It was 1924, the State of Virginia had just passed the sterilization act; which allowed the government to sterilize anyone who was declared feebleminded, an imbecile, or epileptic. However, the government was allowed to do this against that person’s will, because they were supposedly ‘unworthy’ to live a normal life. If you were one of the approximately 7,200 to 8,300 people that were sterilized in Virginia under the new state legislature, you would have undergone a series of faulty tests and examinations to determine if you were intelligent enough to raise a family. The first victim of this horrific law was a girl named Carrie Buck, whose life and story need to be shared and learned from.

Carrie Buck was born to a single mother, Emma Adeline Buck. On account of financial misfortunes, a lack of education, and her late husband’s death, Emma was homeless and helpless. At this time, child welfare and child safety organizations were starting, and with this came the not-so-well-developed foster system. The officer of the peace at the time, John Dobbs, “had come across the Buck family in his travels around town and concluded that Emma was not caring for her children well enough”(Cohen, 20). With approval from the municipal court, John and his wife Alice Dobbs took Carrie from her family to join their daughter in a life that was supposed to be better.

Unfortunately for Carrie, while she was now living in perhaps a cleaner house, and in perhaps a better neighborhood, her life was miserable. Unlike what the Dobbs’ often liked to say, they did not bring Carrie in out of the goodness of their hearts. If they did, she would have had a marvelous life, just like their daughter. Instead, Carrie was practically a slave, working around the house constantly and not having the loving family she deserved. Additionally “Carrie called her foster parents by their last names, as a servant girl would -never “Mother” and “Father”.”(Cohen, 21)  In the beginning of her stay with the Dobbses, she was allowed to attend grade school, and was a good student- she got good grades and rarely got into trouble. However, the Dobses decided that her teachings would be over, so she could clean their house and other neighbors’ houses for pay.

As if Carrie’s life was not already one full of struggles and torment, when she was thirteen years old, Carrie’s mother, Emma “ was deemed “feebleminded” and “sexually promiscuous,” and involuntarily institutionalized at the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in Lynchburg, Virginia.”(PsychCentral) However, these claims were not fully warranted because at the time their intelligence testing system was very faulty; the creators of the test spent little time thinking of what questions to ask the patient and in what order. As if Carrie’s guardian angel flew away, at the age of seventeen, the Dobbses claimed that she was just like her mother and wanted her removed from their household.

The Dobbses told the social worker that Carrie is just like her mother, that she is epileptic, and that she got herself pregnant while they were away from the house for a few days. None of this is true, however, just a really good cover-up from the dark side of Carrie’s life. For example, “According to Carrie, the pregnancy that Alices Dobbs had blamed on Carrie’s not being trustworthy had actually been the result of rape.”(Cohen, 24) What was worse is that Carrie’s attacker was Alice Dobbs’ nephew, Clearance. The Dobbs feared that if Carrie told anybody, their position in society would be ruined, and thought it best to remove Carrie completely from their lives.

Carrie then had a court hearing to determine if she needed to go into an asylum. Because Carrie’s mother was locked away, and her paternal father was dead, and she had no right to a lawyer, and she inevitably lost the case. The judge then declared her both feebleminded and epileptic. Carrie was referenced to the same asylum that her mother was staying in. Unfortunately for the Dobbses, the court proceedings were conducted when Carrie was eight months pregnant, she was moved to a temporary home until she gave birth to her daughter Vivian.  After this, Carrie was sent to the Asylum where she remained for three years and was sterilized and released back into the real world. Unfortunately for Carrie, her little girl died at the age of eight from measles and because of the Virginia state law, was no longer able to reproduce or make a family.

The history of sterilization in America is one of tragedy and one of sorrow. Due to faulty scientists and unfortunate circumstances, many women who were neither feebleminded nor epileptic were sterilized. The first of these women in Virginia was Carrie Buck, a woman who was unwillingly pregnant, and then she was unwillingly sterilized because she was pregnant. Carrie Buck’s story and life need to be remembered, and justice needs to be served, the one who should have been sterilized was Clarence Dobbs, not innocent Carrie Buck.

Works Cited:

Cohen, Adam. Imbeciles ; The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. New York, Penguin Press, 2016.

Margarita Tartakovsky. “Eugenics & The Story of Carrie Buck”. Psych Central, 2018.

psychcentral.com/blog/eugenics-the-story-of-carrie-buck/