Buck v. Bell

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I've been thinking about terrible US Supreme Court decisions for
some reason.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Gosh, I can't imagine why.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, I mean, if you're imagining that the reason is
because of that request to have the Supreme Court overturn Obergefell,
that's not the reason, because that happened after I emailed
you this outline. Yeah, like three hours later were all
the headlines about the Supreme Court being asked to overturn Obergefell.
I had been thinking about that conceptually. I had been

(00:47):
more thinking about birthright citizenship.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Anyway, just I've been thinking a lot about the Supreme Court,
and that reminded me that for a long time, I've
wanted to do an episode on Buck versus Bell, which
has come up in past episodes of our show related
to the eugenics movement. Buck versus Bell is the nineteen
twenty seven Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of

(01:15):
laws allowing or mandating the involuntary sterilization of people who
were deemed to be somehow unfit. We've talked about the
existence of this case and the outcome before, but we
have not really talked about the details of what led
up to it. Most of these sterilization laws that this

(01:36):
relates to have been repealed in the US, but Buck
versus Bell has never been directly overturned. There's like a
patchwork of other decisions and legal lines of reasoning that
kind of undermine it today, But the decision itself still stands,
and at the same time, the lines of thought that

(01:58):
led to Buck versus Bell continue you to influence how
disability and disability rights are discussed today. The text of
the decision is one of the straightforwardly offensive things that
we will be reading from in this episode, and the
case also involved a rape allegation that was never investigated. Also,

(02:21):
part of the underlying philosophy of the eugenics movement is
the incorrect and again offensive idea that disabled people are
a burden on society and the cause of a range
of societal problems, and therefore should not exist. So I
want to say up front that disability is a normal
part of the human experience, and society is what creates

(02:43):
these systemic burdens through ableism by refusing to see every
person is having the same innate worth, and by refusing
to provide the care and support and tools that would
be needed to make the world accessible. We're in the
United States here, we are totally up for spending infinite
money on parking spaces, but balk at the idea of

(03:03):
making some of them accessible. As an example, yeah, the
Buck in Buck versus Bell was Carrie Elizabeth Buck born
on July second, nineteen oh six. Her father, Frank Buck,
was a tenor, and her mother was Emma Harlow Buck.
Carrie had a brother named Roy and a sister named Doris,
and their lives are not documented very well, and a

(03:26):
lot of the documentation that does exist comes from court
testimony that was being used to build the case that
Carrie should not be allowed to reproduce, so that testimony
can't necessarily be taken at face value. In nineteen twenty,
when Carrie would have been about fourteen, her mother, Emma,
was admitted to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and

(03:49):
Feeble Minded near Lynchburg, which had originally been founded in
nineteen ten as a colony for men with epilepsy. Emma
was forty eight, and she was described at that as
a widow and as having a history of illnesses that
included pneumonia, rheumatism, and syphilis. When she was admitted, she
was described as being nervous and restless and was diagnosed

(04:11):
with having a mental deficiency. Records from that colony describe
her as a moron, which was one of the terms
that was being used as a diagnosis of intellectual disability.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
When Emma was admitted to the colony, her daughter Carrie
had been in foster care for about a decade. Carrie's
foster parents were John and Alice Dobbs, who lived in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Dobbses later claims that Carrie had started to show
evidence of feeble mindedness at the age of ten or eleven.
So feeble minded was this catch all term that was

(04:47):
being used to describe people with a whole assortment of
traits and behaviors, and this included people with learning disabilities,
mood disorders, mental illnesses, behavioral disorders, and drug or alcohol addictions,
as well as unmarried women who were sexually active or
who behaved irresponsibly or quote wildly just as examples. Sometimes

(05:11):
people who were described as feeble minded were just living
in poverty without a lot of access to education and resources.
Although men could also be diagnosed as feeble minded, more
of the focus was on women.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
In a law passed in nineteen sixteen, the Commonwealth of
Virginia defined feeble minded this way, quote any person with
mental defectiveness from birth or from an early age, but
not a congenital idiot, so pronounced that he is incapable
of caring for himself, for managing his affairs, or of
being taught to do so, and is unsafe and dangerous

