U.S. Supreme Court
143 Va. 310. The case comes here upon the contention that
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)
Buck v. Bell
No. 292
Argued April 22, 1927
Decided May 2, 1927
274 U.S. 200
ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS
OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA
Syllabus
1. The Virginia statute providing for the sexual sterilization
of inmates of institutions supported by the State who shall
be found to be afflicted with an hereditary form of insanity
or imbecility, is within the power of the State under the
Fourteenth Amendment. P. 274 U. S. 207.
2. Failure to extend the provision to persons outside the
institutions named does not render it obnoxious to the
Equal Protection Clause. P. 274 U. S. 208.
143 Va. 310, affirmed.
ERROR to a judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeals of
the State of Virginia which affirmed a judgment ordering
Page 274 U. S. 201
the Superintendent of the State Colony of Epileptics and
Feeble Minded to perform the operation of salpingectomy
on Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in error.
Page 274 U. S. 205
Mr. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the
Court.
This is a writ of error to review a judgment of the Supreme
Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia affirming a
judgment of the Circuit Court of Amherst County by which
the defendant in error, the superintendent of the State
Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded, was ordered to
perform the operation of salpingectomy upon Carrie Buck,
the plaintiff in error, for the purpose of making her sterile.
the statute authorizing the judgment is void under the
Fourteenth Amendment as denying to the plaintiff in error
due process of law and the equal protection of the laws.
Carrie Buck is a feeble minded white woman who was
committed to the State Colony above mentioned in due
form. She is the daughter of a feeble minded mother in the
same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble
minded child. She was eighteen years old at the time of the
trial of her case in the Circuit Court, in the latter part of
1924. An Act of Virginia, approved March 20, 1924,
recites that the health of the patient and the welfare of
society may be promoted in certain cases by the
sterilization of mental defectives, under careful safeguard,
&c.; that the sterilization may be effected in males by
vasectomy and in females by salpingectomy, without
serious pain or substantial danger to life; that the
Commonwealth is supporting in various institutions many
defective persons who, if now discharged, would become
Page 274 U. S. 206
a menace, but, if incapable of procreating, might be
discharged with safety and become self-supporting with
benefit to themselves and to society, and that experience
has shown that heredity plays an important part in the
transmission of insanity, imbecility, &c. The statute then
enacts that, whenever the superintendent of certain
institutions, including the above-named State Colony, shall
be of opinion that it is for the best interests of the patients
and of society that an inmate under his care should be
sexually sterilized, he may have the operation performed
upon any patient afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity,
imbecility, &c., on complying with the very careful
provisions by which the act protects the patients from
possible abuse.
The superintendent first presents a petition to the special
board of directors of his hospital or colony, stating the facts
and the grounds for his opinion, verified by affidavit.
Notice of the petition and of the time and place of the
hearing in the institution is to be served upon the inmate,
and also upon his guardian, and if there is no guardian, the
superintendent is to apply to the Circuit Court of the
County to appoint one. If the inmate is a minor, notice also
is to be given to his parents, if any, with a copy of the
petition. The board is to see to it that the inmate may attend
the hearings if desired by him or his guardian. The evidence
is all to be reduced to writing, and, after the board has made
its order for or against the operation, the superintendent, or
the inmate, or his guardian, may appeal to the Circuit Court
of the County. The Circuit Court may consider the record
of the board and the evidence before it and such other
Page 1 of 16
admissible evidence as may be offered, and may affirm,
revise, or reverse the order of the board and enter such
order as it deems just. Finally any party may apply to the
Supreme Court of Appeals, which, if it grants the appeal, is
to hear the case upon the record of the trial
Page 274 U. S. 207
in the Circuit Court, and may enter such order as it thinks
the Circuit Court should have entered. There can be no
doubt that, so far as procedure is concerned, the rights of
the patient are most carefully considered, and, as every step
in this case was taken in scrupulous compliance with the
statute and after months of observation, there is no doubt
that, in that respect, the plaintiff in error has had due
process of law.
The attack is not upon the procedure, but upon the
substantive law. It seems to be contended that in no
circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly
is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the
existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have
been recited, and that Carrie Buck
"is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate
offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually
sterilized without detriment to her general health, and that
her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her
sterilization,"
and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general
declarations of the legislature and the specific findings of
the Court, obviously we cannot say as matter of law that
the grounds do not exist, and, if they exist, they justify the
result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare
may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be
strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the
strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt
to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being
swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world
if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for
crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can
prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing
their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory
vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian
tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11. Three
generations of imbeciles are enough.
Page 274 U. S. 208
But, it is said, however it might be if this reasoning were
applied generally, it fails when it is confined to the small
number who are in the institutions named and is not applied
to the multitudes outside. It is the usual last resort of
constitutional arguments to point out shortcomings of this
sort. But the answer is that the law does all that is needed
when it does all that it can, indicates a policy, applies it to
all within the lines, and seeks to bring within the lines all
similarly situated so far and so fast as its means allow. Of
course, so far as the operations enable those who otherwise
must be kept confined to be returned to the world, and thus
open the asylum to others, the equality aimed at will be
more nearly reached.
Judgment affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE BUTLER dissents.
Page 2 of 16
Page 3 of 16
 Carrie and Emma Buck

