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Southern Strategies for Handling the Black Feeble-minded: From Social Control to Profound Indifference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Steven Noll
Steven Noll
Affiliation:
Univeristy of Florida
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Extract

In 1927, the biennial report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections of the Commonwealth of Kentucky warned that “the feeble-minded of the colored race present a greater menace than do the white.…We do desire to point out the utter lack of any provision for colored feeble-minded.” In spite of this admonition, southern states took little notice of their black feebleminded population. Nineteen years after the Kentucky report, the South Carolina Director of Public Welfare admitted that “the care of mentally deficient and mentally ill persons in the same institution is distinctly undesirable, but…the Hospital's efforts to secure provision of a separate training school for mentally deficient negroes have to date been unsuccessful.”

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , April 1991 , pp. 130 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1991

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References

Notes

1. 1925–1927 Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, 52. Feeblemindedness is a condition roughly analogous to the 1990 category of mental handicap or mental retardation. The definition of feeblemindedness could be quite vague, allowing for many different interpretations of the handicap, which often led to institutions serving a population of miscellaneous deviants instead of a rigorously defined group of feebleminded individuals. For the effect of this phenomenon of southern institutions, see Steven Noll, “‘From Far More Different Angles’: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900–1940,” Perspectives on the American South(forthcoming).

2. Arthur Rivers to Dr. Ralph Hinton, Director, Division of Psychiatric and Psychological Services, State of North Carolina, 23 September 1946. State Board of Public Welfare Records, Psychological Services Records, Box 247, Negro Feeble-Minded Folder, North Carolina Archives, Old Records Center, Raleigh.

3. The ten southern states are Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. These states are designated as southern in Howard Odum's seminal 1936 work Southern Regions (Chapel Hill)(see Table 1 below). The twelve institutions housed 6,110 individuals in 1939. This

compared with the 68,103 who resided in the South's twenty public institutions for the mentally ill. (Patients in Mental Institutions, 1939 [U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1943], 12, 252). The terms “feebleminded,” “mentally defective,” and “mentally deficient” were used by physicians, mental health professionals, and social workers to categorize individuals who today would be labeled as mentally handicapped or mentally retarded.

4. First Annual Report of the Petersburg State Colony for the Fiscal Year ending June 30,1939, 5.

5. Fredrickson, George, The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality (Middletown, Conn., 1988), 174.Google Scholar See also Williamson, Joel, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emanicpation (New York, 1984). passim.Google Scholar

6. C. Banks McNairy, “An Appeal to the Appropriations Committee of 1915 for the North Carolina School for the Feeble-Minded, Raleigh, February 12, 1915,” 3, North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Ira Hardy, “Schools for the Feeble-Minded: The State's Best Insurance Policy—A Speech read before the Southern Medical Association, Jacksonville, Florida, November 14, 1912,” 5, North Carolina Collection. For another example of the paternal attitudes toward feebleminded residents of institutions, see the Annual Report of the South Carolina State Training School for the Feeble-Minded, 1920. The report concluded that “the Inmates of this Institution are commonly referred to as ‘children’ regardless of their ages. This term is used both to enable us to avoid the use of the term ‘inmate’ and also to seve as a reminder that our charges are entitled to the tactful and affectionate treatment that all young children require” 6–7), South Carolina State Archives, Columbia.

Ira Hardy, “Prevention of Pauperism, Imbecility, and Crime: The Paramount Duty of the State—A Speech read before the Tri-State Medical Society, February 22, 1912,” 1–2, North Carolina Collection.

8. See Gerald Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New York,19730, Mental Illness and American Society, 1875–1940 (Princeton, 1983)Google Scholar, and “Abuse in American Mental Hospitals in Historical Perspective: Myth and Reality,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 3 (1980): 295–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and McGovern, Constance, “The Myth of Social Control and Custodial Oppression: Patterns of Psychiatric Medicine in Late Nineteenth Century Institutions,” Journal of Social History 20 (1986): 3–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for representative examples of the “humanitarian” side of the dispute. For the social-control argument, see Rothman, David, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic(Boston, 1971)Google Scholar, Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America (Boston, 1980)Google Scholar, and “The State as Parent: Social Policy in the Progressive Era,” in Gaylin, Willard, Glasser, Ira, Marcus, Steven, and Rothman, David, Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, and Scull, Andrew, “Humanitarianism or Control? Some Observations on the Historiography of Anglo-American Psychiatry,” in Cohen, Stanley and Scull, Andrew, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983)Google Scholar, and Social Order/Mental Disorder: Anglo-American Psychiatry in Historical Perspective (Berkeley, 1989).Google Scholar For a voluminous overview of the field, see Dwyer, Ellen, “The History of the Asylum in Great Britain and the United States,” in Weisstub, David, ed., Law and Mental Health: International Perspectives, vol. 4 (New York, 1988), 110–60.Google Scholar