(05:48):
to himself and to others and to the community, and
who consequently requires care, supervision, and control for the protection
and welfare of himself of other end of the community,
but who is not classible as an insane person as
usually interpreted.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
So Carrie supposedly started showing signs of being feeble minded
around age ten or eleven, and that is also around
the time that the Dobbses took her out of school.
She had done fairly well up until the sixth grade,
and after this she did domestic work around the dobbs home.
A couple of sources on this case described this as

(06:28):
the Dobbses taking her out of school because they wanted
her as a household servant.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Then, when Carrie was seventeen, she became pregnant and the
Dobbses started claiming that she was of low moral character.
They also had other foster children, and they were worried
about what would happen if child welfare workers learned that
they had a pregnant teenager in the house. So the
dobbs Is said that they could not afford to care

(06:55):
for Carrie anymore, and they petitioned for her to be
admitted to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and feeble minded.
Everyone seems to agree that the father of Carrie's baby
was Clarence Garland. That was Alice Dobbs's nephew. Carrie and
Clarence knew each other from school, and Clarence had come
to visit her during the summer of nineteen twenty three

(07:16):
when Alice Dobbs, who was the one who was really
responsible for the children, was out of town. In Carrie's words,
during this visit, Clarence forced himself on her and took
advantage of her.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
At one point. She also said he had promised to
marry her but did not. Rape was obviously illegal under
Virginia law, and so was seduction under a promise of marriage,
but Carrie's allegations were never investigated.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Carrie underwent a commitment hearing and was ordered to be
admitted to the Virginia Colony, which is where her mother
also was, on January twenty third, nineteen twenty four, but
the colony was not accepting pregnant patients. Officials did think
that she should be removed from the Dobbs home, though,
so Carrie was sent to live with another family until

(08:06):
after the birth of her daughter, Vivian Alice Elaine Buck,
on March twenty eighth, nineteen twenty four.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Although the Dobbses had claimed they couldn't afford to take
care of Carrie, they did agree to take custody of
her daughter under the condition that they'd be allowed to
send Vivian to the Colony if she showed any signs
of feeble mindedness. So Carrie's child was sent to live
with relatives of the man that she alleged had raped her.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Carrie arrived at the colony on June fourth, nineteen twenty four,
and Robert G. Sheldon became her state appointed guardian. A
few months later, on September tenth, the colony prepared a
list of patients who were candidates for sterilization under Virginia's
Sterilization Act of nineteen twenty four. Carrie was one of

(08:55):
the people on that list.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
So we need to back up for a minute and
talk about this law and the eugenics movement that it
was part of. As people started learning more about genetics
and heredity in the nineteenth century, eugenicists started to propose
that human reproduction be approached along the same lines as
breeding livestock for the betterment of the human race. The

(09:18):
term eugenics was coined by Francis Galton in eighteen eighty three,
basically meaning good breeding. This movement included both positive eugenics,
or encouraging people with so called good genes to have
more babies together, and negative eugenics, or preventing people with
supposedly bad genes from reproducing. Some of the traits that

(09:42):
eugenicists were concerned with do have some kind of genetic component,
but they also blamed so called bad genes for things
like juvenile delinquency, immorality, criminal behavior, and that catch all
of feeble mindedness. These ideas were all so interconnected with
scientific racism. There was an underlying assumption that people with

(10:05):
European ancestry, specifically northern and Western European ancestry, had the
best genes. This movement did have critics from its very beginnings.
One of those was GK. Chesterton, who we talked about
on the show in March of twenty twenty three. But
eugenics was incredibly widely accepted, especially in North America and Europe,

(10:27):
but also in other parts of the world. In the US,
by the late nineteen twenties, most high school biology textbooks
presented eugenics as an established fact. Eugenics was also taught
in hundreds of colleges and universities around the country, and
there were eugenic supporters among some of the same populations
that were targeted by the movement, and there were laws

