Buck v. Bell

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Stuff You Missed in History Class – “Buck v. Bell”

Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Fry
Date: August 20, 2025
Podcast by iHeartRadio

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Episode Overview

This episode focuses on the infamous 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, which upheld the constitutionality of laws allowing or mandating involuntary sterilization of people deemed “unfit” under the eugenics movement. Holly and Tracy take listeners through the origins, legal framework, trial details, and the personal histories involved. The hosts also explore the legacy of this decision, its ties to the broader eugenics movement, and its lingering effects on disability rights and public policy. The subject matter includes sensitive and offensive philosophies, which are discussed with care and historical context.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Background and Motivation for the Episode

• Tracy explains her interest in Supreme Court decisions relating to citizenship and eugenics, emphasizing the persistent influence of Buck v. Bell:
  • “Buck vs Bell is the 1927 Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of laws allowing or mandating the involuntary sterilization of people who were deemed to be somehow unfit.... the lines of thought that led to Buck versus Bell continue to influence how disability and disability rights are discussed today.” [03:06]
• Tracy explicitly acknowledges the deeply offensive underpinnings of the case and clarifies the episode will include reading from problematic historical texts.

The Buck Family and Early Life (05:20–10:25)

• Carrie Elizabeth Buck: Born 1906 in Virginia to Frank and Emma Buck; had siblings Roy and Doris.
• Carrie's upbringing marred by poverty and institutionalization—her mother Emma was diagnosed as “feeble minded” and institutionalized.
• Tracy notes much of the record comes from court testimony designed to prove Carrie’s unfitness, making it unreliable.
• Definition of “feeble minded” from a 1916 Virginia law emphasized a wide net: mild cognitive and behavioral conditions, but also included women viewed as promiscuous or “wild.”
• Carrie removed from school by her foster family (The Dobbses), possibly to serve as domestic help.

Pregnancy, Institutionalization, and Rape Allegation (08:46–10:45)

• At 17, Carrie became pregnant after allegedly being raped by Clarence Garland (her foster cousin); her accusation was never investigated.
  • “In Carrie’s words, during this visit Clarence forced himself on her and took advantage of her.” [09:14]
• The Dobbs family requested her admission to the Virginia Colony for the “Epileptic and Feeble Minded,” citing her pregnancy and “low moral character.”
• Carrie's daughter Vivian was born in 1924 and placed in the care of the Dobbses, with an agreement to institutionalize her if she showed “feeble mindedness.”

Eugenics Movement and Sterilization Laws (11:09–14:43)

• Holly outlines the rise of the eugenics movement:
  • “As people started learning more about genetics and heredity in the 19th century, eugenicists started to propose that human reproduction be approached along the same lines as breeding livestock for the betterment of the human race.” [11:09]
• Positive eugenics: encouraging those with “good” genes to reproduce; negative eugenics: preventing “bad” genes from being passed on.
• Eugenic ideas intertwined with scientific racism—preference for Northern and Western European ancestry.
• Tracey notes how eugenics became standard in education, taught “as established fact” in schools and universities, and encoded in laws (marriage restrictions, sterilization acts, immigration quotas).

The Legal Path to Buck v. Bell (18:33–27:48)

• Superintendent Priddy of the Virginia Colony began sterilizations under questionable legal justifications until pressing for clear, protective legislation.
• State Senator Aubrey Strode (Priddy’s friend) drafted a sterilization law modeled on Harry Laughlin’s eugenics code, designed to withstand constitutional scrutiny.
• The 1924 Virginia law explicitly permitted sterilization of institutionalized people for the “welfare” of society.
  • “...no person legally participating in the execution of the provisions of this act shall be liable either civilly or criminally on account of said participations.” [21:22]
• Carrie’s sterilization was orchestrated as a test case to ensure the law’s constitutionality; her assigned lawyer, Whitehead, was connected to both the institution and prosecution, raising clear conflicts of interest.
  • “So if you're thinking this sounds like somebody who would be working to protect the interests of Priddy and the Colony rather than of Carrie Buck, you are correct.” [23:03]
• Prosecution witnesses referred to the Bucks as “shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South.” [24:23]
• The court accepted unsubstantiated claims of hereditary feeble mindedness across three generations.