Buck v. Bell (1927)

Contributed by Brendan Wolfe

In Buck v. Bell, decided on May 2, 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 8 to 1, affirmed the
constitutionality of Virginia's law allowing state-enforced sterilization. After being raised by foster parents and
allegedly raped by their nephew, the appellant, Carrie Buck, was deemed feebleminded and promiscuous. In
1924, Buck was committed to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, near Lynchburg, and
there ordered sterilized. The Virginia law allowing the procedure had been passed in 1924 and responded to
fifty years of scholarly debate over whether certain social problems, including shiftlessness, poverty, and
prostitution, were inherited and ultimately could be eliminated through selective sterilization. Looking to test
the law's legality before engaging in widespread sterilization, the colony superintendent, Albert S. Priddy,
made sure his order was appealed. The Amherst County Circuit Court and the Virginia Supreme Court of
Appeals both ruled in the colony's favor, and in 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. In an infamous opinion,
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. noted that Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter were all suspected of being
feebleminded, declaring, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." The opinion was never overturned and
led to a marked increase in sterilizations across the United States. At the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi defendants
cited Buck v. Bell in their own defense. Virginia repealed the law in 1974 and in 2002 apologized to its
victims. MORE...

In This Entry
 Facts of the Case
 Legal and Scientific Background
 Appeals Process and Supreme Court
 Legacy
 Time Line
 Further Reading

Page 4 of 16
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Facts of the Case

Some Buildings at the

Virginia Colony for Feeble-Minded
and Epileptics.

The appellant in Buck v. Bell was Carrie Elizabeth Buck. Born on

July 2, 1906, in Charlottesville, she was raised by foster parents
John and Alice Dobbs from the age of three. In 1920, the
authorities deemed Buck's biological mother, Emma Adeline
Harlowe Buck, a "low grade moron" and promiscuous for having a
child out of wedlock. They committed her to the Virginia State
Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Madison Heights, near
Lynchburg. In 1923, Carrie Buck became pregnant, by her account
as the result of rape committed by Clarence Garland, the Dobbs's
nephew. Believing that the pregnancy was evidence of promiscuity
and thus of feeblemindedness, John and Alice Dobbs petitioned a
court in Charlottesville to have Buck committed, which it did on
January 23, 1924. She remained in Charlottesville with another
foster family until the birth of her child, Vivian Alice Elaine Buck,
on March 28, 1924. Then, with the Dobbs family taking custody of

Page 5 of 16
the infant, Carrie Buck joined her mother at the colony on June 4,
1924.

