Alabama
Number of victims
There
were 224 people who were
sterilized, of whom approximately 58% were male. All of the sterilized
were
deemed “mentally deficient.” In terms of the total number of people sterilized, Alabama ranks 27th
in the United
States. Of the 32
states that had
sterilization laws, Alabama is the state with the 5th
lowest number
of sterilizations.
Period during which sterilizations occurred
The
period was 1919 to 1935 (Paul p.
246)
Temporal pattern of sterilizations and rate of sterilization
After
the passage of the sterilization law in 1919, the number of
sterilization
appears to have been low. Gosney/Popenoe
(p. 194; see data
sources) report no
sterilizations yet at the end of
1927, but the number for the end of 1929 was 44. After that year, the
number of
sterilizations increased. The last sterilizations occurred in June 1935
(Paul,
p. 246). Between 1930 and 1935, the annual number of sterilization was
about
30. The rate of sterilization per 100,000 residents per year was about
1.
Passage of law(s)
According to Edward Larson, “Alabama began its long flirtation with eugenics…before any other state in the Deep South” (Larson, p. 50). At the 1901 meeting of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama (MASA), Dr. William Glassell Sommerville, Trustee of the Alabama Insane Hospitals, declared it a proven fact that “the moral disposition for good and evil, including criminal tendencies…are transmitted from…one generation to another…and is as firmly believed by all scientific men as the fact that parents transmit” physical qualities to their children (Dorr, “Defective or Disabled?,” pp. 383-4). At that same meeting, John E. Purdon stated that it was a “‘proven fact’ that criminality, insanity, epilepsy, and other alleged manifestations of degraded nerve tissue were hereditary” (Larson, 50). He emphasized that “‘[i]t is essentially a state function’ to retrain ‘the pro-creative powers’ of the unfit” (Larson and Nelson, p. 407). He suggested that the use of sterilization would benefit the race by saying, “[e]masculation is the simplest and most perfect plan that can be adapted to secure the perfection of the race” (Larson, p. 50). Finally, Purdon explained his belief that “the goodness, the greatness, and the happiness of all upon the earth, will be immeasurably advanced, in one or two generations, by the proposed methods” (Larson and Nelson, p. 407), and, based on his belief that “weakness begets weakness” feared that “humanitarianism would ‘assist the imperfect individual to escape the consequences of his physical and moral malformation’” (Dorr, "Honing Heredity," p. 29).
Over
the next decade, MASA was encouraged
by many authorities such as physicians and Birmingham’s medical society
to
draft a bill to legalize the sterilization of the unfit. In 1911 at the annual MASA
meeting, Walter H.
Bell of Birmingham declared that “any person who would produce children
with an
inherited tendency to crime, insanity, feeblemindedness, idiocy, or
imbecility”
should be sterilized (Larson, p. 51). He
believed
that sterilization was “an easy, safe and practical method of
prevention with
no restrictions or punishment attached” (Larson and Nelson, p.410).
The
MASA, however, continued to delay
taking action until 1914 when it created a committee of physicians who
would
research “needful data in regard to ‘defective children,’ with a
purpose to
urge upon the state legislature the proper provision for the care of
such
‘defectives’” (Larson, , p. 60). During
the 1915
MASA meeting, C.M. Rudolph suggested the formation of a home for
mentally ill
children. He
stressed the importance of
segregating the unfit youth because he believed it shrewd to “[s]egregate the defectives of one
generation to prevent the
multiplication of their kind in the next” (Larson, p. 60).
In this same meeting it was decided that an Alabama
Society for Mental
Hygiene (ASMH) would be formed and led by William Partlow
as a liaison with the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (NCMH) and
to
survey Alabama’s “defectives” (Larson, p. 60).
That
year, MASA collectively agreed to support eugenic sterilization (Dorr, “Defective
or Disabled?,” pp. 386-87).
In
1919, the MASA and the ASMH reached
their goal. In the
next regular session
of the State legislator, a bill was passed to create the Alabama Home
(Larson
and Nelson, p. 413).
Buried within the law was a clause granting
permission to the
superintendent of the Home for the Feeble-Minded in Tuscaloosa, to
sterilize
its patients. This
was the first law
passed in Alabama that supported sterilizations (Paul p. 239).
