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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Nia Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
Nia Rodgers: I'm feeling like I want to start a new series, because we don't do enough of those in this podcast. We have all kinds of series. Can he do that? We have in the news. Then we do miniseries within series, and then in the summers, we do Summer Scars. But we decided that at the suggestion of one of your rather bright students, I think, you have some really intelligent students.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, I do.
Nia Rodgers: Brought this up and said, who is the person behind this name? It got us thinking. That's actually a good question about a lot of people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Whose names are associated with government and politics and government documents and court cases and so on.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, Nia and I receive with some regularity, emails from loyal listeners. This is one of those times where as Nia pointed out, one of my current students, Devin Rich, she had taken class with me, and one of her roommates are loyal listeners to the podcast and it's always heartening to hear.
Nia Rodgers: It's nice to hear that people listen because they want to, not because they're forced to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not be they're forced to. When we started off this endeavor, we didn't know if we would develop a loyal listenership. It's happened. It's really rewarding and we get suggestions. We try to remember to acknowledge the listener who's made the suggestion. This is one of those times.
Nia Rodgers: I think this is a really good idea. Thank you, Devin. It's a really good idea. We really appreciate.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a good reminder, folks that though this podcast originated with a focus on government documents and processes, so much of politics and governing is about people. People who tried to make a difference. In some instances, people who were wronged, who inadvertently played an important role because let's face it, some of the court cases and corruption scandals, etc. These weren't people who were like I hope I become a big name.
Nia Rodgers: Infamous for this.
J. Aughenbaugh: But they played an important role in the governing and political life of this country. To Devin's credit, she reminds us that there are people behind these documents and processes and leading us off is Devin's suggestion. This individual is Carrie Buck. In the infamous Buck V Bell Supreme Court decision from 1927. Rather quickly, because the purpose of these episodes in the series is that we're going to try to keep these short, which is difficult for Nia and I because once we start talking, we're like what about this. Key details about Carrie Buck and the case. First of all, at the age of 18, she was committed to a Virginia mental health institution after she became pregnant as the result of a rape by her foster parents nephew. Her foster family then had her committed to a state institution. What they said in court documents was to protect the family's reputation. It wasn't about Carrie Buck. We're trying to go ahead and make her life better. They wanted to protect the family's reputation. Both Buck's biological mother, Emma, and then eventually her daughter, Vivian, all three of them were classified by the state institution as feeble minded. This is a diagnosis that could include perceived sexual behavior and social status and not whether or not their IQ was considered low.
Nia Rodgers: Feeble minded was a broad term that got thrown around and used in order to get the outcome that somebody wanted.
J. Aughenbaugh: Wanted. That's right.
Nia Rodgers: If a man wanted to be rid of his wife because he wanted to marry another woman, he could declare her feeble minded and have her put away.
J. Aughenbaugh: Get a divorce. That's right.
Nia Rodgers: Get a divorce and then move on to a younger mom without costing him his corvette or his house in the Hamptons.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. The case itself, Virginia state officials chose Carrie Buck as the subject of a test case. They wanted the federal courts to determine if the state's 1924 eugenical Sterilization Act was or was not constitutional. Unfortunately, for Carrie Buck, her court appointed lawyer was also an advocate for eugenics and effectively worked with state government officials against her best interests.
Nia Rodgers: In Buck's time in the 1920s, this was the rage in the United States, was eugenics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: We can make better humans. This is how the Nazis rise out with their Arian perfection crap that they came up with. You have to be this and this and this.
J. Aughenbaugh: The final solution in regards to Jewish problem.
Nia Rodgers: You get all of that comes out of eugenics. Eugenics was the thing. People would go and be tested at state fairs to see how pure they were and they were tall enough and they were broad enough and their eyes were shaped properly and all this weird stuff. That all is happening in the United States, as well as the world. That's the milieu in which she is living.
J. Aughenbaugh: To be clear, was it just happening in the United States? No. Did the United States, in particular, nearly four fifths of all states in this country pass similar eugenics laws? Yes. This was the epitome of progressive public policy in the early 20th century in the United States.
Nia Rodgers: What we're going to do is breed out criminals. We're going to breed out less intelligent.
J. Aughenbaugh: Drug addicts.
Nia Rodgers: Just won't be allowed to have children, and therefore, none of that will be genetically passed on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and this is all based on agricultural science. This is the logic behind so much of livestock breeding. You get the best genes and traits for your livestock by breeding out negative traits, negative genes. This was considered state of the art science in the early 20th century. Case goes to the Supreme Court. The court in an 8-1 decision ruled that the Virginia law was constitutional. It wasn't even a close vote. The majority opinion was written by who scholars. Then in today argue is one of the most progressive, certainly the leading progressive Supreme Court justice of that time all over Wendell Homes. Holding that the Virginia law was constitutional. This case is also known for a quote near the end of the opinion. Home stated three generations of imbeciles are enough. He basically went ahead and argued that Virginia, per its police power could go ahead and regulate, and in the case of Carrie Buck, sterilize her for the greater public health and safety purposes it had in mind when it wrote this law.
