The Lynchburg Story

[Music playing]

[NARRATOR]: Mary Donald was one of the
victims. In 1946, when Mary was only ten

years old, a sheriff brought her to
Lynchburg, along with her brother and

sister. Her mother was already there.
Mary had no idea why she had been taken

to the colony. When she arrived, she was
frightened and confused.

[MARY DONALD]: I said, "I don't understand
this place. What am I doing over here?"

So well, nurse come down, come down the
stairs, put me on the elevator and took me

up to the hospital, in the hospital ward.
And the first thing they did then, they

put me in a bathtub, bathed me and all,
like a kid, you know. Well, I was old

enough to bathe myself, but they done it
for you, see. And, after I stayed there

for a while, Dr. Ramsey, he was the
doctor, he examines me and all, and see

if I, you know, you know what I mean.
Well. And I remember him real good.

And then after I stayed in the hospital
for a while, they sent me down on the

wards, on ward five, that was the first
ward I was ever on as a kid. About ten

years old.

[NARRATOR]: At the Lynchburg Colony, Mary
was one of 1700 inmates. Some were

epileptic, mentally retarded, or severely
disabled. Most however, like Mary, had

been committed using the spurious
diagnosis of feeble-mindedness. This was a

catch-all phrase the authorities used to
classify Virginia's poor and ill-educated

whites. They were thought to be socially
inadequate, and a burden on the state.

[Music playing]

Lynchburg had become a dumping ground for
such people. What Mary and the other

inmates did not know was that they were
to be sexually sterilized as part of a

systematic program of social engineering.

[Screaming]
[Music playing]

[MARY DONALD]: They said, "You got to
be operated on." And I said, "For what?"

And they said, "Well, it's for your own
health." They didn't tell me it was for

being sterilized, and when you get married
you couldn't have no children. They didn't

tell me that. And after that, you know,
I stayed on in hospital for about two

weeks in a coma, they sterilized me when
I was only eleven years old, and they

almost lost me. And the only thing I
remember is the nurse said, "Well, it's up

to God now if she lives."

[NARRATOR]: After her sterilization, Mary
was kept at Lynchburg. She attended the

colony schoolhouse, but received little
education. The schoolteacher, for 25

years, was Charles Wills.

[CHARLES WILLS]: The society would say we
don't think it's a good idea for these

people to continue to have many children,
not being able to take care of themselves.

So the law permitted them to come to the
colony at that time and then they would be

presented at... our psychologist, social
worker, we would work with them to see how

they functioned in our environment. Then
the psychologist, the social worker and

nurses and medical people would check them
out and say "Well, this is familial

retardation. Yes, he would, may be
eligible for sterilization." Here again,

I'm encroaching on the medical field
because I'm looking at it from an

educational point of view, he would not be
able to function much more than at the

primary level. He could hold a routine job
down, maybe working in a field picking

apples and picking tobacco and things like
that. But he would have a difficult time

managing his own money and so they
would... if he met the criteria, he would

be eligible for sterilization.

[Music playing]

[MARY DONALD]: I was about, say about 16
years old. 16 when I learned what it was

all about. They did a whole lot of girls
that way, a whole bunch of them, I wasn't

the only one. And one girl she was up in
it and she was... well, I'm gonna tell you

anyway. She was pregnant, and they didn't
examine her and see if she was pregnant

or not. And they went on and done the
operation. I ain't callin' no names. They

done the operation and when they operated,
they killed a little baby.

[Music playing]

[NARRATOR]: The extent of Virginia's
sterilization program began to emerge in

1980. Reported numbers of victims grew,
until the final total was found to be

8,300. Grave concerns over the legality
and the ethics of the state-run program

began to be voiced. At the time, Judy
Crockett was working for the American

Civil Liberties Union in Richmond,
Virginia. She felt that the forced

sterilization of children at Lynchburg had
violated their constitutional rights. The

ACLU prepared to sue the state of Virginia
on behalf of the victims.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: It was huge publicity, it
was everywhere, and Virginia is very proud

of its history and this was a piece of
history that they couldn't be proud of and

nobody else was proud of. So, the state
wanted this to die down as quickly as it

possibly could, and we of course were not
interested in having it die down, we

wanted it to keep going until it got
fixed, we wanted the law fixed, we wanted

to make sure it was never going to happen
again and the best way to do that would be

to make sure that it was embarrassing
enough and enough people knew about it

and really understood what had happened.