(10:51):
related to this. Obvious examples include laws that prohibited people
with epilepsy and the so called feeble man from getting married.
The first of these laws in the US was passed
in Connecticut in eighteen ninety six. There were also laws
allowing or mandating that such people be sterilized starting with

(11:13):
the law in Indiana in nineteen oh seven, but laws
prohibiting interracial marriage were also eugenics laws because they were
meant to protect white racial purity. So was the Federal
Immigration Act of nineteen twenty four, which limited immigration from
some countries while banning it from others, with no quotas

(11:35):
on the countries that were considered to be genetically desirable.
After Indiana's nineteen oh seven sterilization law, other states passed
laws of their own. Although eugenics was generally accepted, these
laws could be controversial. In addition to people who opposed
the basic idea of eugenics, there were religious denominations that

(11:57):
saw it as an affront to a divine commandment meant
to be fruitful and multiply. There were people who also
thought government mandated surgeries were tyranny, along with anything else
that limited personal autonomy and freedom. Some sterilization bills were vetoed,
and some laws were repealed after different legislators took office.

(12:18):
Many of the early sterilization laws also faced court challenges
and were struck down, including Indiana's law, which was ruled
unconstitutional by the Indiana Supreme Court in nineteen twenty one
Carrie Buck lived in Virginia, as we've said, and we
will get to Virginia's eugenics laws after a sponsor break.

(12:47):
Virginia's nineteen sixteen Act to Define Feeble Mindedness, which we
read from earlier, didn't specifically allow sterilization procedures on the
so called feeble minded, but it did did it include
language allowing medical and surgical treatment that would quote tend
to the mental and physical betterment of patients. Superintendent Albert

(13:11):
Sidney Pretty of the Virginia Colony used that language to
justify sterilizing patients there, arguing that it was for their
mental and physical betterment. This included Willie Mallory and her
daughter Jesse, both of whom were held at the colony
and sterilized. Another of Willy's daughters, Nanny Mallory, was also

(13:33):
held with a plan for her to be sterilized. Willy's husband, George,
filed suit, and while the court ruled that these surgeries
had been medically necessary, it also ordered the colony to
release the Malories.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
While Superintendent Pretty was interpreting that nineteen sixteen law as
allowing these sterilizations, he and the board at the colony
also recognized that continuing to ue them could put them
at legal risk, so Pretty went to his attorney, his
longtime friend, Aubrey Strode. Strode was serving in the Virginia Senate,

(14:09):
and Pretty talked to him about getting legislation passed that
would explicitly allow sterilization surgeries on the feeble minded and
protect the people who were performing them.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Strode drafted a bill that was patterned after a model
eugenical sterilization law that had been included in Harry Hamilton
Laughlin's nineteen twenty two book, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States.
This book documented the sterilization laws that had been passed
in the US, along with the various legal and legislative
challenges they had faced. Laughlin had kept all these challenges

(14:44):
in mind when drafting the model law, and he had
written it with the goal that if it ever became law,
courts would find it to be constitutional.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Virginia's version of this law was passed in March of
nineteen twenty four. It authorized the superintendents of Virginia's state
run hospitals and the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble
Minded to perform sterilizations or cause them to be performed
if it was in the best interests of the patients

(15:14):
and society. The supplied to quote any patient confined in
such institutions afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are
recurrent idiocy, imbecility, feeble mindedness, or epilepsy, provided that such
superintendent shall have first complied with the requirements of this Act.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
The law also outlined various steps that needed to be
taken before a surgery could be performed, and it specified
that quote Neither any of said superintendents, nor any other
person legally participating in the execution of the provisions of
this Act, shall be liable either civilly or criminally on
account of said participations.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
As we said earlier, and September of nineteen twenty four,
the staff at the colony prepared a list of candidates
to be sterilized under this law, and Carrie Buck was
one of them. But Superintendent Pretty and the board wanted
to make sure that this law would be upheld in
court so that they would not be criminally liable before