9. Farber, Bernard, Menatl Retardation: Its Social Context and Social Consequences (Boston,1968).Google Scholar Farber dichotomizes the labeling of persons as mentally retarded as either deviant or incompetent. Those labeled as deviant are “a threat to established social relations”by a “motivation … antithetical to cultural norms” (23, 24). These persons are usually higher-level retarded individuals, labeled as “morons” in the nomenclature of the first forty-five years of the twentieth century. These persons were placed in the retardation system to protect society. Conversely, those labeled as incompetent are nonthreatening and “cannot attain the level of conduct necessary” for participation in society (23). Furthermore, incompetent individuals are unable, not unwilling, to conform to societal norms. These persons, labeled “idiots” in the nomenclature of the early twentieth century, were placed in the retardation system for their own protection. By attempting to handle both types of retardation in one institution, southern reformers could not help either group. For more on the deviancy-incompetency argument, see Farber, 23–42 and 260–63.

10. Zwelling, Shomer, Quest for a Cure: The Public Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1773–1885 (Williamsburg, 1985), 48, 54Google Scholar; Dain, Norman, Disordered Minds: The First Century of Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1766–1866 (Williamsburg, 1971), 19, 109–13Google Scholar; Cahow, Clark, People, Patients, and People: The History of the North Carolina Mental Hospitals, 1848–1950 (New York, 1980), 34Google Scholar; and Thielman, Samuel, “Southern Madness: the Shape of Mental Health Care in the Old South,” in Numbers, Ronald and Savitt, Todd, eds., Science and Medicine in the Old South (Baton Rouge, 1989), 273–74.Google Scholar

11. Dr. James King Hall to Haskins Hobson, 31 January 1936, James King Hall Papers, Box 20, Folder 234, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

12. The literature on the Progressive Era is incredibly rich. See especially Wiebe, Robert, Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar, and Daniel Rodgers's suggestive “In Search of Progressivism,” in Katz, Stanley and Kutler, Stanley, eds., The Promise of American History: Progress and Prospects (Baltimore, 1982), 113–32.Google Scholar For two excellent case studies of this progressive impulse in action in the South, see Ettling, John, The Germ of Laziness: Rockefeller Philanthropy and Public Health in the New South (Cambridge, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jones, James, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New York, 1981).Google Scholar

13. Funkhouser, Dr. W. L., “Human Rubbish,” Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia 26:5 (May 1937): 197–99.Google Scholar

14. “Mental Defectives in Virginia—A Special Report of the State Board of Charities and Correction to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1916,” 20.

15. Whitten, Dr. Benjamin, “Presidential Address to the American Association on Mental Deficiency, May, 1937,” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 42 (1936–1937): 36.Google Scholar The Progressive coalititon in the South, too loosely organized and composed of too many disparate groups to be called a movement, often simultaneously proposed social and political reforms while establishing a legalized caste system based upon race. See Kirby, Jack, Darkness at the Dawning: Race and Reform in the Progressive South (Philadelphia, 1972)Google Scholar, passim, and Kousser, J. Morgan, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Sufrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880–1910 (New Haven, 1974), passim, for the fullest expression of this.Google Scholar See also Grantham, Dewey, Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation of Progress and Tradition (Knoxville, Tenn., 1983), 112–59Google Scholar; Woodward, C. Vann, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913, (Baton Rough, 1951), 321–95Google Scholar; and Tindall, George, The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945 (Baton Rouge, 1967), 1–32.Google Scholar

16. Dr. C. Banks McNairy, “An Appeal to the Appropriations Committee,” 1–2, North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and idem, “Cause and Prevention of Feeble-Mindedness—A Speech read before the Tri-State Medical Association of the Carolinas and Virginia, February 19, 1915,” 26, North Carolina Collection. McNairy served as superintendent of North Carolina's School for the Feeble-Minded (renamed Caswell Training School in 1915) from 1914 to 1924.