[NARRATOR]: Judy learned that the story
began back in 1910, when Lynchburg was set

up as a colony for epileptics. The first
superintendent was Dr. Albert Priddy.

Priddy claimed that Virginia was
accumulating an ever-increasing

population of the feeble-minded. His
solution was to commit these people to the

colony, and to lobby for their
sterilization, but there was no secure

legal framework that would allow this
operation. By the 1920s, however, Priddy

had found the sort of model legislation he
needed. It had been drafted a few years

earlier by the prominent biologist
Dr. Harry Laughlin. Laughlin's model law

called for the compulsory sterilization of
those who were blind, deaf, deformed,

alcoholic, drug addicted, tubercular,
syphilitic, or leprous. It also included

criminals and the feeble-minded as well as
paupers and the homeless.

[Music playing]

[JUDY CROCKETT]: They were trying to make
sure that we kept the white race as pure

as possible and that people who would drag
down the level of the white race, would no

longer be able to breed. They stopped
short of killing them, but they made sure

that they wouldn't have any children. And
the project was supposed to have been,

legally, it was supposed to have been
focused on mentally retarded people or

mentally ill people who had a hereditary
form of mental retardation or illness that

would be passed on to their kids. In fact,
it was people who were poor, teenagers,

we're not talking about adults here, we're
talking about teenagers, sometimes young

teenagers, who were poor, who came from
broken homes, who had been raped or had

children out of wedlock, boys who had
stolen things or run away from home, who

were rounded up, mostly by welfare workers
and put in the institutions, sometimes

just put in solely for the purpose of
being sterilized.

[Music playing]

[NARRATOR]: But how could such a policy
of mass sterilization have been sanctioned

in a free society? Dr. Paul Lombardo has
spent 13 years studying the legal history

of Virginia's program. He started at
Amherst Courthouse, where the Lynchburg

sterilizations were authorized and the
records-

[Static]

[DR PAUL LOMBARDO]: The theory of
eugenics. Eugenics is somewhat peculiar

word to modern era, but at the time people
understood it to mean the science, if you

can call it a science, of being well born,
that is the science of good breeding, of

heredity, of having healthy productive
people marry other healthy productive

people and have children, and preventing
those who were not healthy and productive

from having any children at all.

[NARRATOR]: The word eugenics was coined
by the British scientist Sir Francis

Galton in 1883. Galton was a cousin of
Charles Darwin. The eugenicists wanted to

encourage survival of the fittest, while
eliminating the unfit through surgical

sterilization. Eugenicists claimed that
simple laws of heredity could be applied

to all kinds of complex human qualities.

[MAN]: Mental capacities as well as
physical characters are inherited. The

family history shows special talents
reappearing in successive generations.

Feeble-mindedness and many other
undesirable qualities are also heritable.

[NARRATOR]: Fearing that the nation was
being swamped by defectives, the

eugenicists believed that government
should have the power to prevent further

racial degeneration. Social reformers on
the left as well as the right were seduced

by the idea. Writers like H. G. Wells, and
George Bernard Shaw, and politicians like

Winston Churchill believed that eugenic
sterilization would improve the vigor of

the nation and save millions on welfare,
prisons, and hospitals. In Britain,

Galton's ideas were never put into
practice. It was a different story in the

United States.

[DR PAUL LOMBARDO]: In America, the ideas
that were propounded by the eugenicists

were taken up as a practical way of
limiting reproduction among people whom

some felt should not reproduce.

[NARRATOR]: Compulsory sterilization had
strong support from American politicians.

It also had a broad appeal to ordinary
people. Along with prizes for pig breeders

and pie bakers, state fairs held fitter
family contests to reward those who

practiced good breeding. Eugenics became
a household word, but there were a few

dissenting voices. Hollywood was one.