In March of that year, the General Assembly passed a law that

allowed for the state-enforced sterilization of those deemed
genetically unfit for procreation. On September 10, the colony's
board approved a list of sixteen candidates recommended by
Superintendent Albert Sidney Priddy for sterilization, including
Buck. Before he performed the surgeries, however, Priddy, a firm
supporter of sterilization but also a cautious and methodical
administrator, determined to test the law's constitutionality in the
courts. To do this, he tabled all of the sterilization orders except
for Buck's.

Albert S. Priddy

At Priddy's behest, Buck's state-appointed guardian, Robert G.

Shelton, appealed the sterilization orderto the Amherst County
Circuit Court. Priddy hired Aubrey Strode, who had drafted the
sterilization law, to defend the colony. Irving P. Whitehead, an
experienced lawyer, a former colony board member, and a
sterilization supporter, agreed to defend Buck. On November 18,
1924, Judge Bennett T. Gordon heard testimony in the case
of Buck v. Priddy. Strode began by calling to the stand a
Charlottesville nurse, three teachers, the superintendent of
an Albemarle County orphanage, a welfare office clerk, and a man
who claimed to be the brother-in-law of Buck's dead biological
father. Only two of the witnesses had ever met Buck, and only one
of them had interacted with her recently. A social worker stated
that Buck was "obviously feebleminded" and that her baby "had a
look about it that is not quite normal."

Strode then called several expert witnesses who testified about

the controversial science of eugenics. Dr. Joseph Spencer
DeJarnette, superintendent of the Western Lunatic Asylum in

Page 6 of 16
Staunton, explained, "feeblemindedness runs in families." Asked
by Buck's attorney whether he had ever "trace[d] back along the
lines of heredity to find out what was the beginning of the thing,"
he replied, "No, sir. Adam, I think, was a little off himself on some
things." Arthur H. Estabrook, a eugenics researcher who had spent
a single day interviewing and photographing Buck, her mother,
and her child, concluded that they all were likely the product of
"a defective strain."

Carrie Buck's Baby

Finally, Priddy testified that Buck was the perfect candidate for
sterilization. She came from a family of feebleminded people, he
said, and, absent surgery, likely would give birth to "middle grade
morons" like herself. Those children, including her child, Vivian
Buck, would burden the state by requiring institutional care. But
with surgery, Priddy said, Buck could be released into society,
where with some supervision she could work and even marry, all
without the danger of reproducing again.

The legal historian Paul A. Lombardo has noted that Whitehead

did not aggressively cross-examine any of the witnesses. He failed
to exploit significant weaknesses in their testimony, conceded
contentious facts, and at times seemed to testify himself on
behalf of sterilization. When Strode rested his case, Whitehead
did not call a single witness. "A bystander might reasonably have
reached the conclusion that there were two lawyers working for
Dr. Priddy and none for Carrie Buck," Lombardo wrote in his
history of the case, Three Generations, No Imbeciles (2008).

Priddy died of Hodgkin disease on January 13, 1925, and the

following month Judge Gordon ruled in the colony's favor.
The written judgment, released on April 13, 1925, found that Buck
was "feeble-minded and by the laws of heredity [was] the
probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring"; as

Page 7 of 16
such, she should be sterilized. John Hendren Bell, the colony's
new superintendent, was named to the suit in Priddy's place and
the case was forwarded to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.

Legal and Scientific Background

Most Immediate Blood-kin

of Carrie Buck

The order to sterilize Carrie Buck was founded on the belief that
genetic abnormalities were an important cause of various social
problems, from low intelligence and shiftlessness to promiscuity,
prostitution, and other more serious crimes. At the turn of the
century, Gregor Mendel's experiments with plant hybridization,
performed in the mid-1800s, were receiving renewed interest
from scientists. At the same time, Charles Darwin's half-cousin,
Francis Galton, launched a movement in England based on the
idea that humans could be bred in similar ways to plants and
animals. (Galton coined the term "eugenics," meaning "well-born,"
in 1883.) The American Breeders' Association formed in the United
States in 1903 and three years later established a committee on
eugenics that became, in 1913, the American Genetic Association.

