Anita,

Only California involuntarily sterilized more women than Virginia.

Here's a short reading list.

Harry Bruinius, _Better for all the World: the Secret History of  
Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity_ (New  
York: Knopf, 2006).

J. David Smith, _The Eugenic Assault on America: Scenes in Red,  
White, and Black_ (Fairfax: George Mason University Press, 1993).

J. David Smith, _The Sterilization of Carrie Buck_ (Far Hills, NJ:  
New Horizon Press, 1989).

Walter Ashby Plecker, _The New Family and Racial Improvement_  
(Richmond: Bureau of Vital Statistics, State Dept. of Health, 1928).

Gregory Michael Dorr, “Segregation's Science: The American Eugenics  
Movement and Virginia, 1900-1980” (Ph.D. diss., University of  
Virginia, 2000).

As for Plecker's admiration for Goebbels' final solution, Plecker  
once bragged in a letter to John Collier, the U.S. Commissioner of  
Indian Affairs, that "[y]our staff member is probably correct in his  
surmise that Hitler’s genealogical study of the Jews is not more  
complete.” (Plecker to Collier, April 6, 1943)

Best,
Ed


Edward DuBois Ragan, Ph.D
Lecturer in Virginia History
Department of History
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA 23529-0091
Tel. 757-683-3949
[log in to unmask]


On Feb 19, 2007, at 5:55 PM, Anita Wills wrote:

> I read somewhere that Plecker was part of the Eugenics movement.   
> Was Virginia not one of the states that was sterilizing people of  
> so-called low intelligence?
>
> Anita
>

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