Sterilization of Carrie Buck. David Smith

records indicate that Carrie was a very normal child. She attended classes for five years until the Dobbs withdrew her “to help with the chores at home.” During that time, she progressed in proper sequence from grade to grade. Her last teacher recorded her assessment of Carrie as “very good—deportment and lessons”—and recommended her for promotion.

      Through the years, she always remembered how much she had “liked going to school” even though she admitted, chuckling, that she had “played hooky too often.” But life in the Dobbs’ home consisted of much hard work and sometimes Carrie also did housework for other families in the neighborhood.

      Taking a day off now and then to be with other classmates, or just to walk around town, seemed fun. Clean fun, for she “hadn’t been into boys,” she always insisted. “I didn’t run around; I wasn’t allowed to.” Though the Dobbs “mostly treated me nicely” there was little frivolity, nor even the sense of encouraging normal boy-girl activities they accorded to their own daughter, who was about Carrie’s age.

      ILLUSTRATION 1: Charlottesville in the 1900’s. Holsinger Studio Collection, University of Virginia Library.

      Carrie moved in a different plain; always suspect because of her mother’s reputation, and always beholden because of her own inferior position in the household.

      And, as she grew into a teenager, docile Carrie quietly accepted this status of caretaker for those about her as she would care for many others in her later years.

      “Not that she hadn’t liked boys,” but for Carrie, shy, awkward and gangly, boys had been friends with whom to sneak down to the river and fish in her rare free hours or climb hills with—things other girls didn’t like to do. She had not been wild like her half-sister, Doris, who was always running off with this boy or that. Carrie “had not been into that sort of stuff.” She was, as she herself put it, “a good girl.”

      So that when the Dobbs family insisted she had to get out of their home because she was pregnant, Carrie was bereft. According to Carrie, a member of their own family, their nephew, someone she had known and trusted, had raped her. She had told them the truth, but they preferred not to believe her and had begun to circulate stories that she was “having seizures” and was “morally delinquent.” Carrie swore that none of it was true.

      The nephew had raped her in the Dobbs’ own home, acting as though Carrie had no rights except to submit to his will, and, because of it, she was to be turned out. The blame for the family’s embarrassment caused by the pregnancy became Carrie’s fault.

      And they had found both a method and a route to rid themselves of her as quickly as possible. They would bring her case before the local court, having her certified as feeble-minded. It would be easy with her background and her relatives. And J. T. Dobbs knew exactly how the procedure worked. After all, he was a town peace officer, charged to deal with criminals and vagrants and the shiftless mentally retarded. He himself would file the necessary papers and deliver Carrie to the courthouse, just as he had delivered her mother three years previously on April 1, 1920.

       2

       Emma’s Inquisition—April 1,1920

      The dark-haired, swarthy-looking woman who stared around the court room was unkempt, overweight and shabbily dressed. But she had an unmistakable odor of sensuality about her that made the commission, assembled to decide whether to commit her to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, distinctly uneasy.

      C. D. Shackelford, justice of the peace and judge for the proceedings, motioned for her to be seated.

      But she did not immediately obey. Instead, she stood fidgeting, silently scanning the austere, high ceilings of the room with its scarred benches and dark wooden floor. It was the first of April, but the musty, cold room still felt like winter.

      The examining physician, Dr. Davis, came forward to begin “the inquisition and interrogatories.”

      He cleared his throat and stared into her dark, defiant eyes. The woman stared right back.

      “Be seated,” Shackelford announced. Slowly she sat down in the chair provided.

      Again the physician cleared his throat. “Name?” he began, his voice hesitant, uncertain.

      “Emma Buck,” she said, cocking her head to one side and running a sickly, white-coated tongue, which he later declared hypertrophic, over her reddened lips.

      “When were you born?” he continued, his voice taking on a cutting edge.

      She narrowed her eyes, “November 1872.”

      “And the day?”

      She shrugged.

      “You don’t know the day?” he said, exasperated.

      Again she shrugged.

      “Can you tell me where you were born?”

      “Albemarle,” she said, opening her mouth wide to form the vowel sound, almost as though it were the opening word of a familiar song. He noted the poor condition of her teeth.

      “Where do you live now?” he asked.

      “Charlottesville.” Again she drew out the syllables in that singsong manner.

      Quickly, he jotted the information down and glanced up again, throwing her a furtive glance.

      “Are you married, single or divorced?” he asked with a half-smirk. He had already been made aware, both by the Superintendent of the Colony, Dr. Priddy, and by the local gossip, of Emma’s “mental peculiarity” which was manifested by “a lack of moral sense and responsibility.”

      “Widow,” she murmured. He could barely suppress a knowing chuckle.

      Next, he showed her some colors and common objects. He seemed surprised when she could distinguish them all. Indeed, she seemed to understand most of his words and the rudimentary commands he uttered, but, when he asked her to do a simple errand, she merely sat, as if dumbfounded, not moving.

      “Could you give this book to the lady over there?” he asked again, slowly and succinctly. When she did not respond, he repeated his request twice.

      The woman continued running her hands over her rumpled dress, but made no move to get up and obey. Whether she was being obstinate or simply did not understand, he couldn’t be quite sure.

      “I’m going to have to report that you can’t do a simple errand,” he said, petulantly looking at the other two physicians. She shrugged and continued to stare at him. He decided to try a different subject.

      “Do you have children?”

      She held up three fingers.

      “Three?” he questioned.

      She nodded her head.

      “Any of the children been mentally defective?”

      She shook her head, “No, there are not.” Indeed, it was to be a prophetic statement.

      Dutifully, he wrote “no.”

      They had reached the point in the interrogation where he had to ascertain her physical condition. Grumbling, he began to examine her.

      “Have you ever had any serious illness?”

      She waited until he had begun to inspect her teeth, tonsils, ears and eyes. “Yes,” she murmured, “pneumonia, rheumatism.” She exhaled