Arthur H. Estabrook

Scientists, medical doctors, and amateur eugenicists embarked on

ambitious data-collection projects designed to prove their
theories. Large statistical studies of institutional populations and
family genealogies purported to demonstrate that mental illness

Page 8 of 16
and criminal tendencies were inherited. In a long article in
the Atlantic Monthly in April 1875, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
argued that "crime can be shown to run in the blood." Two years
later, the sociologist Richard L. Dugdale published The Jukes: A
Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity. It focused on a
single, pseudonymous family from New York and argued that
heredity, while not the only cause, was one of the most important
causes of crime. Arthur Estabrook updated the study in The Jukes
in 1915 (1916), and, in 1926, coauthored Mongrel Virginians: The
Win Tribe, a study of racial mixing in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Enthusiasm for eugenics coincided with the Progressive Movement,

which assumed that society could be improved through laws that
encouraged better human behavior. Although eugenic assumptions
suggested that such reforms were futile, many Progressives
nevertheless embraced the new field, seduced by its modern,
scientific connotations. Eugenicists believed that African
Americans, American Indians, poor people, criminals, prostitutes,
and alcoholics all suffered from inferior genes, a theory that lent
scientific credibility to widespread assumptions about white
supremacy and informed Virginia's Act to Preserve Racial
Integrity (1924).

Eugenics Makes the World

go 'round.

Many scientists and sociologists recognized that links between

crime and heredity were not yet sufficiently supported by
evidence. Still, a number of states moved quickly to pass
sterilization laws, taking advantage of the relatively new
procedures of vasectomy, for males, and salpingectomy, for
females. By 1917, sixteen states—including, as of 1916, Virginia—
had laws authorizing medical procedures on the institutionalized.

Page 9 of 16
While Virginia's 1916 legislation did not explicitly authorize
sterilizations, it did authorize medical procedures that "tend to
the mental and physical betterment of said patients," and
sterilization sometimes resulted. This was especially true for the
treatment of "chronic pelvic disorder," a procedure that Priddy
claimed required cutting the fallopian tubes and that he
performed most often on female patients of childbearing age who
were about to be paroled, sometimes as a condition of their
release. Twenty such women were sterilized by the end of 1916.
Some of them were married and some were not immediately told
that they could no longer bear children.

In 1917, George Mallory, of Richmond, sued the colony for $5,000

in damages following the sterilization of his wife, Willie Mallory.
He contended that Willie Mallory and one of their children, Nannie
Mallory, had been detained, diagnosed as feebleminded, and
committed to the colony without the due process required by the
1916 law and that the sterilization procedure had been performed
against the patient's will. In 1917 a jury accepted Priddy's
argument that he had operated only out of medical necessity, and
in 1918 the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld that decision
but freed all members of the Mallory family yet detained.

The case had the result of making Priddy and other

superintendents more cautious about following the letter of the
law. In 1920, Aubrey Strode drafted two successfully passed bills
designed to protect Priddy: one that required the state to cover
legal costs for superintendents in cases such as Mallory, and
another that retroactively deemed legal the commitments of all
current inmates at state mental institutions. The 1924 law,
meanwhile, explicitly authorized sterilizations and outlined a
series of legal safeguards intended to insulate it from a successful
legal challenge. With the Buck case, Priddy hoped to finally clear
the way for an ambitious sterilization program founded on eugenic
principles.

Appeals Process and Supreme Court

Page 10 of 16
Aubrey Ellis Strode

On November 12, 1925, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals

upheld the Amherst County Circuit Court ruling in Buck v. Bell.
The U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case for review in
September 1926. In his long and detailed brief, Strode made three
main arguments, anticipating longstanding objections by those
who opposed eugenic sterilization: 1) Virginia's law did not impose
cruel and unusual punishment; 2) the law afforded inmates due
process of law; and 3) it represented a valid exercise of police
power, which stemmed from the state's obligation to protect the
public's health and safety. Strode emphasized that for Carrie Buck,
sterilization would be a painless procedure that benefited her
quality of life while also benefiting society at large. In addition,
Buck was given reasonable notice of the procedure, appointed a
guardian, protected by the oversight of a state board, and
afforded the right to appeal.