In
1934, Partlow
wanted permission to sterilize all discharged patients from the Home (a
procedure he was already practicing as superintendent) (Dorr, "Eugenics
in Alabama").
Partlow
proposed a bill that gave the
superintendent of any state hospital for the insane complete power to
sterilize
“any or all patients upon their release.”
The bill also proposed the creation of a board with three
doctors who
would have the right to sterilize a larger group of people. Finally, the anticipated
bill granted
permission for county public health committees to sterilize anyone in a
state
or local custodial institution (Larson and Nelson, p. 418). Although Partlow’s
bill was passed in both the House and the Senate, the bill was vetoed
by
Alabama’s Governor, Bill Graves after consulting with the Alabama
Supreme Court
on the bill’s constitutionality (Larson and Nelson, p. 422). In 1935 the Alabama State
Supreme Court
viewed the bill and deemed it unconstitutional because it violated the
Due
Process Clauses of the state and federal constitutions—a sterilization
victim
would not have the right to appeal to a court against his or her
sterilization
(Larson and Nelson, p. 422). A
second
version of the bill was drafted and, similarly, passed in both houses
but was
vetoed by the Governor (Larson and Nelson, pp. 422-23).
Soon after this second
veto, Partlow
“discontinued the practice of
sterilization” (Larson and Nelson, p. 424).
Partlow’s
bill, however, was unsuccessfully reintroduced in 1939 and again in
1943. In 1945,
legislation was created that asked
for the right to sterilize every inmate or person eligible for entrance
in the
state’s insane asylums. This
bill was
passed by the senate but was rejected by the house (Larson and Nelson,
p.
426).
Groups identified in the law
In
the 1919 law, William Partlow
included in his draft the permission for the
superintendent of the Home for the Feeble-Minded to “sterilize any
inmate”
(Larson, p.
84). “Inmates” were
any “person confined
in a poor house, jail, an orphanage, or a boarding school in the State”
(Larson,
pp.
48-49). In the 1935
bill, it was
proposed that “any sexual pervert, Sadist, homosexualist,
Masochist, Sodomist, or
any other grave form of
sexual perversion, or any prisoner who has twice been convicted of
rape” or
imprisoned three times for any offense be sterilized.
It was also suggested granting permission to
county public health committees to sterilize anyone in a state or local
custodial institution (Larson and Nelson, p. 418).
An expansion of the law, proposed by Alabama State Health Officer Dr.
James Norment Baker, called for the sterilization of “anyone committed
to state homes for the insane and feebleminded, reformatories,
industrial schools, or training schools, …, as well as any sexual
pervert, Sadist, homosexual, Masochist, Sodomist” (Dorr, "Protection,"
p. 173) as well as anyone convicted of rape twice. The bill was
considered unconstitutional and vetoed by Governor Bill Graves.
Process of the law
In
the 1919 law, the superintendent of
the Alabama Home for the Feeble-Minded was given the authority “to
sterilize
any inmate” (Larson, pp. 48-49). This
law held
only one limitation on sterilization in the Alabama Home. The superintendent of the
Alabama Insane
Hospitals had to agree upon the sterilization of the inmates from the
Alabama
Home for the Feeble-Minded (Larson, pp. 105-06).
This
absence of safeguards for inmates in the law made it possible for
William Partlow to
sterilize every
inmate of the Home. This
law was
drafted by Partlow and
was the only sterilization law
passed in Alabama. Although
this law
passed, Partlow
continued to try to strengthen the
power to sterilize in Alabama through other bills.
All of his attempts, however, failed.
Precipitating factors and processes
The
entire Southern region in general
was more hesitant to adopt eugenic ideals for many reasons. One of the
most
important Southern values was its traditional emphasis on family and
parental
rights, which eugenics challenged (Larson, p. 8).
The
Southern sense of family also encouraged relatives to take
responsibility for
“individuals who might otherwise be subject to eugenic remedies in
state
institutions” (Larson, p. 9). Most
immigrants in
the South came from the British Isles, the same area most Southerners
originated from. Subsequently,
a
community existed in the South including many immigrants, unlike the
North and
West where Americans focused their eugenic ideas on ethnically diverse
immigrants
(Larson, p.
9). The strength of Southern religion also played a role in the overall
rejection of eugenics in Alabama.
