21 Facts About Carrie Buck

Carrie Buck had given birth to an illegitimate child without the means to support it.

The surgery, carried out while Buck was an inmate of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, took place under the authority of the Sterilization Act of 1924, part of the Commonwealth of Virginia's eugenics program.

Carrie Buck was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, the first of three children born to Emma Buck; she had a half-sister, Doris Buck, and a half-brother, Roy Smith.

Carrie Buck attended public school, where she was noted to be an average student.

Since Carrie Buck had been declared mentally incompetent to raise her child, the Dobbses adopted the baby and named her "Vivian Alice Elaine Dobbs".

Carrie Buck attended Venable Public Elementary School of Charlottesville for four terms, from September 1930 until May 1932.

Carrie Buck was a perfectly normal, quite average student, neither particularly outstanding nor much troubled.

Carrie Buck improved during her second term in 1B, meriting an A in deportment, C in mathematics, and B in all other academic subjects; she was placed on the honor roll in April 1931.

Carrie Buck died from a secondary intestinal infection, enteric colitis, at the age of 8.

Eugenicists used Buck to legitimize this law in the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v Bell through which they sought to gain legal permission for Virginia to sterilize Buck.

Whitehead failed to adequately defend Carrie Buck and counteract the prosecutors.

The 1927 Supreme Court opinion states that Carrie Buck is the likely parent of "socially inadequate offspring[s]" which is a euphemism for illegitimate children.

Carrie Buck was sterilized on October 19,1927, roughly five months after the Supreme Court trial verdict.

Carrie Buck became the first Virginian sterilized since the 1924 Eugenical Sterilization Act passed.

Carrie Buck later married and she and her husband attempted to have children; she did not discover the reason for their lack of success until 1980.

Reporters and researchers who visited Carrie Buck later in life claimed she was a woman of normal intelligence.

Carrie Buck was buried in Charlottesville near her only child, Vivian, who had died at age eight.

Carrie Buck searched through case records and the papers of the lawyers involved in the case.

Lombardo eventually found Carrie Buck and was able to interview her shortly before her death.

Carrie Buck's case was covered in the October 2018 American Experience documentary "The Eugenics Crusade".

Carrie Buck's story is explored in Adam Cohen's book Imbeciles.