(16:19):
he went ahead with actually doing all of these surgeries,
so he issued the order for Carrie to be sterilized
and then asked her guardian Robert G. Shelton to appeal it.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
Carrie Buck was chosen for this case because her mother, Emma,
was also a resident at the colony and had been
diagnosed as a moron, and because Carrie also had a
child of her own, who Pretty assumed would be feeble minded.
The idea behind these laws was that so called feeble
minded people should be stopped from reproducing so they would

(16:52):
not pass down their genetic taint to another generation. So Emma, Carrie,
and Vivian Buck were supposed to service proof that feeble
mindedness was inherited and that it was in everyone's best
interest to prevent Carrie from becoming pregnant again. Pretty went
through the steps to issue an order for Carrie to
be sterilized, and at Pretty's request, her guardian, Robert G. Shelton,

(17:16):
appealed it.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Pretty's attorney was Aubrey Strode, the state senator who had
drafted the law. The board of the Colony appointed Irving P.
Whitehead to represent Carrie Buck. Whitehead had been a founding
member of the board of the Virginia State Colony for
Epileptics and Feeble Minded and had been serving on that

(17:38):
board when it approved the sterilizations of Willie and Jesse Mallory.
He was also a longtime friend of both Strode and Pretty,
and so if you're thinking this sounds like somebody who
would be working to protect the interests of Pretty and
the colony rather than of Carrie Buck, you are correct.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
This case was heard before the Amherst count Circuit Court
on November eighteenth, nineteen twenty four. Strode called several witnesses
from the Charlottesville area who claimed to know of Carrie
or her family or families like the Bucks, but most
of them had not spent much time with her, if any.
Strode also called expert witnesses, including doctor Joseph S. De

(18:21):
Jarnette of Virginia's Western Lunatic Asylum, who had taken the
nickname Sterilization de Jarnet, and doctor Arthur Estebrook of the
Eugenics Record Office. The Eugenics Record Office was a pro
eugenics research center originally founded by the Carnegie Institution of
Washington as the Station for Experimental Evolution. Estebrook was also

(18:45):
author of a book called The Jukes in nineteen fifteen,
which was part of a genre called eugenic family studies.
And was one of the most famous books in that genre.
Harry Hamilton Laughlin, author of The Model Eugenics Law, also
provided a written deposition that largely rehashed previous letters to him.

(19:06):
This included describing the Bucks as belonging to the quote shiftless, ignorant,
and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
When he was called to the stand, Pretty said that
Carrie Buck, now eighteen years old, would probably remain fertile
for another thirty years, and that if she was not sterilized,
her progeny would become an increasingly enormous burden on the state.
He said that if she were held at the colony
for the rest of her life to try to keep
her from having more children, that would cost the state

(19:38):
about two hundred dollars a year, but if she were sterilized,
she could be released from the colony and go back
to living with the Dobbs family and eventually become a
self sufficient member of society. Whitehead didn't really press any
of Pretty's witnesses from Charlottesville about whether they had any
direct knowledge of Carrie Buck or the Buck family. He

(20:00):
also didn't ask for more detail when Red Cross nurse
Caroline Wilhelm described the infant Vivian Buck as having quote
a look about it that is not quite normal. That
statement wasn't based on any kind of test or diagnostic criteria,
and it was the only evidence Strode had to offer
that Vivian had inherited some kind of negative trait from

(20:23):
her mother. And Whitehead also didn't point out various contradictions
that came up over the course of the testimony. He
objected to the inclusion of Laughlin's deposition, but didn't offer
any witnesses of his own. Yeah, there are many lines
of questioning that he could have pursued but did not.

(20:43):
Albert Pritty had been seriously ill during the preparation for
the trial and the trial itself, and he died of
cancer on January thirteenth, nineteen twenty five. Then a few
months later, on April fifteenth, Judge Bennett's T. Gordon issued
his decision in the case, describing Virginia's sterilization law as quote,

(21:04):
a valid and constitutional enactment and not obnoxious to the
objections urged against it, as contrary to the provisions of
the Constitution of the State of Virginia and of the
United States. In his decision, He also affirmed that Carrie
was feeble minded, as was her mother and quote apparently

