Buck v Bell
Aubrey E. Strode drafted the 1924 sterilization law and acted as legal counsel to the Board of Directors of the Virginia State Colony. He was paid $750 to represent the Board in each of the appeals of Carrie Buck's case.
Mrs. John Dobbs was the foster mother of Vivian Buck, Carrie's daughter. To demonstrate that the infant was an imbecile, like her mother and grandmother, Mrs. Dobbs waved a coin in front of Vivian's face and determined that the infant could not follow the coin with her eyes. This photo was used as evidence of her imbecility.
Dr. A.S. Priddy, the superintendent of the Virginia Colony, assigned Irving Whitehead, a former member of the colony's board, to be Carrie Buck's defense lawyer. Priddy died before the appeals in the case were heard, and John Bell succeeded him.
John Hendren Bell worked as a physician in Augusta and joined the staff of the Virginia State Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded in 1917, becoming its superintendent in 1925. An advocate of eugenic sterilization to prevent the spread of traits deemed defective and hereditary, Bell performed the operation on Carrie Buck.
These buildings at the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded were the site of Carrie Buck's 1927 sterilization. Afterward, she was released from the colony. She married twice, and family and friends later denied the accuracy of her diagnosis.
Because characteristics such as feeble-mindedness and sexual immorality were thought to be hereditary, the Virginia Colony often used pedigrees to determine whether a person was a good candidate for sterilization.
In 1924 the General Assembly attempted to improve social welfare by granting mental institutions the means to prevent people considered “feeble-minded” or having inherited diseases or conditions from having children. In 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell agreed that the state could require sterilization of people it deemed socially unfit. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the court that the state had a right to “prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” Referring to Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter, Holmes went on to state that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
That was the law. Was it justice?
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Buck v. Bell