Nia Rodgers: This was decided while Vivian was still an infant.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
Nia Rodgers: They had no idea whether Vivian was feeple minded or not.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: They couldn't know that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: She was an infant.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the aftermath of the case, Carrie Buck was sterilized in October of 1927. Shortly thereafter, she was released from the institution. She married twice. She was widowed after nine years with one husband, 40 years her senior and her second marriage until her death. She did not die until 1983.
Nia Rodgers: Ernest. It's good to point out that even though Carrie Buck may have been a little wild in her youth, and the rape was not her fault. Nobody's suggesting that it, but after she was raped. There are questions about whether she then engaged in sexual behavior because at that point she was no longer virgin. There was no longer any reason.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's one of the things about sterilization programs. If the progressives didn't want women to be promiscuous. Well, if you sterilize them, then they don't have to necessarily worry about getting what?
Nia Rodgers: Promiscuity.
J. Aughenbaugh: Getting pregnancy. That's right. Which scholarship.
Nia Rodgers: There's no reason to believe she had affairs during her marriage. There's no reason to believe she was wild once she got married.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, subsequent research revealed that neither Carrie Buck nor her daughter Vivian, were actually intellectually disabled. Vivian, in fact, was an honor roll student in elementary school before she suffered a premature death at the age of eight.
Nia Rodgers: Carrie if she had any problems in school, in part was because she was bounced around the foster system.
J. Aughenbaugh: System. Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Now, her mom was a little wild. Her mom was bounced around from man to man and lots of stuff and whatever. Back in the day, that would have been seen as promiscuous and one of those women. It caused Carrie to be in the foster system, which is how she comes to be raped by the nephews of her foster family.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: The whole thing is just extremely, extremely unfortunate for Carrie because Carrie is treated inhumanly I think.
J. Aughenbaugh: Just terribly. The attitudes about women. The attitudes about sexual behavior.
Nia Rodgers: Getting a lawyer who is clearly not interested in your case.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Buck v. Bell decision led to the forced sterilization, and I saw a number of numbers. The one that most scholars can agree to was that at least 60,000 Americans were forced to be sterilized under similar state laws.
Nia Rodgers: This was not overturned until 1942.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: This held for 20 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, 15 years. Think about that, folks, in 15 years.
Nia Rodgers: They sterilized 60,000 Americans. We didn't have that many Americans at that time period. We have a lot more Americans now than we had then.
J. Aughenbaugh: As Nia pointed out, listeners from this particular case and this particular movement at the time is what led to what Nazi Germany did. The problem with the United States is they didn't go far enough.
Nia Rodgers: They quit before they finished.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Because in the United States, it allowed for forced sterilization. The Nazis were like if you really want to make sure that these genetic traits don't get passed on, you kill them. You killed them.
Nia Rodgers: Hundred and twenty two million. With our population in 1930, 60,000.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's all. But the last postscript to this horrific Supreme Court case is finally in 2002, the Commonwealth of Virginia officially apologized for its eugenics program. Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Well after Carrie death.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nearly 20 years after her death. Not when she was alive, 20 years after her death.
Nia Rodgers: Although when she was alive, and this is a great thing for us to end on with Carrie Buck, Carrie Buck talked to reporters. Like, she talked to people who found her and she told them. She didn't try to hide away and be like, I don't want to be involved in anything. She was like, no, this is what happened. She wanted people to know what happened and what really went down in her life. Wrongly accused by basically a fervent thing at the time that was going on. We can make the world this engineered place. Part of that comes out of the idea of like you were talking about, a huge amount of it comes out of the agricultural engineering. But now we know that when you do enough of that, you mess up the animals.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Because they lose other qualities that they need to have. They lose their immune systems or they lose all these other things. We didn't know what we were doing. We were just mucking around with science trying.
J. Aughenbaugh: Survivability. Which is an essential trait for any species, can be impacted when you use science to remove what you think are bad genetic traits.
Nia Rodgers: It turns out you actually need that thing every once in a while. You don't have it.
J. Aughenbaugh: That does not allow you to overcome adversity or a negative, if you will, environment. Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Kudos to Carrie Buck for holding on to two marriages and for continuing to live out her life. I think one of your notes said she was very sad about not being able to have any more children.
J. Aughenbaugh: More children. Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Depriving somebody of that. That's a big step for the Supreme Court to take and that was clearly wrong.
J. Aughenbaugh: They rather blase dismissive three generations are enough. I'm sorry. It was just one sentence in an opinion. But that careless thought. That resonates. I'm sorry. It just resonates.
Nia Rodgers: Still today. Thank you, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you. Again, once more, the proverbial hat tip to Devin Rich for the suggestion. Both Nia and I were very pleased to receive this suggestion, and this is the beginning of a series. Thank you.