(21:25):
so was her baby.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Since the point was to get the Supreme Court's opinion
on the case, the next step was an appeal. Doctor
John Hendryn Bell, newly appointed Superintendent of the Virginia Colony,
took Pritty's place in the court proceedings. Strode prepared a
brief that incorporated testimony from Carrie's original commitment hearing as
well as the earlier trial. He also made a number

(21:50):
of constitutional arguments, keeping in mind all the legal arguments
that had already been documented in Harry Hamilton Laughlin's book
Eugenical Sterilization in the u S. United States.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Meanwhile, Whitehead's much shorter brief argued that the law would
violate Carrie Buck's right to do process and equal protection
under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and that it would
deprive her of liberty and property. The Virginia Supreme Court
of Appeals upheld the lower court's ruling on November twelfth,
nineteen twenty five. The next appeal was to the United

(22:25):
States Supreme Court under Chief Justice William Howard Taft, former
President of the United States and a eugenicist. The Supreme
Court agreed to hear the case in September of nineteen
twenty six. We'll have more about this after a sponsor break.

(22:50):
Attorney Aubrey Strode Supreme Court brief and Buck versus Bell
argued that Virginia's eugenic sterilization law was constitutional. Arguments were
informed by legal challenges that had already been made to
other states sterilization laws, many of which, as we've said,
had been documented by Harry Laughlin. This included arguing that

(23:13):
Virginia's law was not cruel and unusual punishment under the
Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, since these sterilizations were not
being performed as punishment for committing a crime. He also
argued that the patients were given due process before the
surgeries were authorized, and he argued that because the law

(23:35):
protected public health and safety by keeping dangerous and undesirable
people from reproducing, it was a valid use of the
state's police power. Whitehead continued to represent Carrie Buck, and
he argued again that the law violated her rights to
due process and equal protection under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments,

(23:57):
generally being less detailed and thorough than road was. I
feel like I could have put the word represent in
scare quotes in that sense.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
He was physically there.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
He showed up and did enough of a job that
people didn't immediately go, you're not doing your job, man.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case on
April twenty second, nineteen twenty seven, and issued its decision
less than two weeks later. The Supreme Court upheld the
lower courts ruling eight to one, meaning that Virginia's sterilization

(24:33):
law was constitutional. Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior authored
the court's opinion, which incorporated a lot of language that
was already widely used within the eugenics movement. This opinion
was also exceptionally short, at under three pages. If you've
ever read a Supreme Court opinion, that's the still scribbles.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
That's that's scratch paper, that's notes. It recapped the steps
that were required to approve a sterilization surgery under Virginia's law,
saying those steps met the constitutional standard for due process.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
From there, it said, quote, the attack is not upon
the procedure, but upon the substantive law. It seems to
be contended that in no circumstances could such an order
be justified. It certainly is contended that the order cannot
be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the
facts that have been recited, and that Carrie Buck is

(25:35):
the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted,
that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her
general health, and that her welfare and that of society
will be promoted by her sterilization, and thereupon makes the
order in view of the general declarations of the legislature

(25:56):
and the specific findings of the court. Obviously, we cannot
say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist,
and if they exist, they justify the result. We have
seen more than once that the public welfare may call
upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be
strange if it could not call upon those who already

(26:18):
sap the strength of the state, for these lesser sacrifices,
often not felt to be such by those concerned. In
order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence, it is
better for all the world if, instead of waiting to
execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve

(26:39):
for their imbecility. Society can prevent those who are manifestly
unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory
vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
The principle of compulsory vaccination is a reference to Yakubsen
versus Massachusetts, which the Court had decided in January of
nineteen oh five. In that case, the Supreme Court had
upheld a compulsory smallpox vaccination law, ruling that quote, it
is within the police power of a state to enact
a compulsory vaccination law, and it is for the legislature

(27:21):
and not for the courts, to determine in the first instance,
whether vaccination is or is not the best mode for
the prevention of smallpox and the protection of the public health.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Jakobsen versus Massachusetts established a basic standard for when public
health measures could overrule a person's individual liberty and still
be considered constitutional. The measures in question had to be
necessary to protect public health, reasonable and proportional, and they
had to prevent harm. So, in the context of vaccines,