[Music playing]

[MRS. WHITE]: Now sit down, I want to talk
to you. I am Mrs. White of the Welfare

Association. You are 17, aren't you Alice?

[ALICE]: Yes, but what have you done to
my folks?

[MRS. WHITE]: Well, we thought it
necessary to present your family's case

to the State Medical Commission. And after
an examination, they decided it was a

(inaudible) action to take, and have your
entire family sterilized.

[ALICE]: Well, what's that? I don't know
what you're talking about!

[MRS. WHITE]: Well, we investigated your
family's history, Alice, and most of the

past three generations have been
feeble-minded, congenital cripples,

or (inaudible) drunks. It's even been been
proven each generation is more of a

problem. Now in this state, we have a law
which provides for such people to have an

operation so there won't be any more
children.

[ALICE]: I see.

[MRS. WHITE]: And you can go back to your
job soon. I will arrange for (inaudible).

[ALICE]: But I'm picking my job, I'm not
going anywhere.

[MRS. WHITE]: Now you're going to the
hospital too, Alice.

[ALICE]: And do you mean they're going to
stop me from having children ever?

[MRS. WHITE]: Exactly.

[ALICE]: I'm alright, I tell you, I won't
go to any hospital.

[NARRATOR]: By the mid-1920's, the
eugenicists were determined to overcome

all opposition to enforced sterilization.
During his research, Dr. Paul Lombardo

uncovered an extraordinary conspiracy.
Dr. Albert Priddy, a Lynchburg

superintendent, had been privately
sterilizing inmates, but stopped in 1917

when he was sued for damages by a victim.
Fearful of being sued again, Priddy needed

Dr. Laughlin's model law to be declared
constitutional by the highest court in the

land. In 1924, Priddy colluded with others
to bring a test case before the U.S.

Supreme Court. A case they knew they would
win. It began here, at Amherst, and became

known as Buck versus Bell.

[DR PAUL LOMBARDO]: Buck vs. Bell was the
first time that the United States Supreme

Court said that it was okay under the
constitution to sexually sterilize someone

because they were likely to have children
who were in the words of the court,

socially inadequate.

[NARRATOR]: The person Priddy used to
serve his purposes was a teenage girl

named Carrie Buck. Carrie came from a
poor family that lived in Charlottesville,

Virginia. Her mother Emma was suspected
of being a prostitute and had already been

committed to Lynchburg. They said she was
feeble-minded. Carrie was sent to live

with foster parents, John and Alice Dobbs.
John Dobbs worked on the railway in

Charlottesville, and was active in local
affairs. When Carrie was 16, she was raped

by a nephew of the Dobbs in this house.
She became pregnant, and in 1924, gave

birth to a little girl who she named
Vivian. Ashamed of what had happened,

the Dobbs wanted to be rid of Carrie and
reported her to the authorities. Although

a victim of rape, her pregnancy out of
wedlock was sufficient to have her taken

away to the Lynchburg Colony.

[Music playing]

[NARRATOR]: What happened to Carrie would
change the lives of tens of thousands of

poor teenagers like her.

[Screaming]

When Carrie Buck arrived at Lynchburg,
she found herself in terrifying

circumstances. Torn from her daughter
Vivian, she was brought before

Dr. Albert Priddy, whose stated mission
was to rid the nation of people like her.

Priddy examined Carrie, and classified
her, like her mother, as feeble-minded of

the moron class, a moral delinquent, and
worthy of sexual sterilization. In fact

she was none of these things, but Priddy
now had two generations of the Buck family

locked away. Priddy knew that the Virginia
law only applied to people with hereditary

defects, so Carrie Buck appeared the
perfect subject for Priddy's test case.