Supreme Court Decision (32:09–39:33)

• Strode’s brief argued for the necessity and reasonableness of the law for public welfare, framing sterilization as not punitive but preventive.
• Whitehead’s defense was perfunctory, barely contesting the prosecution’s claims.
• The Supreme Court (8-1) upheld the law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. issuing a succinct and chilling opinion:
  • “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” [35:51]
  • Holmes compared compulsory sterilization to mandatory smallpox vaccination (Jacobson v. Massachusetts): “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.” [36:18]
• Only Justice Pierce Butler dissented—without providing a public opinion.

Aftermath for Carrie Buck and Legacy (39:33–44:17)

• Carrie was sterilized and eventually released, only to be institutionalized again after brief stays with foster families.
• Her sister Doris was sterilized without her knowledge during an unrelated operation.
• Carrie’s daughter Vivian, who had been cited as further “proof” of hereditary feeble mindedness, made her school’s honor roll before dying young of illness.
• In her later years, Carrie met law student Paul Lombardo, who documented her story:
  • “They done me wrong. They done us all wrong.” – Carrie Buck [43:21]

Broader Impact and Modern Reactions (44:17–46:59)

• The ruling led to widespread adoption of compulsory sterilization laws—32 states and Puerto Rico enacted such statutes by the late 1930s.
• Over 60,000 people were sterilized in the U.S., disproportionately targeting Black women and other women of color.
  • “Fannie Lou Hamer popularized the term Mississippi appendectomy to describe the forced sterilization of black women in the southern United States.” [45:16]
• Buck v. Bell was cited by Nazi Germany to justify the sterilization of millions and was introduced as a defense at the Nuremberg Trials.
• Later legal cases like Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942) and Poe v. Lynchburg (1985) chipped away at, but never directly overturned, Buck v. Bell.

Continuing Relevance (46:59–48:11)

• Most sterilization laws have since been repealed; Virginia apologized in 2002.
• However, some laws still allow for the involuntary sterilization of disabled people under certain circumstances, making the legacy of Buck v. Bell disturbing and unresolved.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the philosophical underpinnings of eugenics:
  • “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 these systemic burdens through ableism.” – Tracy V. Wilson [04:09]
• Classic Holmes line:
  • “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” – Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. [36:18]
• On the defense Carrie Buck received:
  • “I feel like I could have put the word represent in scare quotes. In that sense, yes, he was physically there. He showed up and did enough of a job that people didn't immediately go, you're not doing your job, man.” – Tracy V. Wilson [33:20]
• Carrie’s own reflection, near the end of her life:
  • “They done me wrong. They done us all wrong.” – Carrie Buck [43:21]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Supreme Court’s initial framing and background context: [03:06–05:20]
• Early life and institutionalization of Carrie Buck: [05:20–10:45]
• Defining “feeble mindedness” and its use: [07:37–08:46]
• Eugenics movement and law origins: [11:09–14:43]
• Legal strategies and the Buck trial: [18:33–27:48]
• Supreme Court decision analysis and Holmes’ opinion: [32:09–39:33]
• Personal impact on Carrie & legacy: [39:33–44:17]
• Broader legal and historical legacy: [44:17–46:59]
• Present-day implications: [46:59–48:11]

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Tone and Language

Holly and Tracy approach the episode with measured gravity, occasionally using understated irony (“Thanks for this uplifting topic, Tracy.” [48:11]) to underscore the horror and injustice of the subject. They directly confront the ableism and racism at the heart of the case, offer empathetic commentary for the individuals involved, and remind listeners of the ongoing impact and relevance of the Supreme Court decision.

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Summary

This episode meticulously explores Buck v. Bell, from the exploitation of the Buck family to the Supreme Court’s infamous ruling and its far-reaching consequences for eugenics, disability rights, and bodily autonomy in the U.S. and abroad. Holly and Tracy make clear that while the legal framework has changed, the decision’s stain and the attitudes that underpinned it persist. This is a sobering, essential lesson in how law, pseudoscience, and prejudice can intertwine with devastating results.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an I Heart podcast.

[Holly Fry]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Welcome to Today.

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From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all along, as the forecast calls for football all across the country, blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

And the best way to start is together.

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Watch the Today show weekday mornings at 7am on NBC.