(27:56):
in Jakobsen versus Massachusetts, the general public was being protected
through requirements that people be vaccinated for smallpox, and those
requirements were reasonable and proportional. In the context of Buck
versus Bell, According to this court decision, the general public
was being protected from the feeble minded and their associated

(28:17):
societal burdens by removing their ability to bring about another
generation of feeble minded people, and according to the reasoning
of this decision, surgically sterilizing them was reasonable and proportional.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
The decision continued quote. But it is said, however, it
might be if this reasoning were applied generally, it fails
when it is confined to the small number who are
in the institutions named, and is not applied to the
multitudes outside. It is the usual last resort of constitutional
arguments to point out shortcomings of this sort. But the

(28:53):
answer is that the law does all that is needed.
When it does all that it can, indicates a policy
applies it to all within the lines, and seeks to
bring within the lines all similarly situated, so far and
so fast as its means allow. Of course, so far
as the operations enable. Those who otherwise must be kept
confined to be returned to the world, And thus open

(29:16):
the asylum to others, the equality aimed at will be
more nearly reached.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
In other words, Virginia's law didn't violate the constitutional guarantee
of equal protection under the Laws by applying only to
people who were institutionalized, in part because people could then
be freed from asylums once they'd been sterilized, and that
would make more room in the asylums for more people
to be sterilized. The one descent in this case was

(29:44):
Associate Justice Pierce Butler. He did not author a dissenting opinion,
and the reasons for his descent are not clearly documented anywhere.
It's sometimes attributed to his being Catholic. He was the
child of Irish immigrants who had fled the Great Famine
in the mid nineteenth century. The Catholic Church was not

(30:05):
broadly against the idea of eugenics, but it was generally
opposed to measures that involved some kind of contraception or sterilization.
After the Supreme Court decision on October nineteenth, nineteen twenty seven,
doctor John Hendryn Bell performed a salpjectomy, or a surgical
procedure to remove the fallopian tubes on twenty one year

(30:27):
old Carrie Buck. She remained in the colony infirmary, recovering
until November three, and a little over a week later
she was furloughed from the colony. Although there was a
proposal for her to go live with the Dobbs family,
where her daughter was, the Dobbses apparently didn't think that
was a good idea, so she was designated as a

(30:48):
ward of the Coleman family and sent to live with them.
The Coleman's returned to Carrie to the colony after she
allegedly used a dishpan as a chamber, something that Missus
Coleman seems to have thought was a prank. Not long
after Carrie was readmitted to the colony, her thirteen year
old sister Doris, was sterilized there without her knowledge, during

(31:12):
an operation in which her appendix was also removed. Carrie
Buck was later released from the colony again and went
to live with mister and Missus A. T. Newberry, who
at first were authorized to return her to the colony
if they deemed it necessary. Carrie was formally discharged from
the colony on January first, nineteen twenty nine, at the

(31:35):
age of twenty two.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Carrie's daughter Vivian, who was now known as Vivian Dobbs,
made the honor roll at her elementary school in the
spring of nineteen thirty one. The following year, she died
of enterocolitis at the age of eight. This was probably
a complication of a case of measles. Carrie had not
seen her daughter again after first being separated from her,

(31:59):
and no one told her about Vivian's death. She found
out about it much later.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
On May fourteenth, nineteen thirty two, Carrie Buck married William D. Eagle.
She had kept in touch with staff at the Virginia Colony,
including doctor Bell and a nurse named Roxy Barry, who
had been one of the attendants during her sterilization surgery.
Over the years, Carrie wrote them a series of letters,

(32:25):
many of which asked about her mother's health and whether
it was okay for her to send things that her mother, Emma,
had asked her for. Carrie also tried to make arrangements
for Emma to be released from the colony and come
to live with her and her husband. That never happened,
and Emma Buck died of pneumonia there in nineteen forty four. Somehow,

