By Topher Webb on September 25, 2013. Contact Topher Webb at t.webb@chronicle.utah.edu.

Edwin Black speaks Tuesday morning in the Public Health Building about Eugenics. Cole Tan

The American eugenics movement caused the forced sterilization of 1,000 people per year and influenced the Nazi party, said visiting scholar Edwin Black.

Black, an investigative reporter, spoke at the School of Medicines grand rounds in public health on Tuesday.

Eugenics began as a response to social upheaval in the U.S. at the end of the 19th century, Black said. Populations had started to move from rural to urban locations and the ethnic demographic of the country was changing as Jewish, Mexican and Chinese immigrants made the United States their home.

Black said some intellectuals wanted to change the country back to the way it was. People promoting eugenics were often prominent and respected members of society, such as university presidents and judges. He said other examples include Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, President Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison.

What they wanted was a white, blonde, blue-eyed, Nordic supreme race, Black said.

Eugenics was not based on simple racism but the idea that all bad things in society come from peoples genes. Black said it did not matter how educated a person was or how much good he or she had done in society, because his or her offspring could potentially harm society.

You werent born into poverty. Poverty was born into you, Black said. It was not about eliminating individuals, but about eliminating your bloodline.

The goal was to remove Jews, Mexicans, blacks, southern Italians and Caucasians with dark hair, as well as the mentally inferior from society. This was to be done by removing one-tenth of the population at a time until only the supreme race, meaning people who looked like those promoting eugenics, remained.

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Visiting reporter speaks on eugenics and history