[Holly Fry]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I've been thinking about terrible U.S. supreme Court decisions for some reason.

[Holly Fry]

Gosh, I can't imagine why.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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 more thinking about birthright citizenship. Anyway, just I've been thinking a lot about the Supreme Court. And that reminded me that for a long time I have wanted to do an episode on Buck vs Bell, which has come up in past episodes of our show related to the eugenics movement. Buck vs Bell is the 1927 Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of 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 relates to have been repealed in the US but Buck vs 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 led to Buck versus Bell continue 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, 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 these systemic burdens through ableism. By refusing to see every person as 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 making some of them accessible. As an example.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, the buck in Buck vs Bell was Carrie Elizabeth Buck, born on July 2, 1906. Her father, Frank Buck, was a tinner, 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 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1920, when Carrie would have been about 14, her mother, Emma, was admitted to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded near Lynchburg, which had originally been founded in 1910 as a colony for men with epilepsy. Emma was 48 and she was described at that time 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 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.

[Holly Fry]

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 claimed that Carrie had started to show evidence of feeble mindedness at the age of 10 or 11. So feeble minded was this catch all term that was 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 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In a law passed in 1916, 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 or managing his affairs or of being taught to do so, and is unsafe and dangerous to himself and to others and to the community, and who consequently requires care, supervision and control for the protection of and welfare of himself, of others and of the community, but who is not classable as an insane person as usually interpreted.

[Holly Fry]

So Carrie supposedly started showing signs of being feeble minded around age 10 or 11. 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 the Dobbs's taking her out of school because they wanted her as a household servant.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Then when Carrie was 17, 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 Dobbses said that they could not afford to care for Carrie anymore and they petitioned for her to be admitted to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded.

[Holly Fry]

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 1923 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. 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 Car's allegations were never investigated.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Carrie underwent a commitment hearing and was ordered to be admitted to the Virginia Colony, which is where her mother also was, on January 23, 1924. 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 after the birth of her daughter Vivian Alice Elaine Buck on March 28, 1924.

[Holly Fry]

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 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Carrie arrived at the colony on June 4, 1924, and Robert G. Sheldon became her state appointed guardian. A few months later, on September 10, the colony prepared a list of patients who were candidates for sterilization under Virginia's sterilization Act of 1924. Kerry was one of the people on that list.

[Holly Fry]

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 19th 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 term eugenics was coined by Francis Galton in 1883, 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Some of the traits that 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 also interconnected with scientific racism. There was an underlying assumption that people with European ancestry, specifically Northern and Western European ancestry, had the best Chinese genes.

[Holly Fry]

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 2023. But eugenics was incredibly widely accepted, especially in North America and Europe, but also in other parts of the world. In the US by the late 1920s, 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 eugenics supporters among some of the same populations that were targeted by the movement.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And there were laws related to this. Obvious examples include laws that prohibited people with epilepsy and the so called feeble minded from getting married. The first of these laws in the US was passed in Connecticut in 1896. There were also laws allowing or mandating that such people be sterilized, starting with a law in Indiana in 1907. 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 1924, which limited immigration from some countries while banning it from others, with no quotas on the countries that were considered to be genetically desirable.

[Holly Fry]

After Indiana's 1907 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 saw it as an affront to a divine commandment 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. 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 1921.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Carrie Buck lived in Virginia, as we've said, and we will get to Virginia's eugenics laws after a sponsor break.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Holly Fry]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Virginia's 1916 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 include language allowing medical and surgical treatment that would, quote, tend to the mental and physical betterment of patients. Superintendent Albert Sidney Priddy of the Virginia Colony used that language to justify sterilizing patients there, arguing that it was for their mental and physical betterment.

[Holly Fry]

This included Willie Mallory and her daughter Jessie, both of whom were held at the Colony and sterilized. Another of Willie's daughters, Nanny Mallory, was also held with a plan for her to be sterilized. Willie'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 Mallorys.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

While Superintendent Priddy was interpreting that 1916 law as allowing these sterilizations, he and the board at the Colony also recognized that continuing to do 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, 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.

