Number of victims
Florida did not have a eugenic sterilization law.
Passage of law(s)
While there was no law authorizing sterilizations, soon after the Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case granted Virginia the authority to sterilize Virginians in 1927, many bills were drafted for similar sterilization rights throughout the Deep South (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p.107). A bill was proposed in the Florida legislature that covered both patients in Florida’s state mental health hospitals as well as its institutions for the mentally retarded (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 107). This legislation, however, was not considered in the state Senate (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 107). Bills requesting to sterilize the “mentally ill, mentally retarded, and epileptic patients in the state institutions” were proposed in the Florida legislature in 1933 and 1935. While legislative committees approved and state mental health officials endorsed them, they did not come to a final vote (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 123).
Although a sterilization law was never passed in Florida, a segregation law was passed.
In response to the activities of Marcus Fagg (see below), Florida legislators in 1915 authorized a commission of physicians, mental health officials, and other interested citizens to study the need for a eugenically segregated institution for epileptic and mentally retarded children” (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 59). The commission made the determination that “over one thousand known cases of feeble-mindedness and epilepsy” existed and a more detailed study would find even more cases (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 67). Such a study was conducted by the Russell Sage Foundation of New York (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 59), and its result was a proposal of a “colony plan,” which the state legislature subsequently adopted (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 84).
Groups identified in the law
In the drafted sterilization laws, the “mentally ill, mentally retarded, and epileptic patients in state institutions” were identified as people who should be sterilized (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p.123). In the segregation law that was passed, the “Epileptic and Feeble-Minded” as well as the “retarded” were identified and termed “unfortunates” (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 68).
Process of the law
The segregation law determined that there would be an “Institution for the care of the Epileptic and Feeble-Minded.” It led to the creation of a “Farm Colony” intended to stem “the propagation of future degeneracy and dependency through eugenic segregation.” The statue decreed that colony would be organized in a way that “these unfortunates may be prevented from reproducing their kind, and the various communities and the State at Large be relieved from the heavy economic and moral losses arising by reason of their existence” (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 68).
Precipitating factors and processes
The entire Southern region in general
was more hesitant to adopt eugenic ideals for many reasons. As in Alabama, one
of the most important Southern values was its traditional emphasis on
family. “The doctrine of
eugenics…directly challenged southern concepts of the family and parental
rights” (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science,
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, Sex, Race, and Science, 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, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 9).
The strength of Southern religion also
played a role in the overall rejection of eugenics in the South. Religion lent itself to conceptions of
congregations as extended families and many people in the South accordingly
apposed segregating the “unfit” (Larson, Sex,
Race, and Science, 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, Sex, Race, and Science, 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, Sex,
Race, and Science, pp. 40-44).
Moreover, Florida, in comparison with
the other states in the Deep South, had a more “cosmopolitan environment” than
the other states, as Edward Larson has put it (Sex, Race, and Science,
p. 123). The State Federation of Women’s Clubs of Florida was the first
organization in the Deep South that advocated the use of birth control to women
instead of sterilization (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p.123). The Florida Medical Association was also the
first state in the Deep South whose physicians pointed to scientific evidence of
the environment affecting mental disabilities (Larson,
Sex, Race, and Science,
pp. 123-24).
Groups targeted and victimized
The groups that were targeted and victimized in Florida consist of “girls and women of child-bearing age” (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 68), as well as the people deemed feebleminded, mentally retarded, and/or epileptic (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, pp. 68, 123).
Other restrictions placed on those identified in the law or with disabilities in general
As well as being an advocate for the segregation of the
“mentally retarded and epileptic” (Larson, Sex,
Race, and Science, p. 58), Marcus Fagg also
supported eugenic marriage laws—along with the Florida Federation of Women’s
Clubs, which believed that there should be a law ensure any “applicant for a
marriage license is not an imbecile, or insane person, or person of feeble
mind, or an epileptic, or infected with tuberculosis in an advanced stage, or
infected with any venereal disease” (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p.88).
Although Fagg and the Florida Federation of
Women’s Clubs continued to advocate a eugenic marriage law, no legislation was
passed (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science,
p. 98).
Major proponents
Marcus Fagg became the superintendent of the Children’s Home Society of Florida, a Child’s welfare agency (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 58). He was involved in the eugenic ideas in Florida and supported the idea that the state give permanent institutional care to mentally retarded and epileptic children (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 58). He was a major participant in convincing the Floridian legislature to create a commission to study the need to segregate certain individuals in a state institution (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 58).
Institutions
The Florida Farm Colony for Epileptic and Feeble-Minded was founded in 1921 (Noll, Feeble-Minded, p. 12). The institution was located in Gainesville, Florida. It was created with the purpose of preventing epileptic and “feeble-minded” people from procreating and relieving society of their “burden” (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 68). The name of the institution, as Steven Noll suggests, “underscores its major purpose as a site of agricultural production” (Noll, “Public Face,” p. 32). In 1939, the superintendent of the school, J. Maxey Dell claimed that “[t]he wards are so crowded we are having to place some of the patients on an open sleeping porch, during both summer and winter” (Noll, “Public Face,” p. 34).
The website “Asylum Projects” claims that the use of the
Colony to “study the needs of persons who were ‘feeble-minded’ and epileptic” and
also states that the facility is now closed.
Opposition
Overall, Florida was opposed to sterilizations. The State Federation of Women’s Clubs was
part of a general opposition to a state law because they advocated the use of
alternate forms of birth control rather than sterilization (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 123). The Florida Medical Association supported the
scientific evidence that the environment has a “demonstrable effect” on mental
deficiency (Larson, Sex, Race, and
Science, p. 124). Senators opposed
the bills for sterilization through additional provisions that subverted the
intent of a sterilization bill and satirized its content, such as that it were
to apply “persons over the age of seventy years,” the operation “may only be
performed on a moonlight night…by a clairvoyant” and the law must be approved
by “the female electorate of the Senate…on a cold day in July” (Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, p. 123).
Bibliography
Asylum Projects. “Florida Colony.” Available at: <http://www.asylumprojects.org/tiki-index.php?page=Florida+Farm+Colony>
Larson, Edward J. 1995. Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Noll, Steven. 1995. Feeble-Minded in Our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900-1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Noll, Steven. 2005. “The Public Face of Southern Institutions for the ‘Feeble-Minded.’” The Public Historian 27, 2: 25-42.