Although the word "eugenics" was coined by Francis Galton in 1883, the movement for eugenics in the United States did not really gain momentum until the first quarter of the 20th century. Charles Davenport is one of the biggest names associated with the movement. In 1902, he applied to the Carnegie Institution to receive funding to create the Institution's Station for Experimental Evolution, which opened in 1904. 

A few years later, Davenport joined the American Breeders' Association (ABA), which was founded with the intent to apply Medelian laws of inheritance to animal and plant breeding. Davenport successfully convinced the ABA to form a Eugenics Committee to apply these methods and ideas to human breeding. There was this belief Davenport had that some traits could be found in "superior blood". This led to the founding of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in 1910 to keep data on family bloodlines and study records of family traits in order to advise on marriages that would be fit or unfit.

The ERO went on to support legislative measures that were taken to sterilize those deemed unfit or carrying undesirable genes that could be potentially passed on to their offspring.

Davenport worked alongside many notable eugenists, such as H. H. Laughlin to study pedigrees and find more evidence to back their beliefs. Laughlin was considered to be a Eugenics expert and was appointed to the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. He was able to put forth data that showed that immigrants from Eastern Europe made up a large proportion of those in prison or deemed "feeble-minded". With his input then, the Committee helped push through the Johnson-Reed Act, which capped the number of immigrants that were allowed to enter from these countries. 

Laughlin was credited with the Model Eugenical Sterilization Law. According to Gur-Arie in her analysis on Laughlin's book, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, "Laughlin says that he intends his model law to prevent those people considered to be defective or degenerate, and possessing the potential to produce offspring that carry their parents' unfavorable attributes, from doing so through sterilization". Some of these "unfavorable attributes" were outlined in this book: criminals, feeble-minded individuals, drunkards, moral and sexual perverts, diseased individuals, etc.

Many states had already passed sterilization and eugenics laws, such as the world’s first sterilization law in 1907 passed by Indiana. In 1927, one of the most prominent cases regarding eugenics reached the Supreme Court: Buck v. Bell. The Supreme Court held up that it was legal to sterilize young Carrie Buck, who was deemed an "imbecile" and this supported the states that had already put these laws in place, a total of 32 by the 1960s.

In 1983, Oregon was the last state to repeal its sterilization act, which ended legal eugenical sterilization in the United States.