Whitehead's brief was less than half as long as Strode's. It

conceded that Carrie Buck was feebleminded while implying the
same about her child. Citing the Fourteenth Amendment, he
argued that sterilization deprived Buck of due process by violating
"her bodily integrity" and of equal protection by targeting only a
portion of the state's feebleminded population. Finally, he
suggested that the procedure's benefits to the patient remained
unproven and, in fact, may have been a smokescreen intended to
hide the government's intention "to rid itself of those citizens
deemed undesirable according to its standards."

Page 11 of 16
Dr. John H. Bell and Carrie
Buck

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Buck v. Bell on April

22, 1927, and then on May 2 delivered an 8 to 1 decision upholding
the order to sterilize Carrie Buck and the law that authorized it.
(Associate Justice Pierce Butler dissented but did not write an
opinion.) The majority opinion, written by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr., was just several paragraphs long. "We have seen more than
once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for
their lives," Holmes wrote. He continued:It would be strange if it
could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the
State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those
concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with
incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting
to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve
for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly
unfit from continuing their kind.

Referring to the fact that various courts had found Emma Buck,
her daughter Carrie Buck, and her granddaughter Vivian Buck all
to have been feebleminded, Holmes concluded, "Three
generations of imbeciles are enough."

On October 19, 1927, John H. Bell, the colony's superintendent,

performed a salpingectomy, sterilizing Carrie Buck. She was
released from the institution a month later.

Legacy

Page 12 of 16
 Play Audio

Eugenics in Virginia

The decision in Buck v. Bell was widely hailed in the press.

The Daily Progress in Charlottesville called the Holmes opinion "a
genuine classic" and praised its "progressive tendencies,"
while Time magazine described opponents of eugenics as
"sentimentalists." In the decade that followed, seven states and
Puerto Rico enacted sterilization statutes for the first time; others
revised theirs to model Virginia's court-tested law. During those
ten years, almost 28,000 Americans were sterilized, compared
with 8,515 between the years 1907 and 1927. Between 1927 and
1972, about 8,300 Virginians were sterilized.

In England, where the eugenics movement had started,

sterilization laws never took hold. "I do not say that the law ought
not, at some future time, to be extended more widely," the
philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in Marriage and Morals (1929).
"I say only that our scientific knowledge at present is not adequate
for this purpose, and that it is very dangerous when a community
allows its moral reprobations to masquerade in the guise of
science, as has undoubtedly happened in various American States."
Pope Pius XI, in an encyclical dated December 31, 1930, also
opposed those who would "put eugenics before aims of a higher
order."

Eugenics had been popular in Germany before World War II (1939–

1945), and at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945–1946, prosecutors took
aim at sterilizations performed in concentration camps "in the
guise of scientific research." Multiple Nazi defendants cited Buck
v. Bell and Holmes's decision in their own defense.

In the United States, meanwhile, Buck v. Bell was never

overturned. In Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942), the U.S. Supreme

Page 13 of 16
Court outlawed sterilization as a punitive measure, something the
Virginia law already was careful to repudiate. Virginia finally
repealed its sterilization law in 1974, and on December 29, 1980,
the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Lynchburg Training
School and Hospital (previously the Virginia State Colony for
Epileptics and Feeble-Minded) on behalf of the men and women
who had been sterilized there. In Poe v. Lynchburg Training School
and Hospital (1981), the U.S. District Court for the Western
District of Virginia ruled that while the sterilizations had been
legal, there was cause to believe that correct procedure had not
always been followed. The plaintiffs later settled with the state
out of court, with the state agreeing to attempt to locate all living
persons who had been sterilized, to inform them of the
consequences of the operation, and to provide them with
counseling and medical treatment.