Religion lent itself to conceptions of congregations as
extended
families and many people in the South accordingly apposed segregating
the
“unfit” (Larson,
pp. 13-14). In
comparison with the rest
of the United States, Progressivism in the South was relatively weak
due to the
comparatively small size of its typical carriers, secular groups, urban
professional middle classes, and the more educated (Larson, p. 17). Moreover, the Deep South
was lagging other
regions in biological research programs, as well as scientists and
education,
which shifted the advocacy of eugenics to state mental health officials
and
local physicians (Larson, pp. 40-44). The
MASA and
leaders such as William Partlow
were extremely
important to the eugenics movement in Alabama.
Without the organizations and leaders that were produced
from the MASA,
Alabama may have never started eugenic practices.
Overall,
Alabama was not in favor of
sterilization, which is reflected in the comparatively low number of sterilization
victims. In
general, the people of
Alabama were more in favor of segregation of the “unfit” than
sterilization
(Larson,
pp.
60-63). However,
inadequate funding of
such facilities for segregating the “feeble-minded” as well as
over-crowding
seems to have facilitated a push toward sterilization (Larson, pp. 90-91). “Even
though mental health surveys placed Alabama’s ‘feeble-minded’
population at
more than 7,000 persons, the new facility could accommodate only 160
residents,
and was filled within two months of it opening” (Larson, p. 90).
Groups targeted and victimized
Among those targeted were males, including “some of the delinquent boys who[m] we fear might escape” (Larson, p. 106), the poor, “mental deficien[ts]” and the “feebleminded” (Larson, p. 151). People who could be committed to the state mental health hospital included people in prison, a poor house, and orphanage, or a state boarding school” (Larson, pp. 48-49).
While Alabama never established a facility for feebleminded blacks (see Dorr, “Defective or Disabled?,” p. 387), Gregory Dorr has argued that the absence of such a facilty should not lead observers to conclude that eugenics in Alabama lacked racist elements, for the limitation of eugenics to the sterilization of whites (in contrast to Virginia) reflected the belief that the "betterment" of the black "race" could not be achieved by such measures. In fact, by the time the wall of segregation had started to come to down in the 1970s and no longer assured second-class citizenship of Blacks, African Americans had become the targets of extra-institutional and extra-legal sterilizations, reflective of a more general southern racist view that it was necessary"to further protect the white race itself from black folks" (Dorr, "Defective or Disabled?," p. 383; see also Dorr, Segregation's Science).
The Relf case
The
cause of forced sterilization in Alabama was not helped by the Relf
case. By 1973, the focus had moved away from sterilization of the
mentally deficient and those imprisoned, to the use of sterilization as
birth control. The Relf family was on welfare, and living in a
public housing project in Montgomery, Alabama. Two Relf sisters, Minnie
Lee, age 14, and Mary Alice, age 12, had been receiving shot of
Depo-Provera as a form of long term birth control (Rossoff, p.
6). When the use of the drug was no longer allowed, the mother was
mislead into signing a consent form allowing the sterilization of her
daughters. Mrs. Relf was unable to read or write, so she “signed”
the form with an X, without any physicians explaining the conditions to
her (Roberts, p. 93, Carpia, p.78, Caron, p. 211, Southern Poverty Law
Center). She thought she was signing a form consenting to
additional shots, when she was actually consenting to sterilizations
(Tessler, p. 58). A third daughter, Katie Relf, also received the
birth control shots, but refused to open the door to her room when the
official came to get the three girls to be sterilized. Because
she was 17, she could not be sterilized without her own consent.
(Larson and Nelson, p. 440) Later, when Mrs. Relf realized that her
daughters had been sterilized, she sued the surgeons and other
associated groups for $1,000,000 (Rosoff, p. 6). As a result, a
moratorium was placed on federally funded, coerced sterilizations until
a decision was reached by the Department of Justice.
Other restrictions placed on those identified in the law or with disabilities in general
In
1919, Alabama passed legislation that
made it the first state in the Deep South that made it illegal for
people with
venereal diseases to marry (Larson, p. 88).
(Photo origin: Encyclopedia of Alabama: Eugenics in Alabama; available
at http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1367)
(Photo origin: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/media_content/m-2320.jpg)