(32:48):
Carrie and her brother Roy didn't get the telegram that
was sent to notify the two of them of their
mother's death. They knew that she was sick, though, they
went to the colony to visit her, only to learn
that she had died a couple of weeks before.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
By that point, Carrie had been widowed. Her husband, William,
died on July twenty third, nineteen forty one. In nineteen
sixty five, she got married again to Charles A. Detamoor.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
In nineteen seventy nine, Carrie's sister, now known as Doris Figgins,
learned that the reason that she had never been able
to get pregnant was that she had been sterilized while
at the Virginia Colony fifty years before. Doris died three
years later in nineteen eighty two.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Near the end of her life, Carrie met Paul Lombardo,
who went on to write Three Generations, No Imbeciles, Eugenics,
the Supreme Court, and Buck versus Bill, which is considered
the definitive work on this case and the people involved
with it. At the time, he was a law student,
Carrie and her husband, Charlie, were living in a state

(33:55):
operated home after it had become clear that they needed
more support than they could yet living on their own.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
During this meeting, Carrie told Lombardo quote, they'd done me wrong,
They'd done us all wrong. Carrie Buck Eagle Detemir died
a few weeks after this meeting, on January twenty eighth,
nineteen eighty three, at the age of seventy seven. As
we've discussed, feeble mindedness was sort of an umbrella category
that just does not hold up under scrutiny. Beyond that,

(34:24):
there is general agreement today that Emma's diagnosis is suspect
because it was based mainly on unreliable IQ test, and
that neither Carrie nor her daughter Vivian was disabled. This
does not mean that Carrie's sterilization was somehow more tragic
than it would have been if she had a disability.
Disabled people's bodies and bodily autonomy are not worth less

(34:47):
than that of non disabled people. The point is that
the justification for her sterilization and the Supreme Court case
that upheld it, was not even true. After Buck versus
Bell upheld Virginia's sterilization law as constitutional, other states and
Puerto Rico began passing their own laws. By nineteen thirty seven,

(35:08):
thirty two states had some kind of compulsory sterilization law,
and five other states had carried out procedures without some
kind of law on the books. It's believed that at
least sixty thousand people in the United States were sterilized
without their consent over the course of more than fifty years,

(35:29):
as had happened with Doris Buck Figgins. Sometimes people were
not even told this was what was happening, and they
thought they were having surgery for some other reason. While
the Bucks were white, these surgeries were disproportionately performed on
Black women and other women of color. Fanny lou Hamer
popularized the term Mississippi apendectomy to describe the forced sterilization

(35:54):
of black women in the Southern United States.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
And there were also sterilization programs in other parts of
the world. Nazi Germany passed its law for the Prevention
of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases in nineteen thirty three. This
paved the way for approximately two million sterilizations in Nazi
occupied Europe after World War II. Buck versus Bell was

(36:18):
cited as a defense during the Nuremberg trials. There are
also other connections between American and Nazi eugenics. For example,
in nineteen thirty six, the University of Heidelberg, which was
under Nazi administration, awarded Harry H. Laughlin an honorary doctorate
in medicine for his contributions to quote the science of

(36:39):
racial cleansing.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
We said at the top of the show that Buck
versus Bell has never been directly overturned. One case that
might have done that was Skinner versus Oklahoma, which followed
Oklahoma's passage of its Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act of nineteen
thirty five. That law required a person and to be
sterilized if they had been convicted of three or more

(37:03):
felonies of moral turpitude. The Supreme Court ruled that this
was unconstitutional because it was a cruel and unusual punishment
and was applied arbitrarily, but it did not apply this
ruling to involuntary sterilizations. More broadly, in nineteen eighty, the
American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of thousands

(37:26):
of women who had been sterilized under Virginia's eugenics law.
This led to Poe versus Lynchburg, which was ultimately settled
at the district court level in nineteen eighty five without
overturning the original law. Most of the sterilization laws that
were passed in the US in the early twentieth century
have been repealed today. Virginia repealed its law in nineteen

(37:49):
seventy four and removed other legal references to sterilization of
people with quote hereditary forms of mental illness that are
recurrent in nineteen seventy nine. Virginia also apologized to the
victims of its sterilization law in two thousand and two,
but there are still laws on the books in various