[DR PAUL LOMBARDO]: Probably the most
important person after Dr. Priddy was a

man named Aubrey Strode. Aubrey Strode
was the attorney who represented the

Virginia colony in this case. Mr. Strode
served a term as senator in the state

assembly, he also acted as a lobbyist and
he wrote legislation at the request of

people like Dr. Priddy. His counterpart
was a lawyer named Irving Whitehead who

was appointed to represent Carrie Buck.
Mr. Whitehead had more than a passing

acquaintance with the Virginia colony as
well. He had been a member of its first

special board of directors, he had
actually voted to sterilize people even

before the specific statute was passed in
1924. Whitehead and Strode had been

friends, they'd grown up together in the
village of Amherst. They had been business

associates, political friends, and had
worked together in lobbying to gain

additional funding for the Virginia
colony.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: They set up the Supreme
Court challenge to this and what can only

be described as a sweetheart deal, with
everybody who participated in the lawsuit

being someone who was strongly in favor of
the sterilization law including the person

who was supposed to be representing Carrie
Buck. So, it was, it was an outrage, that,

that case was an outrage that it went
forward and that they accepted those

ideas.

[NARRATOR]: As proceedings got underway
at Amherst Courthouse, expert evidence was

given against Carrie by a man who had
never examined her, never even met her.

It was Dr. Harry Laughlin, the very man
who wrote the model sterilization law.

Dr. Laughlin was in charge of the Eugenics
Record Office on Long Island, New York.

This organization tracked down so-called
"problem families" and promoted the idea

of compulsory sterilization. Dr. Laughlin
was America's leading eugenicist. He

trained hundreds of field workers to
gather data on families he thought should

be sterilized. When Priddy needed an
expert witness to testify against Carrie,

Laughlin was the obvious choice.

[DR PAUL LOMBARDO]: Even though Laughlin
never met Carrie Buck, never examined her,

in fact never saw her, he produced a
deposition for her trial. The deposition

was based verbatim on information given to
him by Dr. Priddy, and the deposition

repeated the phrase that Priddy used to
describe the Buck family. "These people

belong to the shiftless, ignorant, and
worthless class of anti-social whites of

the South." That phrase made its way into
the Supreme Court records of the Buck vs.

Bell case. Laughlin said that Carrie was a
socially inadequate person, that she was a

moral delinquent because she had had
a child and hadn't been married and that

in fact all of the pointers of heredity
indicated that her family was the source

of this hereditary deficiency and that
Carrie herself would pass on her defects

to those she had as children. The court
also heard evidence from a woman named

Caroline Wilhelm. Miss Wilhelm was a Red
Cross nurse and she was very familiar with

the Buck family. She also had the
opportunity to observe Carrie's child

Vivian, when Vivian was not more than six
months old. When asked in court how that

child responded, Miss Wilhelm was unable
to come up with specifics, but said simply

that there was something peculiar about
the child. "I'm not sure exactly what it

is," she said, but there is something
peculiar about it." It was that comment

that became the basis for Carrie's
sterilization. She was later condemned as

one of three generations of imbeciles, her
mother being the first, Carrie the second,

and her daughter Vivian, who was simply
somewhat peculiar, the third.

[NARRATOR]: In the spring of 1927, the
case of Buck vs. Bell came before the U.S.

Supreme Court. It was heard by Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes is one of

the greatest figures in American
jurisprudence and is widely regarded as

a libertarian. But in this case, he issued
an opinion which was to deprive tens of

thousands of Americans of their right to
have children. Holmes said they could be

forcibly sterilized by declaring, "The
principle that sustains compulsory

vaccination is broad enough to cover
cutting the Fallopian tubes."

[DR PAUL LOMBARDO]: Holmes, in a phrase
which is remembered even today, concluded

that Carrie was in fact a feeble-minded
mother of a feeble-minded daughter,

herself the daughter of another feeble-
minded mother. Drawing the line under

these three people, Holmes said simply,
"Three generations of imbeciles are

enough," and declared that the Virginia
law was constitutional and could be

applied to Carrie and others like her.

[JUDGE]: Do you know anything about her
family background?

[DOCTOR]: Yes, your honor, I do.

[JUDGE]: There are several other children,
aren't there?

[DOCTOR]: Yes.
[JUDGE]: What is their condition?