[Holly Fry]

Strode drafted a bill that was patterned after a model eugenical sterilization law that had been included in Harry Hamilton Laughlin's 1922 book, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. This book documented the sterilization laws that had been passed in the U. S, along with the various legal and legislative challenges they had faced. Laughlin had kept all these challenges 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Virginia's version of this law was passed in March of 1924. It authorized the superintendence 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 and society. This applied to 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.

[Holly Fry]

The law also outlined various steps that needed to be taken before a surgery could be performed. And it's 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

As we said earlier, In September of 1924, 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 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.

[Holly Fry]

Carrie Buck was chosen for this case because her mother Emma was also a resident at the colony and had been diagnosed as a. 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 not pass down their genetic taint to another generation. So Emma, Carrie and Vivian Buck were supposed to serve as proof that feeblemindedness 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 Priddy's request, her guardian, Robert G. Shelton, appealed it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Priddy'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 board when it approved the sterilizations of Willie and Jesse Mallory, she. 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.

[Holly Fry]

This case was heard before the Amherst county circuit court on November 18, 1924. 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 Dr. Joseph S. De Jarnet of Virginia's Western Lunatic Asylum, who had taken the nickname Sterilization de Jarnet, and Dr. Arthur Estabrook 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. Estabrook was also author of a book called the jukes in 1915, 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. This included describing the Bucks as belonging to the, quote, unquote, shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

When he was called to the stand, Pretty said that Carrie Buck, now 18 years old, would probably remain fertile for another 30 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 about $200 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.

[Holly Fry]

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 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 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, there are many lines of questioning that he could have pursued but did not. Albert Pretty had been seriously ill during the preparation for the trial and the trial itself, and he died of cancer on January 13, 1925. Then a few months later, on April 15, Judge Bennett T. Gordon issued his decision in the case describing Virginia's stereotyp sterilization law as, quote, 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 so was her baby.

[Holly Fry]

Since the point was to get the Supreme Court's opinion on the case, the next step was an appeal. Dr. John Hendren Bell, newly appointed superintendent of the Virginia Colony, took Priddy's place in the court proceedings. Strode prepared a brief that incorporated testimony from Kerry's original commitment hearing as well as the earlier trial. He also made a number 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 United States.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Meanwhile, Whitehead's much shorter brief argued that the law would violate Carrie Buck's right to due process and equal protection under the Fifth and 14th Amendments and that it would deprive her of liberty and property.

[Holly Fry]

The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's ruling on November 12, 1925. The next appeal was to the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice Washington William Howard Taft, former President of the United States and a eugenicist. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in September of 1926.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We'll have more about this after a sponsor break.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

CBS this Labor Day.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Attorney Aubrey Strode's Supreme Court brief in Buck vs Bell argued that Virginia's eugenic sterilization law was constitutional. His arguments were informed by legal challenges that had already been made to other states sterilization laws, many of which have, as we've said, had been documented by Harry Laughlin. This included arguing that 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 these surgeries were authorized. And he argued that because the law protected public health and safety by keeping dangerous and undesirable people from reproducing, it was a valid use of the state's police power.

[Holly Fry]

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, generally being less detailed and thorough than Strode was.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I feel like I could have put the word represent in scare quotes. In that sense, yes, he was physically there. 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 22, 1927, and issued its decision less than two weeks later. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling 8 to 1, meaning that Virginia's sterilization law was constitutional.

[Holly Fry]

Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 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 that's basically scribbles. That's that's scratch paper.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

That's notes.

[Holly Fry]

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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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 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 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 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 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.

[Holly Fry]

The principle of compulsory vaccination is a reference to Jacobson vs Massachusetts, which the court had decided in January of 1905. 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 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Jacobson vs. 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 in Jacobson 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 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.

[Holly Fry]

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 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 the asylum to others, the equality aimed at will be more nearly reached.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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.

[Holly Fry]

The one dissent in this case was Associate Justice Pierce Butler. He did not author a dissenting opinion and the reasons for his dissent 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 19th century. The Catholic Church was not broadly against the idea of eugenics, but it was generally opposed to measures that involved some kind of contraception or sterilization.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

After the supreme court decision on October 19, 1927, Dr. John Hendren Bell performed a salpingectomy or a surgical procedure to remove the fallopian tubes on 21 year old Carrie Buck. She remained in the colony infirmary recovering until November 3rd 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 ward of the Coleman family and sent to live with them. The Coleman's returned Carrie to the colony after she allegedly used a dish pan as a chamber pot, something that Mrs. Coleman seems to have thought was a prank.