17. McCulloch, James, ed., The Call of the New South: Addresses Delivered at the Southern Sociological Congress, Nashville, Tennessee, May 7–10, 1912 (Nashville, 1912), 8.Google Scholar For more on the Southern Sociological Congress and its role in southern social change, see The Call of the New South and the other five published volumes of congress addresses, as well as Chatfield, E.Charles, “The Southern Sociological Congress: Organization of Uplift,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 19 (December 1960): 328–47Google Scholar, and “The Southern Sociological Congress: Rationale of Uplift,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 20 (March 1961): 51–54. See also Dewey Grantham, Southern Progressivism, 374–85, and C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 423–24.Google Scholar

18. C. Banks McNairy, “Eugenics—A Speech read at the Onslow County Medical Society, Jacksonville, North Carolina, January 21, 1916,” 11. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. For more on the needs-rights dichotomy, see David Rothman's suggestive “The State as Parent: Social Policy in the Progressive Era,” in Gaylin, Willard, Glasser, Ira, Marcus, Steven, and Rothman, David, Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence (New York, 1981), 69–96.Google Scholar

19. Report of the South Carolina State Board of Public Welfare, 1920, South Carolina State Archives, Columbia, 24. Also see “Georgia's Progress in Social Welfare—Report of 6th and 7th Years Work, 1925–1926” for another enthusiastic report on the beginnings of a state institution for the feeble-minded, Record Group 24, Subgroup 1, Series 6, Box 1, Georgia State Archives, Atlanta.

20. J. R. Baggett to Daisy Denson, 9 September 1913, State Board of Public Welfare Records, Commissioner's Office Records, Box 1, North Carolina State Archives, Old Records Center, Raleigh.

21. Dr. Grace Kent to her parents, 19 September 1920, in Whitten, Dr. Benjamin, A History of Whitten Village (Clinton, S.C., 1967).Google Scholar Whitten, superintendent of the school from its opening in 1920 until 1965, included a series of unedited letters from Kent to her parents in this book. They provide a unique picture of life at the institution in 1920–21. See also Annual Report of the South Carolina State Training School for the Feeble-Minded,1922, 3. The report declared that “without appropriations, we continue to forego the choice of operating a modern institution for the care and training of mental defectives.”

22. Gainesville Sun, 19 December 1921, 3.

23. Special Survey of Florida Farm Colony, 5 May 1945, Chaired by Ellen Whiteside, Vault Files, Gainesville Sunland Center. Florida Farm Colony was renamed Sunland Center in 1957. North Carolina's experience seemed to be similar. In 1936, a massive study of the state's mental health programming recommended sixteen provisions for the improvement of efforts in mental health care. Improved care and treatment of the black feebleminded population (then housed in overcrowded quarters often not segregated from insane patients) at the State Hospital of the Black Insane in Goldsboro was not even mentioned as a recommendation. See A Study of Mental Health in North Carolina: A Report to the North Carolina Legislature of the Governor's Commission Appointed to Study the Care of the Insane and Mental Defectives (Ann Arbor, 1937)Google Scholar, and Lewis, Nell Battle, “Detailed Survey Completed of Mental Health Problems,” Raleigh News and Observer, 7 February 1937, 1.Google Scholar

24 Eleventh Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Florida Farm Colony 1939–1941, Vault files, Gainesville Sunland Center.

25. These commitment applications were found in Superintendent's Correspondence, Vault files, Gainesville Sunland Center. Since the files were by no means complete, a distinct possibility remains that more black individuals could have been committed.

26. Dell, J. Maxey to Hennessee, Edna, 6 October 1939, Superintendent's Correspondence, Vault files, Gainesville Sunland Center.Google Scholar

27. Application form of 17 September 1937; Dell reply of 25 September 1937, Superintendent's Correspondence, Vault files, Gainesville Sunland Center.

28. R. L. Turner to Dell, 4 March 1938; Dell reply, 9 March 1938, Superintendent's Correspondence, Vault files, Gainesville Sunland Center.