[DOCTOR]: One is a cripple, two others
might be classed as feeble-minded.

[JUDGE]: Isn't the oldest son in jail?
[DOCTOR]: Oh, yes I believe so.

[JUDGE]: And knowing all that you still
contend that this girl should be allowed

to bring more people like that into the
world?

[DOCTOR]: She's normal, your honor.
She's not anything like the rest. Surely

she should be given a chance to work out
her own salvation.

[JUDGE]: I can't agree with you, doctor.
Suppose she is normal. The chances are

that her children will inherit the family
thing, isn't that possible?

[DOCTOR]: But your honor, I...

[JUDGE]: I'm sorry doctor. Three
generations of unfit are enough. Petition

not allowed.

[ALICE]: Don't you understand what you're
doing? Look at me, can't you see that I'm

well and strong and I will be a good
mother too, judge, honest I will.

[Music playing]

[NARRATOR]: After Buck vs. Bell, the
floodgates opened. American states began

wholesale sterilization of poor citizens
at the margins of society. Eugenics became

a cornerstone of American social policy.
States competed to sterilize the largest

numbers of citizens and boasted of how
much public money they saved. In 1933,

Hitler came to power. One of his first
acts was to introduce a eugenic

sterilization law. While Hitler encouraged
breeding from ideal human stock, his

sterilization act marked the beginning of
the Holocaust. In the first three years,

the Nazis sterilized more than 225,000
people. The final total was nearly half a

million. Throughout the Nazi period,
eugenic sterilizations in America

increased. The Lynchburg authorities
welcomed Hitler's sterilization law. Their

annual report of 1933 praised the great
German republic. They wrote, "Apply the

pruning knife with vigor." Hitler's
sterilization law borrowed directly from

Dr. Harry Laughlin's American legislation.
In 1936, the Nazis recognized Laughlin's

contribution to race hygiene by giving him
an honorary doctorate from the University

of Heidelberg. Virginia health officials
envied the Nazi sterilization program. In

1934, one of them declared, "The Germans
are beating us at our own game." In

Hitler's Germany, sterilization soon gave
way to the killing of mental patients by

lethal injection and ultimately the final
solution in which more than six million

died.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: It was obvious that the
program that America had, had some

influence on the Nazis. I was startled to
find that out, I always thought that the

Nazis kind of thought it up for
themselves. It struck me as incredibly

ironic that before World War II, that
there was all this very florid language in

the reports about how, about eugenics. And
after world- and sterilizations ran high,

and after World War II the sterilizations
did not drop, they just changed the

language.

[NARRATOR]: Judy Crockett wanted
Virginia's sterilization law repealed, and

for the state to pay compensation. But she
needed to find victims of the program to

build her case.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: Among the first people
that I interviewed was Doris Buck who was

Carrie Buck's sister, and her husband
Matthew Figgins. They had just recently

found out that she had been sterilized.
They had spend most of their lives trying

to have kids and, finally realizing that
they weren't going to, adopting their

nephews and nieces, and they were still
very upset about having found out that she

had been sterilized. It was clear to me
when I interviewed her that there was

something drastically wrong with this
program. I mean, bad as it would have

been if it had only sterilized mentally
retarded people. It was much worse to have

sterilized and ruined the lives of people
who were clearly not retarded and

obviously able to function in society.
Just reaching the victims of the program

was an enormous obstacle for us. These
were folks who were really deeply

humiliated and hurt by the fact that they
had been institutionalized in the first

place, and then that the state had decided
that they were so disgusting that they

shouldn't be allowed to have kids. We
didn't feel that it was our business to

ferret people out, they needed to want to
come to us. The reporters were ferreting

people out. So when they ferreted them out
they would say "You should call the ACLU."

[NARRATOR]: One of the reporters who
searched for the victims is Mary Bishop,

of the Roanoke Times. Thirteen years
later, she is still concerned with their

plight.

