Race Betterment Foundation
[citation needed] John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 – December 14, 1943) was a physician, eugenicist, promoter of physical fitness and vegetarianism.
He profoundly influenced numerous movements, including ones for pure food and drugs, public health, personal hygiene, physical culture and exercise, temperance, purity, and eugenics.
[6] Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 – April 29, 1947) was an economics professor and a pivotal reformer during the Progressive Era's Clean Living movement.
[8] Charles Davenport (June 1, 1866 – February 18, 1944) was a well-known biologist and eugenicist, who introduced biometrics into American science and applied it in eugenics.
The conferences, focusing on hygiene and eugenics, were held under the support of John Harvey Kellogg and Race Betterment Foundation.
[10] The First National Conference on Race Betterment was held at the Battle Creek Sanitarium (John Harvey Kellogg is its owner), on June 1–6, 1914.
The conference received much public interest, and thus gave the foundation the chance to be present on the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco on August 4–8, 1915.
[10] The theme of the 1915 exposition included "acceleration of all that the New world had accomplished" since Columbus' discovery of America, the opening of Panama Canal, the reconstruction of San Francisco from the 1906 earthquake, and "multiculturalist ambitions", etc.
The Race Betterment Congress was held by the exposition, and leading eugenicists made speeches on the best methods for achieving higher racial purity (Kellogg's support of eugenic registry as an example).
Besides the section of eugenics, the exposition had a mile long stretch of Joy Zone that re-created villages of natives in a depiction of life in far-away lands.
After the war, due to the actions of Nazi Germany in perpetrating the Holocaust, neither race betterment nor eugenics were acceptable concepts in academic discussion.
[13] The brothers developed a method of producing crunchy, flavorful flakes of processed grain that became a popular breakfast food among the patients at Battle Creek Sanitarium.
The purpose of the registry was stated on its family information survey forms as: The board members included pioneering eugenicists: David Starr Jordan, president; John Harvey Kellogg, secretary; Irving Fisher, Luther Burbank, and Charles Davenport, director of the ERO.
[22] The latter was associated with eugenics at the Kansas Free Fair in 1920, and was developed into "Fitter Families for Future Firesides" competitions under the direction of Mary Tirrell Watts and Florence Brown Sherbon.
The initial sponsor of the competition was the Red Cross (1920–1924), then Rockefeller and Eastman (1924–1926), and then was transferred to Race Betterment Foundation under Luther S. West's direction in 1928.
Hence all the students, faculty members, and officers of the college were required to be "earnest and enthusiastic supporters and promoters of race betterment principles and methods".