Vivian Dobbs's School Grades

Historians have since found evidence that neither Carrie Buck nor
her daughter suffered from any mental illness and that Bell's
sterilization relied on a false diagnosis. Vivian Dobbs, Carrie Buck's
daughter, was placed on the honor roll at her elementary school in
1931, a year before she died at the age of eight. Carrie Buck Eagle
Detamore, who married twice, died in a nursing home
in Waynesboro on January 28, 1983, and is buried in Oakwood
Cemetery in Charlottesville. On May 2, 2002, the seventy-fifth
anniversary of the Buck decision, Virginia governor Mark
Warner apologized for Virginia's eugenics program, calling it "a
shameful effort in which state government never should have been
involved." Astate historical highway marker was dedicated to Buck
v. Bell in Charlottesville on that day.

Time Line

Page 14 of 16
 1836 - Richard B. Garnett enters the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and graduates twenty-ninth in the
class of 1841.
 November 28, 1872 - Emma Adeline Harlowe is born in Charlottesville, the daughter of Adeline Dudley Harlowe,
who dies in childbirth, and Richard Harlowe, a farmer in Albemarle County.
 1877 - Richard L. Dugdale authors The Jukes, a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity. The book
focuses on a single, pseudonymous family from New York and argues that heredity is an important cause of
crime.
 1883 - Charles Darwin's half-cousin, Francis Galton, coins the term "eugenics," meaning "well-born."
 1903 - The American Breeders' Association forms in the United States.
 1906 - The American Breeders' Association establishes a committee on eugenics.
 July 2, 1906 - Carrie Buck is born in Charlottesville, the daughter of Frank W. Buck, a tinner, and Emma Adeline
Harlowe Buck.
 1907–1927 - Various states sterilize 8,515 Americans.
 1910 - At age three, Carrie Buck is taken from the care of her mother, Emma A. Harlowe Buck, and placed with
foster parents, John and Alice Dobbs.
 1910 - The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics opens in Madison Heights, near Lynchburg. Albert S. Priddy is the
superintendent.
 1913 - The American Breeders' Association's committee on eugenics is established as the American Genetic
Association.
 1914 - The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics becomes the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-
Minded.
 1916 - Arthur H. Estabrook authors The Jukes in 1915, updating an earlier family study by Richard L. Dugdale.
 March 20, 1916 - The General Assembly approves legislation detailing the commitment of the mentally ill. It
does not specifically authorize sterilization, but allows for medical procedures that "tend to the mental and
physical betterment of said patients."
 July–December 1916 - Twenty women are sterilized at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-
Minded.
 1917 - By this year, sixteen states, including Virginia, have laws authorizing medical procedures on the
institutionalized.
 1917 - George Mallory, of Richmond, sues the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded for the
detention and forced sterilization of his wife, Willie Mallory.
 1918 - In Mallory v. Virginia Colony, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upholds the sterilization of Willie
Mallory but orders that she and her daughter be freed.
 1920 - The General Assembly passes a law that retroactively deems legal the commitments of all current
inmates at state mental institutions. Another law protects superintendents from the costs of suits brought by
inmates.
 April 1920 - Authorities deem Emma Buck a "low grade moron" and promiscuous for having a child out of wedlock
and commit her to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Madison Heights, near
Lynchburg.
 Summer 1923 - John and Alice Dobbs's nephew Clarence Garland allegedly rapes Carrie Buck, their foster child,
and she becomes pregnant.
 January 23, 1924 - Responding to a petition by her foster parents, a court in Charlottesville adjudges the
pregnant seventeen-year-old Carrie Buck to be feebleminded.
 March 20, 1924 - The General Assembly passes a bill that allows for the state-enforced sterilization of those
deemed genetically unfit for procreation.
 March 28, 1924 - Vivian Alice Elaine Buck, the daughter of Carrie Buck, is born in Charlottesville.
 June 4, 1924 - Having been adjudged feebleminded and committed by a Charlottesville court, Carrie Buck
arrives at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Madison Heights, near Lynchburg. Her
mother, Emma Buck, is also an inmate there.
 July 21, 1924 - The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded appoints Robert G. Shelton, a justice
of the peace in Madison Heights, to serve as legal guardian of Carrie Buck, an inmate at the colony.
 September 10, 1924 - The board of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded approves a list of
sixteen candidates for sterilization, including Carrie Buck.

