The Adoption History Project states that until the late 1940s, many African-American children were simply not counted in formal adoption statistics at all. The largely African-American states of Louisiana and Florida, in fact, did not record an adoption of an African-American child (by a family of any race) for decades before 1950. African-American parents felt discriminated against by most adoption agencies, yet were reluctant to establish same-race programs for themselves while they were seeking integration, not segregation, in other aspects of life.
According to The Adoption History Project, the first recorded adoption of an African-American child by a white family occurred in Minnesota in 1948. (A Washington state couple later adopted an African-American daughter who had been placed with them as a foster child in 1944.)
Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s also adopted German war orphans and children of U.S. servicemen, some of whom were the children of German mothers and black American soldiers.
Adoption resource exchanges, which published summaries describing waiting children and families, were originally used to match African-American children with African-American parents, according to the Adoption History Project. By the late 1960s, they had come to be used routinely for all hard-to-place children.
Efforts made in the 1950s publicizing African-American children who needed parents brought responses from a trickle of white families as well as the targeted black families. By the early 1960, some agencies had begun transracial adoption programs.
The peak year for adoption of African-American children by white parents was 1970. In this peak year, only 2.500 such adoptions took place. In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers wrote a statement opposing such adoptions, which then slowed to a trickle.
Meanwhile, international adoption began to take off—first among children of U.S. servicemen, then among other orphans of foreign wars—became more common. The success of these adoptions likely helped to overcome the prevalent adoption practice of “matching” children and parents based on appearance.
The Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 (MEPA) says that agencies or entities receiving federal funds and involved in adoption or foster placements cannot categorically deny any person the opportunity to become an adoptive or foster parent based solely on the race of the child or the prospective parent. However, an agency may “consider the cultural, ethnic, or racial background the child and the capacity of the prospective foster or adoptive parents to meet the needs of a child of this background as one of a number of factors used to determine the best interests of a child.”
Modifications to MEPA were enacted in 1996 as part of the Small Business Job Protection Act. The Interethnic Adoption Amendment: Section 1808 “Removal of Barriers to Interethnic Adoption” simply prevents entities receiving federal funds from denying placements based on race, removing the qualifying phrase about considering the parent(s)’ ability to meet the needs of a child of a particular background.
Please see these related blogs:
Is Transracial Adoption Necessary?
Media Review: Opposing Viewpoints: Adoption
Book Review: Inside Transracial Adoption