May 2, 1927, Buck v. Bell, Supreme Ct. Sterilization of Unfit; Eugenics, 1924 Immigration Law, Nazis

[appalachiablue]

- Carrie and Emma Buck.
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Buck v. Bell (1927) SUMMARY

In Buck v. Bell, decided on May 2, 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 8 to 1, affirmed the constitutionality of Virginia’s law allowing state-enforced sterilization. After being raised by foster parents and allegedly raped by their nephew, the appellant, Carrie Buck, was deemed feebleminded and promiscuous. In 1924, Buck was committed to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, near Lynchburg, and there ordered sterilized. The Virginia law allowing the procedure had been passed in 1924 and responded to 50 years of scholarly debate over whether certain social problems, including shiftlessness, poverty, and prostitution, were inherited and ultimately could be eliminated through selective sterilization.

Looking to test the law’s legality before engaging in widespread sterilization, the colony superintendent, Albert S. Priddy, made sure his order was appealed. The Amherst County Circuit Court and the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals both ruled in the colony’s favor, and in 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. In an infamous opinion, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. noted that Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter were all suspected of being feebleminded, declaring, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The opinion was never overturned and led to a marked increase in sterilizations across the United States.

At the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi defendants cited Buck v. Bell in their own defense. Virginia repealed the law in 1974 and in 2002 apologized to its victims. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/buck-v-bell-1927/
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- NPR: 'The Supreme Court Ruling That Led To 70,000 Forced Sterilizations,' March 24, *2017. -Ed.

In the early 20th century, American eugenicists used forced sterilization to "breed out" traits considered undesirable. Adam Cohen tells the story in his book 'Imbeciles.' One of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history, according to our guest journalist Adam Cohen, was the 1927 decision upholding a state's right to forcibly sterilize a person considered unfit to procreate - unfit because they were deemed to be mentally deficient. That decision is part of a larger chapter of American history in which the eugenics movement was behind preventing so-called mentally deficient people from procreating through not allowing them to marry, sterilizing them and segregating them in special colonies. The Nazis borrowed some ideas from American eugenicists. The eugenics movement also influenced the 1924 Immigration Act, which was designed in part to keep out Italians and Eastern European Jews.

The book, "Imbeciles" is about the eugenics movement in the early 20th century and the Supreme Court case legalizing sterilization. COHEN: They embraced the new genetics that was emerging in their era. And they believed that it could be used to perfect the human race. The word eugenics was actually coined by Francis Galton, who was a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, and it really derived a lot from Darwinian ideas. The eugenicists looked at evolution and survival of the fittest as Darwin was describing it. And they believed, we can help nature along if we just plan who reproduces and who doesn't reproduce. GROSS: And who was considered unworthy of reproducing? COHEN: Well, at the beginning, Galton looked at geniuses throughout history and looked to see if genius was genetic within families. And he believed that it was. But overtime, eugenics expanded quite a bit.

And by the time it got to America, there were all kinds of categories of people who were deemed to be unfit, including people who were deaf, blind, diseased, poor was a big category, indolent. So it was really in the eye of the beholder. People looked around, and they saw human qualities they didn't like, and they thought, we can really breed these out. GROSS: And you left out feebleminded. What did feebleminded mean? COHEN: Yes, feebleminded was really the craze in American eugenics. There was this idea that we were being drowned in a tide of feeblemindedness, that basically unintelligent people were taking over, reproducing more quickly than the intelligent people. But it was also a very malleable term that was used to define large categories of people that, again, were disliked by someone who was in the decision-making position. So women who were thought to be overly interested in sex - licentious - sometimes deemed feebleminded. It was a broad category. And it was very hard to prove at one of these feeblemindedness hearings that you were not feebleminded.

GROSS: The Nazis actually borrowed from the U.S. eugenics sterilization program. What did the Nazis take from us? COHEN: We really were on the cutting edge, doing a lot of this in the 1910s and 1920s. Indiana adopted a eugenic sterilization law - America's 1st - in 1907. We were writing the eugenics sterilization statutes that decided who should be sterilized. People were writing a lot of what might be thought of as pro-Arian theories. Madison Grant wrote a very popular book called "The Passing Of The Great Race," which talked about the superiority of Nordics, as he called them, & how they were endangered by all the brown people & the non-Nordics who were taking over. A lot of those ideas were really precursors to Nazism. And also, people forget now, but there was some strong pro-Nazi sentiment in the US before World War II. In New York, there were pro-Nazi rallies. In some intellectual circles it was not uncommon to find people who actually espoused Nazism. Harry Laughlin ran the Eugenics Record Office on Long Island, grew up in Missouri, was a one-time agriculture professor and pro-Nazi. He corresponded with Nazi scientists. He wrote with pride in his eugenic journal that the Nazis were looking to his model statute and American eugenics to plan their racial program...

- Read More, https://www.npr.org/2017/03/24/521360544/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations
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Also: - NPR, 'Imbeciles' Explores Legacy Of Eugenics In America, 2016,
https://www.npr.org/2016/02/26/468297940/imbeciles-explores-legacy-of-eugenics-in-america

https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/buck-v-bell-1927/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Buck



- Schonbrunn Psychiatric Hospital, 1934.

- The Nazi program for involuntary euthanasia, Aktion T4. The murder of thousands of disabled and psychiatric patients.

Aktion T4 was the name for the mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany's eugenics program based on "mercy killing" and mandatory sterilization. The program started in October 1939 on the orders of Adolf Hitler. The office that had to implement this Sonderprogram worked under the leadership of Philipp Bouhler a German senior Nazi Party functionary who was both a Reichsleiter (National Leader) and Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP. He was also the SS official responsible for the Aktion T4 euthanasia program that killed more than 250.000 disabled adults and children in Nazi Germany, as well as co-initiator of Aktion 14f13, also called "Sonderbehandlung" ('special treatment') that killed between 15.000 - 20.000 concentration camp prisoners.

Also appointed as an organiser was Karl Brandt Hitler's personal physician. Trained in surgery, Brandt joined the Nazi Party in 1932. A member of Hitler's inner circle at the Berghof, he was selected by Philipp Bouhler, the head of Hitler's Chancellery, to administer the Aktion T4 euthanasia program. Brandt was later appointed the Reich Commissioner of Sanitation and Health (Bevollmächtigter für das Sanitäts- und Gesundheitswesen). Accused of involvement in human experimentation and other war crimes, Brandt was indicted in late 1946 and faced trial before a US military tribunal along with 22 others in United States of America v. Karl Brandt. He was convicted, sentenced to death and later hanged on 2 June 1948...https://www.normandy1944.info/aktion-t4-or-the-euthanasia-of-disabled-people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4