In Season 2, Episode 1, of Not Even Past, host Brendan Wolfe introduces us to Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in the notorious Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell (1927) that authorized Buck’s forced sterilization. Producer Miranda Bennett also interviews the scholar Paul Lombardo and visits the former Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Lynchburg.
IMAGE: Carrie and Emma Buck, on the grounds of the Virginia State Colony, in November 1924 (Arthur Estabrook Papers, Special Collections & Archives, University at Albany, SUNY)
Miranda Bennett’s podcast on Carrie Buck is a fascinating story on the widespread acceptance of eugenics in the early 20th century. She portrays the brutality shown toward poor women who were forcibly sterilized under the authority of the state, the U.S. Supreme Court and the medical profession. A moving account of Carrie Buck, one of tens of thousands of women sterilized in the U.S.