29. Application of 11 February 1938; Dell's reply of 14 February 1938, Superintendent's Correspondence, Vault files, Gainesville Sunland Center. Dell's responses appeared typical of the superintendents of the Colony. In 1935, the previous superintendent, Dr. J. H.Colson, answered an application for a black patient this way: “I regret to advise that we have no provisions for the care of colored patients at the Colony.” Colson to E. C. Bogue, 16 April 1935, Superintendent's Correspondence, Vault files, Gainesville Sunland Center.

30. Dr. Ira Hardy, “Prevention of Pauperism, Imbecility, and Crime,” North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

31. Twentieth Biennial Report of the Florida Hospital for the Insane, 1915–1916, 7.

32. Feeble-Minded and Epileptic in Institutions 1923 (Washington, D.C., 1926), 37Google Scholar; Patients in Mental Institutions 1939 Washington D.C., 1943), 18, 265.Google Scholar In 1939, 133,852 feebleminded individuals were institutionalized in both institutions for the mentally retarded and mental hospitals.

33. Superintendent's Recommendations, Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Caswell Training School, 1920, Caswell Center Archives, Kinston, North Carolina.

34. Report of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Caswell Training School, Minutes of the Board of Directors, 9 December 1919, 201, Caswell Center Archives;Special Meeting of the board of Directors of Caswell Training School, Minutes of the Board, 5 March 1924, 339–40, Caswell Center Archives.

35. “Brief History of the Care of the Underprivileged Child in North Carolina,” Special Bulletin #13, issued by the North Carolina State Board of Public Welfare, 24; Orchid Wilson to W. A. Blair, Chairman of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, 19 September 1943, State Board of Public Welfare Records, Social Services Department, Box 6, Negro Feeble-Minded Study Folder, North Carolina State Archives, Old Records Center, Raliegh.

36. Linville, W. C. to MrsBost, W. T., North Carolina Commissioner of Public Welfare, 15 January 1935Google Scholar, State Board of Public Welfare Records, Psychological Services Records, Box 247, Committee on Feeble-Mindedness Folder, North Carolina State Archives, Old Records Center, Raleigh; Sanders, Wiley Britton, Negro Child Welfare in North Carolina—A Rosenwald Fund Study, published for the North Carolina State Board of Charities and Public Welfare (Chapel Hill, 1933), 149.Google Scholar See also Biennial Report of Goldsboro State Hospital, 1932–1934, 38. The report found that “there is a constant increase in the number of applications for mental deficient patients, many of whom are idiotic. They no doubt, are a burden to the family at home and at times a nuisance in the neighborhood. We will haveto admit as few of this class as possible on account of the room.”

37. Winston, Ellen, “Facilities are Needed to Care for 900 Feeble-Minded Children in North Carolina,” Public Welfare News 7:8 (September 1945): 37.Google Scholar

38. Arthur Rivers to Dr. Ralph Hinton, 23 September 1946.

39. Denson, Daisy, “Comments,” 1896 Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (Boston, 1896), 459Google Scholar; Small, Reverend Samuel, “Comments,” 1903 Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (Indianapolis, 1903), 541, 540.Google Scholar For comprehensive examinations of provisions made for black insane persons at different times, see Babcock, J. W., “The Colored Insane,” 1895 Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (Boston, 1895), 164–86Google Scholar, and Smith, Alan, “The Availability of Facilities for Negroes Suffering from Mental and Nervous Diseases,” The Journal of Negro Education 6 (1937): 450–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For more on the use of black insanity rates to rationalize slavery, see Samuel Thielman, “Southern Madness,” 274, and Deutsch, Albert, “The First U.S. Census of the Insane (1840) and Its Use as Pro-Slavery Propaganda,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 15 (1944): 369–82.Google Scholar

40. Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1925–1927, 52; 1921–1923, 16.

41. Biennial Report of the Georgia State Department of Public Welfare, 1927–1928, 81; Report of the Georgia State Department of Public Welfare for the Years 1929, 1930, 1931, 36, Georgia State Archives, R.G. 24, Subgroup 1, Series 6, Atlanta. Georgia's funding, or lack of it, for white feebleminded children was problematic as well. See Biennial Report, 1927–1928, 82.