[MARY BISHOP]: I was looking through court
records from the 20's and 30's, looking

for people who had been sterilized with
the colony, looking for people who'd lived

through all that. And among those names I
found a Jesse Frank Meadows. And I looked

in the Lynchburg phone book and found a
Jesse F. Meadows, and called him and I

said, "Well, I'd like to come and talk
with you," and he said, "Well, come right

over." So I went over that day and it was
about all I could take, just to hear an

hour of it at that time because there was
such sadness in it.

Mr. Meadow's mother died in childbirth
when he was 13, and his father quickly

married another woman and his stepmother
decided she didn't want to raise any of

the children, she wanted all the children
to be dispersed. He was sent to the

Virginia colony, he was just 17 years old.
He was sent there in 1940.

[MARY BISHOP]: Hey, Mr. Meadows! How're
you doing?

[JESSE FRANK MEADOWS]: Fine, fine, how
are you?

[MARY BISHOP]: Good to see you. Nice day,
huh?

[JESSE FRANK MEADOWS]: Yeah.

[MARY BISHOP]: Hi puppy. Sure is. You got
a nice breeze here though, as always.

[JESSE FRANK MEADOWS]: Yeah.

[JESSE FRANK MEADOWS] They took me in an
operating room and they were taking shots

and the... and the doctors coming in and
nurses and they examined me to see if I

was numb enough, and they started cutting.

[MARY BISHOP]: Were you watching?

[JESSE FRANK MEADOWS]: Yeah. After I went
back to the ward 10. I was sore for a week

or two and could hardly walk. It took some
people really bad when they operated on

them, they put them back in the hospital.
And give them more shots and give them

penicillin, nearly killed some of them.

[MARY BISHOP]: Mr. Meadows would have
loved to have been a father, and he would

have been a very good father. He loves
children and he really misses that, he's

very sad that that could not have happened
to him.

[JESSE FRANK MEADOWS]: It's been terrible,
I might have wanted some children when I

got older. Yeah, pretty hard life and one
boy, they took him when he was 15, and

threatened to have him done like that. His
mother and father got lawyers and got him

away from there before they had time to do
it. Some other boys, they'd run away and

go into service to keep them from
doing it.

[NARRATOR]: Sterilization was not the only
scandal at the Lynchburg colony.

Able-bodied inmates were exploited for
their labor. Boys worked on the colony's

farm for as little as 25 cents a week. The
girls served in the dining hall, and were

made to help on the wards. Other inmates
had their labor sold outside the colony,

and worked as virtual slaves.

[JESSE FRANK MEADOWS]: I felt like I'd
never get out, well I just thought I'll

never get out. They said they needed me
there for work. They said they didn't have

enough painters, and they'd have to keep
me there till they got somebody, paint

until they got somebody. And then they'd
give me a raise, but all I ever seen was

25 cents a week.

[Music playing]

[NARRATOR]: Punishments at Lynchburg were
severe. One of the most frequent was the

blind room. Tiny cells where inmates were
placed in solitary confinement for up to

90 days. Their heads were shaved and they
were made to wear a hospital gown. The

cells contained nothing except a mattress
and a bucket.

[MARY DONALD]: I didn't like it then, so I
went and run, and when I came back they

put me in this "blind room," they put me
in there and I stayed in there for a

while. And they'd get somebody who was
mean, another patient who was mean, and

put them in the blind room with me, make
them stay in there with me, and I was

scared to death.

[Music playing]

Then I saw something there
one day, I'm not calling no names,

and I saw this person, I'm gonna say
person, I think it sounds better, beat

this patient, you know, that didn't have
too much mind, put her in a straitjacket

and all, and twist her arms behind her.
And they used to carry these real heavy

keys, you know, on the side of their
pocket, and would beat this patient with

it. And the next morning when I got up,
the patient was dead. I asked a certain

party, I said, "What happened to Mary?"
and she said, "Well, she's deceased," but

I think she really, you know, beat her to
death with the keys, and I was scared to

say anything about it, because they said
if I said anything about it, I'd get the

same thing that patient did. That was the
worst part, I guess.