[Holly Fry]

Not long after Carrie was readmitted to the colony, her 13 year old sister Doris was sterilized there without her knowledge during an operation in which her appendix was also removed.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Carrie Buck was later released from the colony again and went to live with Mr. And Mrs. A.T. newbery, 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 1, 1929 at the age of 22.

[Holly Fry]

Carrie's daughter Vivian, who was now known as Vivian Dobbs, made The honor roll at her elementary school in spring of 1931. The following year, she died of enterocolitis at the age of 8. This was probably a complication of a case of measles. Carrie had not seen her daughter again after first being separated from her, and no one told her about Vivian's death. She found out about it much later.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On May 14, 1932, Carrie Buck married William D. Eagle. She had kept in touch with staff at the Virginia colony, including Dr. Bell and a nurse named Roxy Berry, who had been one of the attendants during her sterilization surgery. Over the years, Carrie wrote them a series of letters, 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 1944. Somehow, 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.

[Holly Fry]

By that point, Carrie had been widowed. Her husband William, died on July 23, 1941. In 1965, she got married again to Charles A. Dettimore.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1979, 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 50 years before. Doris died three years later. In 1982, near the end of her.

[Holly Fry]

Life, Carrie met Paul Lombardo, who went on to write three generations, no imbeciles, eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck vs Bell, 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 operated home after it had become clear that they needed more support than they could get living on their own.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

During this meeting, Carrie told Lombardo, quote, they done me wrong. They done us all wrong. Carrie Buck Eagle Dettimore died a few weeks after this meeting on January 28, 1983, at the age of 77.

[Holly Fry]

As we've discussed, feeble mindedness was sort of an umbrella category that just does not hold up under scrutiny. Beyond that, 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 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.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

After Buck vs Bell upheld Virginia's sterilization law as constitutional, other states and Puerto Rico began passing their own laws. By 1937, 32 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 60,000 people in the United States were sterilized without their consent over the course of more than 50 years, 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. Fannie Lou Hamer popularized the term Mississippi appendectomy to describe the forced sterilization of black women in the southern United States.

[Holly Fry]

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 1933. This paved the way for approximately 2 million sterilizations in Nazi occupied Europe after World War II. Buck vs Bell was cited as a defense during the Nuremberg trials. There are also other connections between American and Nazi eugenics. For example, in 1936, 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 Racial Cleansing.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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 1935. That law required a person to be sterilized if they had been convicted of three or more 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.

[Holly Fry]

More broadly, in 1980, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of thousands of women who had been sterilized under Virginia's eugenics law. This led to Poe vs. Lynchburg, which was ultimately settled at the district court level in 1985 without overturning the original law.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Most of the sterilization laws that were passed in the U. S in the early 20th century have been repealed today. Virginia repealed its law in 1974 and removed other legal references to sterilization of people with, quote, hereditary forms of mental illness that are recurrent in 1979. Virginia also apologized to the victims of its sterilization law in 2002. But there are still laws on the books in various 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 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 Buck versus Bell. One of the worst things that I have researched in a while.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, thanks for this uplifting topic, Tracy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Well, I wasn't expecting more Supreme Court explicit badness happening just immediately after I finished writing it.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, do you have listener mail that's hopefully less horrifying?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I have listener mail. This is from Bobby. 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. Love it. 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 20th century. Is that worse than saying 1900s? Haha. 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 are the party of Lincoln. I want to scream. Anyway, that's my little aside. 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. 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. Last episode a lot of times gets really Oversimplified as being related to the Civil Rights Act. And that is like one moment in almost a hundred years of history that involved a lot of different changes and shifts and legislative priorities and sort of shifts in 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.

[Holly Fry]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And all of that changed over a 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 askhistorian subreddit is a really good resource. They have been around for years 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. So if you go to the Ask Historians Subreddit, they have in their, 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. How the parties each have shifted over this 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 was curious about that, the Ask Historians Subreddit. 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 15 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 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 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 historypodcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff youf 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 your favorite shows.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Learn [e-mail] iHeart presents the Big Three playoffs this Sunday.

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[Holly Fry]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an iHeart podcast.