42. Benjamin Whitten, Presidential Address, 37, 39.

43. Population figures for Central State Hospital from 165th Annual Report of the Virginia State Hospital Board for the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 1938, 5; 47th Annual Report of the Central State Hospital, 1917, 16. See also James, Arthur, Virginia's Social Awakening: The Contribution of Dr. Mastin and the Board of Charities and Corrections (Richmond, 1939), 167–68.Google Scholar

44. Forty-Seventh Annual Report of the Central State Hospital, 17. For an almost identical quote concerning the white feebleminded population of the Lynchburg State Colony, see Second Annual Report of the Feeble-Minded Colony, 1915, 15. “The burden of feeblemindedness is felt by the entire public,” the report concluded, “and every intelligent person who considers the subject realizes that this blight on mankind is increasing at a rapid rate.”

45. Fifty-Second–Fifty-Third Annual Report of the Central State Hospital, 1922–1923, 19; Sixty-fifth Annual Report of the Central State Hospital, 1934–1935, 23. See also Minutes of the Virginia Board of Public Welfare, 20 February 1936, 238, Record Group 42, Virginia State Archives, Richmond.

46. Sixty-sixth Annual Report of the Central State Hospital, 1935–1936, 23; First Annual Report of the Petersburg State Colony, 1939, 5; “Laws of Virginia Relating to Mental Hygiene and Hospitals—Issued by Department of Mental Hygiene and Hospitals” (Charlottesville, 1944), Section 1092, 26.Google Scholar See also “Child Welfare Notes,” The Survey 74:3 (March 1938): 84.Google Scholar

47. 166th Annual Report of the Virginia State Hospital Board for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1939, 41; First Annual Report of the Petersburg State Colony, 1939, 6. For the similarities between vocational education at the colony and black vocational education generally in the South, see Anderson, James, “The Historical Development of Black Vocational Education,” in Kantor, Harvey and Tyack, David, eds., Work, Youth, and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on Vocationalism in American Education (Stanford, 1982), 180–222Google Scholar; idem, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill, 1988), esp. 186–237Google Scholar; and McMillen, Neil, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana, 1989), 90–93.Google Scholar For more on the similarities between vocational training in institutions in the North and South, see the writings of Charles Bernstein, superintendent of New York's Rome State School from the 1910s to the 1930s. Bernstein's development of vocational training programs at his institution was an important but historically underrecognized influence on the process of institutionalization and treatment. See Bernstein, , “Rehabilitation of the Mental Defective,” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 24 (1919–1920): 126–55Google Scholar; “Colony Care for Isolation Defectives and Dependent Cases,” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 26 (1920–1921): 43–59Google Scholar; “Advantages of Colony Care of Mental Defectives.” Psychiatric Quarterly 1 (1917): 419–25Google Scholar; “Colony and Extra-Institutional Care for the Feeble-Minded,” Mental Hygiene 4:1 (1920): 1–20Google Scholar; and “Parole Care for Dependents and Defectives,” Mental Hygiene 7:3 (1923): 449–71.Google Scholar

48. First Annual Report of the Petersburg State Colony, 1939, 7.

49. Second Annual Report of the Petersburg State Cobny, 1940, 9, 11; Third Annual Report of the Petersburg State Colony, 1941, 10, 7; Second Annual Report, 6. Courts and social workers adjudicated many delinquent feebleminded blacks to state industrial schools ratherthan to institutions for the feeble-minded. A 1936 report on North Carolina's Morrison Training School, the state facility for young delinquent black males, concluded that “more than 75 percent of all boys entering the Morrison Training School are greatly in need of hospital treatment.” “Questionnaire on Permanent Improvement Estimates for 1937–1939, Morrison Training School,” State Board of Public Welfare Records, Box 162, Morrison Training School Folder, North Carolina State Archives, Old Records Center, Raleigh.

50. Stowell, Geraldine, “Comparative Study of Certain Mental Defects Found in Institutionalized Whites and Negroes in the District Training School,” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 36 (1930–1931): 270.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., 281, 272. Blacks comprised 181 of the total 355 patients at the institution; 62 patients were admitted to the Training School for these offenses, of which 46 were black. Staff at the school seemed as anxious as that at the Petersburg State Colony to scientifically investigate black feeblemindedness. “There seems to be nowhere else collected together a similar group under a set environment,” they reported, “that included such numbers of both negroes and whites” (269).

