Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell

Acknowledgments

2 8 1 a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s I owe thanks to many people for their support while this book was in its long gestation, but I would be remiss if I did not thank James H. Jones first. Jim read my dissertation more than twenty-five years ago, and he responded to it with honest criticism that challenged me to pursue the Buck story further. Many years later, he repeatedly encouraged me to start thinking seriously about writing this book. It is not an exaggeration to say that it would not have been completed without Jim’s help. From 1998 to 2005, I made numerous trips to Cold Spring Harbor, New York, to work on the Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement. That exhibit is now the most extensive online compilation of images and textual material related to the history of eugenics in the United States. Helping to edit and compile those materials was a wonderful opportunity for me to learn more about the history of eugenics, and it was also one of the richest professional experiences of my life. Many insights that made their way into this book resulted from conversations with my colleagues on that project as we—both literally and figuratively—retraced the steps of Harry Laughlin and the eugenicists through their Long Island haunts. I thank Garland Allen, Elof Carlson, and Steven Selden for their friendship, their good humor, and their generosity during our time on the historians’ working group of the Image Archive of the American Eugenics Movement. Similarly, the hospitality of all the staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, particularly Dave Micklos at the Dolan DNA Learning Center and Jan Witkowski at the Banbury Center, made my visits to Cold Spring Harbor a pleasure. My special thanks are also due to Sue Lauter at the Dolan DNA Learning Center, who delivered very timely help in retrieving many of the images for this volume. For several years during his tenure as director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia, my friend and colleague Jonathan Moreno exhorted me to get this book into print. He was careful to navigate the delicate territory between nudge and nag, and the motivation he provided for me to complete my account of Buck was a great help. 2 8 2 | Acknowledgments Five people read this book in manuscript. Jim Jones provided important perspective, and Gregory Dorr’s penetrating historical critique was invaluable. I turned to Wendy Parmet for her view as a lawyer with a keen sensitivity to history and to my wife, Conni, who reminded me that clarity was universally valued in prose, regardless of the topic. My editor, Jacqueline Wehmueller, has been unrelentingly positive from the moment of her initial invitation to submit this book to the Johns Hopkins University Press. All five were, as a valued mentor once put it, “kind enough to put kindness aside and tell me what they really thought.” My thanks to all of them. I suspect that I did not always succeed in clearing the bar they set for me, so whatever missteps a reader may discover in the text should be attributed to my limitations alone. Many people sent material over the years that helped me flesh out the Buck story. Four friends I have known my entire adult life will recognize in these pages the little gems they tossed my way. To John Migliaccio, David O’Leary, Maryvelma Smith O’Neil, and Paul Zurkuhlen: Mille grazie. The current public awareness of Buck v. Bell is largely due to the efforts of the reporters, science writers, and filmmakers who rediscovered the case and told it to larger audiences in the last twenty years. Often they revived dated and generally unnoticed scholarship, but they also tracked down and gave voice to living survivors of sterilization. Peter Hardin’s work as the Washington correspondent for the Richmond Times-Dispatch deserves first notice in this group. Hardin’s numerous page-one features on Virginia eugenics created momentum both for the first legislative denunciation of eugenics and the first gubernatorial apology on behalf of a state. Mary Bishop, formerly of the Roanoke Times, was also a stalwart in keeping the story of Virginia eugenics and the faces of its survivors in the public eye. Kevin Begos again called attention to the Buck story during his extraordinary series on North Carolina eugenics. And it would be hard to...