutionalization was initially praised as a move away from the “custodial isolation,” the Community Health Act has been criticized for failing to replace federal facilities with community-based clinics and for perpetuating the incarceration of unsheltered individuals in urban areas.

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1970s