52. Benjamin Whitten, “Report No. 2—Discussing Question of Locating Institution for Colored, 1941,” in A History of Whitten Village, 104; Benjamin Whitten, “Presidential Address,” 36.

53. Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1921–1923, 16.

54. Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1925–1927, 52.

55. Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1927–1929, 71–72, 93.

56. Biennial Report of the Department of Welfare of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1937–1939, 51. The Department of Welfare assumed control of the institution in 1936. In response to a 1937–38 survey of the state's mental health facilities, the legislature passed the Chandler-Harris Act in 1938, authorizing $800,000 in extra appropriations for these institutions. This allowed the institution to hire eighteen more white attendants. Only three more black attendants were also hired (ibid.).

57. Dr. J. H. Bell, “Eugenic Control and Its Relationship to the Science of Life and Reproduction—A Paper Read before the Virginia Medical Society, October 7, 1931.”Virginia State Library, Richmond.

58. For generalized accounts of the eugenic sterilization movement, see Kevles, Daniel, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Berkeley, 1985), 107–12Google Scholar, Haller, Mark, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought, 2d ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1984), 130–41Google Scholar, and Pickens, Donald, Eugenics and the Progressives (Nashville, 1968), 86–101.Google Scholar For more on sterilization and its legal standing, see Laughlin, Harry, The Legal Status of Eugenical Sterilization (Chicago, 1930)Google Scholar, and Sterilization Laws: Compilations of the Sterilization Laws of the 24 States (Des Moines, n.d.). For more on sterilization in the South, see Steven Noll, “Sterilization in the South, 1920–1950” (unpublished paper).

59. A. S. Priddy, quoted in Harry Laughlin's deposition in Virginia Circuit Court of Amherst County, Buck v. Priddy, 13 April 1925, in Laughlin, The Legal Status of Eugenic Sterilisation, 17. The Buck case went on to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1927 ruled that eugenic sterilization was constitutional. See Buck v. Bed, 274 U.S. 200 (1927). For more on the case, see Gould, Stephen Jay, “Carrie Buck's Daughter,” Natural History 93 (July 1984): 14–18Google Scholar; Lombardo, Paul, “Eugenic Sterilization in Virginia: Aubrey Strode and the Case of Buck v. Bell” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Virginia, 1982)Google Scholar; and Dimmock, Avary, “Human Steriliztion,” Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia 26:7 (August 1937): 425.Google Scholar See also Edward Larson's analysis of Georgia's eugenics policy, “Belated Progress: The Enactment of Eugenic Legislation in Georgia” (unpublished paper), 23–24.

60. Biennial Report of Goldsboro State Hospital, 1934–1936, 15. For examples of similar language concerning feebleminded whites, see above p. 34, n. 55.

61. Prichard, W. I., “Sterilization of the Mentally Deficient in Virginia,” American journal of Mental Deficiency 53 (1949): 544Google ScholarPubMed; Lawrence, George, “Some Facts Concerning Sterilization Based upon a Study in Orange County, North Carolina,” North Carolina Medical journal 8:1 (January 1947): 23Google Scholar; Gamble, Clarence, “Eugenic Sterilization in North Carolina,” North Carolina Medical Journal 12:11 (November 1951): 551.Google ScholarPubMed State population figures from Dodd, Donald and Dodd, Wynelly, Historical Statistics of the South, 1790–1970 (University, Ala., 1973), 38–39, 58, 59.Google Scholar These two states sterilized by far the most individuals in the South. Virginia sterilized more than 5,000 persons from 1928 to 1944, while North Carolina sterilized almost 1,000 in that time period. See Steven Noll, “Sterilization in the South,” 9. These figures had changed by the 1960s, when North Carolina continued to sterilize individuals for eugenic reasons. Of the 863 persons eugenically sterilized by the state of North Carolina from 1962 to 1966, 64 percent were black. See Hurley, Rodger, Poverty and Mental Retardation: A Causal Relationship (New York, 1969), 47.Google Scholar

62. “North Carolina's Social Welfare Program for Negroes,” Special Bulletin #8 of the North Carolina State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, 1926, 11.