Page 15 of 16
 October 3, 1924 - R. G. Shelton, on behalf of Carrie Buck, appeals her sterilization order to the Amherst County
Circuit Court.
 November 19, 1924 - Judge Bennett T. Gordon, of the Amherst County Circuit Court, hears arguments in the
case of Buck v. Priddy, appealing the order to sterilize Carrie Buck.
 January 13, 1925 - Albert S. Priddy, superintendent of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-
Minded, dies of Hodgkin disease.
 February 1925 - Amherst County Circuit Court judge Bennett T. Gordon announces from the bench his decision
in Buck v. Priddy. He upholds the order to sterilize Carrie Buck.
 April 13, 1925 - Judge Bennett T. Gordon releases his written opinion in the case of Buck v. Priddy, upholding
the order to sterilize Carrie Buck. The decision is appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals as Buck v.
Bell, after the death of Albert S. Priddy.
 November 12, 1925 - In Buck v. Bell, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upholds the sterilization order of
Carrie Buck.
 1926 - Arthur H. Estabrook authors Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe, a study of racial mixing in the Blue Ridge
Mountains.
 June 18, 1926 - Doris Buck, sister of Carrie Buck, arrives at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-
Minded, having been diagnosed as feeble-minded and committed.
 April 22, 1927 - The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case of Buck v. Bell, appealing an order to
sterilize Carrie Buck.
 May 2, 1927 - In Buck v. Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a Virginia order to sterilize Carrie Buck.
 1927–1972 - About 8,300 Virginians are sterilized by the state.
 October 19, 1927 - Dr. John H. Bell performs the operation to sterilize Carrie Buck several months after the
U.S. Supreme Court upholds, in Buck v. Bell, the constitutionality of a Virginia law allowing state-enforced
sterilization.
 November 12, 1927 - After being sterilized, Carrie Buck is released from the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics
and Feeble-Minded into the care of the Coleman family in Belspring, Pulaski County.
 December 10, 1927 - A sterilization order is issued for Doris Buck, sister of Carrie Buck and an inmate at the
Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded.
 January 25, 1928 - Doris Buck, sister of Carrie Buck, is sterilized at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and
Feeble-Minded.
 December 31, 1930 - Pope Pius XI issues the encyclical Casti connubii (On Christian Marriage), which, among
things, criticizes eugenics.
 1931 - Vivian Buck, daughter of Carrie Buck, in placed on the honor roll at Venable Elementary School in
Charlottesville. Earlier legal action involving her mother had suggested that she was feebleminded.
 June 1, 1942 - In Skinner v. Oklahoma, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that sterilization cannot be imposed as
punishment for a crime.
 November 20, 1945–October 1, 1946 - At the Nuremberg Trials, multiple Nazi defendants cite the U.S.
Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell in defense of their own sterilization efforts.
 December 29, 1980 - The American Civil Liberties Union files the civil lawsuit Poe v. Lynchburg Training School
and Hospital on behalf of all sterilization victims, male and female, in the U.S. District Court for the Western
District of Virginia.
 January 28, 1983 - Carrie Buck Eagle Detamore dies in a nursing home in Waynesboro and is buried in
Charlottesville's Oakwood Cemetery with her husband, Charlie Detamore.
 May 2, 2002 - Governor Mark Warner apologizes for Virginia's eugenics program, and a state historic highway
marker in Charlottesville is dedicated to Buck v. Bell.

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