[Music playing]

[NARRATOR]: Despite repeated stories like
Mary Donald's, the state denied all

liability. Judy Crockett pressed ahead
with the lawsuit on behalf of the victims.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: Once we got the victims,
then the state really started to go

berserk. We wanted to get their medical
records, and the state threw up all kinds

of roadblocks. The governor at that time,
Governor Dalton announced to the press,

"No, I'm not going to notify people so
that they can sue the state for the ACLU."

So we really had this fight through the
state's resistance to letting us get at

their documents.

[NARRATOR]: Eventually Judy Crockett's
persistence paid off.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: We discovered as we
started to finally get the records that

there had been a kind of a kangaroo court
proceeding where the teenage inmate was

brought before someone who was acting as
a judge, and accompanied by someone who

is supposed to be acting as their attorney
representing their best interest and that

there was some sort of form, where, of a
hearing where the issue was discussed. I

was startled to find out that there was
any kind of hearing because most of the

people I talked to didn't recall ever
having a moment at which they were told

that they were going to be sterilized and
asked if they agreed to be sterilized. And

what we found when we started looking at
the hearings was that they were completely

lacking in all the necessary elements that
you have to have when somebody is agreeing

to a medical procedure, or any sort of
a procedure, that the person who was

supposed to be representing their best
interest, in most cases had never met

them, never discussed the issue with them,
in fact often didn't even seem to know

their name, never even spoke.

[NARRATOR]: Hearing officer: How old are
you? Boy: 17. How long have you been here?

About eight months. Are you going to
school? I was going, but I quit. Do you

like the movies? Yes sir. Do you like the
funnies? Yes sir. You don't mind being

operated on, do you? No sir. Alright, you
can go ahead. Hearing officer: How old

are you? Girl: 16. Where is your home?
Richmond. How long have you been here?

Five months. You like it here alright?
Yes. You know what sterilization is? Yes.

Alright with you? Yes.

[MARY DONALD]: They asked me, "Do you know
what this meeting is for?" I said, "No

sir, I don't." They said, "Well this is a
meeting you go through when you have to

have a serious operation, and it's for
your health," that's the way they

explained it to me. And I said, "Well, if
it's for my health then, I guess, I'm

going through with it," see, I didn't know
the difference.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: The children there knew
that they would not be able to be released

unless they were sterilized. In some of
the records in the papers other than the

hearings it was specified they, she can't
be released yet to her family because she

hasn't been sterilized. We're waiting
until she's sterilized before she can be

released.

[CHARLES WILLS]: Well, after they
completed the hospitalization stay, they

were just re-entered into the various
education and training programs as if

nothing happened. Forgive the remark, but
I don't think sterilization cut the gleam

out of anybody's eye, it was just, I
think, a procedure to not permit people to

have subnormal quotation marks children
that couldn't function too well in

society.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: It was obvious that they
had suffered a really deep blow to their

sense of who they were, and one that was
never going to be able to be fixed. What

accompanied that was the clear sense that
the state had thought that they were

basically trash, worthless, and having
children was a very big focus in their

lives, it was something they had expected
to do, something that they wanted to do,

it would have made an enormous difference.
Numbers of them felt that their marriages

had been ruined, their husbands had left
or whatever, because they couldn't have

children, and I believe that's probably
true.

[Music playing]

[MARY DONALD]: I guess I stayed there
about 16 years. In 1958, I stayed over

there until 1958. And then when I married,
he come and got me out and married me. I

reckon that was the best part of my life.
And him and I got married, and I told him

all about my life, you know, I told him
how I'd been sterilized and couldn't have

no child. But at the time he said it
didn't make no difference if I could have

a child or not, he loved me like I was. So
we was married about, I guess 10 years, I

had 10 years of good marriage, and then he
decided he wanted to get divorced. I

figure me being sterilized and all that
was the cause of our marriage being broke

up like that. Cause he loves children and
all that. He loved kids. And I used to lay

in my bed and cry cause I couldn't give
him what he wanted, I wanted to give him a

son to bear his name, cause most men, they
want a son to bear his name. And I cried

and he said, "Don't worry about it, honey,
everything's gonna be alright." But then

as years go by, I don't know, he began to
change his mind. So he got divorced and

married somebody else. That's the end of
that story now.