(38:09):
states allowing for involuntary sterilizations in some circumstances, including laws
that allow parents, guardians, or other caregivers to approve sterilizations
for their disabled children and other dependents. This is an
incredibly sensitive and contentious topic because it involves figuring out

(38:30):
how to simultaneously respect disabled people's rights to privacy and
bodily autonomy while also allowing people to make medical decisions
for them if they are genuinely unable to communicate their
own wishes or make decisions for themselves. That's Book versus
Bell one of the worst things that I have researched

(38:51):
in a while.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, thanks to this uplifting topic.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Tracy, Well, I wasn't expecting a more Supreme Court explicit
badness happening just immediately after I finished writing it.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, do you have a listener mail that's hopefully less horrifying.
I have listener mail. This is from Bobby.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
So Bobby wrote with a question that we get periodically
that I just kind of wanted to revisit. Bobby wrote, Hi,
Tracy and Holly, I'm a huge fan of the show
and currently playing catch up with episodes and up to
the Kurt Vonnegut episode.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Love it.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Some of the episodes in the last couple weeks, like
February to March, you mentioned Democrats and Republicans before they
had a platform shift in the mid twentieth century. Is
that worse than saying nineteen hundred's ha ha. I don't
know if there is much information on that, or even
if you could do a whole episode on that, but
the switching platforms is very interesting to me, and I
often wonder how that happened. When Republicans today say they

(39:48):
are the Party of Lincoln, I want to scream. Anyway,
that's my little at side. I love your episodes and
listen to you all while I'm on the road for work.
Thank you so much for keeping me company. Cheers, Bobby.
So I wrote back to Bobby, and this is something
that we have I think mentioned on the show before
that I know we've gotten other questions from listeners about before.

(40:08):
We don't have an episode on how the platforms of
the Democrat and Republican parties in the United States have shifted,
and we're not really planning to do one because it
is just, in my opinion, not something that translates very
well to a narrative podcast episode. A lot of times

(40:28):
gets really oversimplified as being related to the Civil Rights Act,
and that is like one moment in almost one hundred
years of history that involved a lot of different changes
and shifts and legislative priorities and sort of shifts in

(40:50):
how both parties were focused. Like longer ago, in the past,
there was more breadth within each of the parties as
far as having like a more progressive and a more
conservative side right, and all of that changed over a

(41:10):
very long time in a way that I just don't
know how to make make sense and be interesting to
listen to in like a narrative podcast. So one of
the resources that I point people to for this often
is the Ask historians subreddit. The Ask Historian subreddit is
a really good resource. They have been around for years

(41:32):
and really focused on people who have historical knowledge, including
historians and other experts, like building up their trust within
that community to be able to answer user questions in
a reliable and correct way. And they have a whole
page that's basically the changing role of Republicans and Democrats.

(41:55):
So if you go to the Ask historians subreddit, they
have in their subreddit information like a whole frequently asked
questions area, and that is one of them, and it
has a lot of just very good, comprehensive answers that
are easy to understand for a lay person, kind of
walking through how the parties each have shifted over this

(42:22):
more than a century, and how their individual platforms have
shifted over the century in a way that I feel
like the written text is a lot easier to understand
than an audio podcast would be. So I already sent
that link to Bobby and thank you Bobby for writing.
If anybody else it's curious about that the Ask historians subreddit.

(42:45):
I know a lot of folks have kind of a
gut reaction to the idea of reddit, But the ask
Historians subreddit is really good. If you jump in there
fifteen minutes after a question has been asked, you might
see random people that have put in answers. Those are
very quickly moderated away until a good, thorough answer is

(43:08):
provided by somebody in the community, and then that becomes
a resource for everybody to read. They have a handy
little link that you can click to you remind yourself
to come back and check for an answer later if
there's not an answer there yet on a question. If
you would like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast, we are at History Podcast at

(43:28):
iHeartRadio dot com and you can subscribe to the show
on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to
get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

(43:50):
your favorite shows.

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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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