GA Eugenics
Monday, March 3rd, 2008So, I have to post this to get it out of my head. I am trying to find out why my great-great-grandmother got sent to the crazy house for the better part of her life. One reason I am trying to find out is my daughter is on the autism spectrum, my cousins have kids on the spectrum, and my Aunt Linda was most definitely on the spectrum.
What if this poor woman was too? Mama called my great-Aunt (my grandmother’s sister), and she said that Linnie just got too hard to control What does that mean? Mama says Bigmama told her one time that Linnie took a kid by their arms and just was swinging them round and round. What does that mean? So, did Linnie do inappropriate things? Did she have meltdowns and freak out and physically hurt anyone that happened to get in her way (maybe even to help?) If so, yeah that is hard to control (sorry Bri, you’ve been there!) but for God’s sake you don’ t lock people up for that.
If she got locked up when Granny was 10 or so, no wonder my Granny was as self-sufficient as everyone says she was. And it kills me Granny had to go to a nursing home, she must have really hated that. Also, if Granny’s mama was locked up for so long, how did that affect her parenting skills, and then my bigmama’s parenting skills, and mama’s parenting skills, and now my parenting skills?
I have to know WHY she got locked up.
OK, back to Eugenics. Eugenics is the search for the master race. Even though GA was one of the last states to create a Eugenics law, they used it more than anyone else. This Atlanta Journal article is absolutely chilling. Apparently the Junior League of Augusta led legislative advocacy efforts to create a bill in the State of Georgia that would approve the sterilization of the “mentally deficient”. When the governor vetoed the bill (he joked that maybe one day they would declare him “mentally deficient” and he didn’t want them working on him!), a respected paper lamented “The scientific reasons for sterilization are so well-established and so sound that the governor is flying in the face of accepted practice by vetoing the bill (Larson).
Y’all this was not even 100 years ago. The law was finally enacted in 1937. And it was a class thing, not a race thing, at least at first. They wanted to get rid of “degeneracy, imbecility, insanity, etc among the lowest class of whites and negroes….by sterilizing the younger generation” (Larson).
From that same study comes this alarming statement:
A week before his inauguration, Rivers summoned state lawmakers to Milledgeville for an inspection of the state hospital. Rivers then called for “immediate and urgent action” to improve the “deplorable conditions” of the aged and overcrowded facility. Two weeks later, a thirty-five member legislative committee termed conditions at the hospital “unbelievable” and recommended a massive construction program to expand and modernize facilities (Larson).
I believe this was in 1937. My great-grandmother was still there. 
According to the study, the Georgia League of Women Voters also wanted to see the “sterilization of the unfit” (what/who was declared “unfit”??)
The scary thing is, one argument for the practice was that by not adopting this “humane procedure”, Georgia was falling behind foreign countries that had adopted the practice of eugenics. Countries like Germany. (look at the date the law was passed….1937!)
AUGH how did any of my family survive!
The study is “Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South” by Edward J. Larson.