[Music playing]

[NARRATOR]: The Virginia sterilization
program ended only in 1972. Despite the

best efforts of Judy Crockett and her
colleagues, the 8,300 victims were never

to receive justice. The court ordered a
final settlement in 1985.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: I have to admit that I
was disappointed. It was clear from early

on that the judge was not going to declare
something unconstitutional that the

Supreme Court had said earlier was okay.
What I most deeply would have wanted would

be a sincere apology from the governor on
the behalf of the state of Virginia. Most

of the people that we dealt with had
either had the sterilization or found out

about the sterilization long enough ago
that we could not have asked for any money

for them. What we did get was an
announcement on the radio and in the

papers, to people that if they had been
in institutions in these times and had an

operation, they should get in touch with
the state and the state did agree to

provide some sort of mental health
counseling. But they would never agree to

paying for reversal operations.

[NARRATOR]: Carrie Buck, sterilized
because of a Supreme Court decision in

1927, left Lynchburg, got married and
worked as a housekeeper. After the death

of her first husband, she married Charles
Ditmore. They returned to Charlottesville,

and were found living in abject poverty in
a house with no heat or running water.

Carrie was eventually taken to a nursing
home where in 1982, Paul Lombardo met her.

She had just played the role of the Virgin
Mary in a Christmas pageant. Carrie died a

few weeks later in January 1983. A handful
of people attended her funeral, which took

place on a cold, rainy day. Dr. Lombardo
was the only mourner who knew the drama

which had begun with Carrie's rape in
1923, and continued with her forced

sterilization in 1927. Dr. Lombardo
discovered two other gravestones in the

Charlottesville cemetery which relate to
Carrie's story. One belongs to the Dobbs

family, her foster parents whose nephew
had raped her and caused the birth of her

daughter, Vivian. After Carrie had been
taken away to Lynchburg, Vivian was

adopted by the Dobbs. Next to the Dobbs
monument is a tiny gravestone with a

legend, V. A. E. D., Vivian Alice Elaine
Dobbs, Carrie's daughter who died

tragically at the age of eight from an
intestinal disorder. Paul Lombardo learned

that Vivian attended the Venable School
in Charlottesville. He went there to look

for evidence of her alleged
feeble-mindedness.

[DR PAUL LOMBARDO]: I came here to the
Venable School, ultimately, and found the

report cards of Vivian, which demonstrated
to me what I had suspected all along.

There were no generations of imbeciles in
the Buck family, not three, not two, not

even one. Least of all Vivian who at one
point had even been on the honor role in

this very school.

[NARRATOR]: Carrie Buck's story has a
strange footnote. Dr. Harry Laughlin, the

man who testified against her, himself
became the kind of person he wanted to

sterilize. He developed severe epilepsy
and was dismissed by his employers, the

Eugenics Record Office. The work of the
Eugenics Record Office was discredited as

early as 1935 by a team of independent
scientists. They judged its methods and

records unsatisfactory for the study of
human genetics. The eugenicists wanted a

neat and orderly society with social
problems excised by the surgeon's knife.

In the case of Buck vs. Bell, they
presented false evidence to justify

compulsory sterilization. Throughout
America, they forced 70,000 people to

undergo unnecessary operations and robbed
them of the ability to have children.

[JUDY CROCKETT]: We don't have the wisdom
to make those decisions, we don't begin to

understand what makes a good person or
what makes a worthwhile person. We're so

caught up in our prejudices, in our
habits, and we could lose this beautiful

variety as this, this wonderful messiness
that we have in the world, and we could

get so terribly tidy. We could tidy away
all of our flaws and lose all of our

wonder, all of our excitement, all of
our unexpectedness.

[Music playing]

[NARRATOR]: Catch the best from
independent filmmakers tomorrow night

starting at 10:30 when Independent View
shows the latest film and video. It's

followed at eleven by two features about
crooks without a clue. Zoom in on

independent films tomorrow night at 10:30
on KQED, on the web at KQED.org.

[Music playing]