- Welcome to University Place Presents.
I'm Norman Gilliland.
The late 19th Century brought quite a number of
really major advances in human well-being.
For example, the electric light in the 1870's
provided a clean, safe source of illumination.
The invention of the automobile
did away with all of the disease components
associated with horse traffic.
And in 1919, of course, Prohibition was an attempt
to regulate human behavior in a more healthy vein.
In 1907, the State of Indiana passed the first
State Eugenics Law, a logical extension,
perhaps, of the foregoing.
And in 1913, Wisconsin followed suit.
What was the purpose of these laws, exactly?
How effective were they?
And where are they today?
Joining me for University Place Presents
is Phyllis Reske.
She's the author of the article,
"Policing the 'Wayward Woman': Eugenics and
"Wisconsin's Involuntary Sterilization Program,"
which appeared in the Wisconsin Magazine of History.
Welcome to University Place Presents.
- Oh, thank you, good to be here.
- So I've mentioned all these wonderful advances
you know, - [Phyllis] Yes.
- in human health in the late 19th
into the early 20th Century.
A logical extension, eugenics,
to police the population's new members?
- Yes, it started in the late 19th Century.
A precursor was Social Darwinism where--
- [Norman] I wondered about that.
- Yes, yes, so where we just
we just leave the races alone
and eventually the "unfits" population will just die out.
Natural selection, it would just happen.
And then Sir Francis Galtan,
he coined the word "eugenics,"
which is in general meaning "well-born."
He was the cousin of Charles Darwin.
He believed that no, they're just not,
it's not going to happen with Social Darwinism.
With natural selection they're not going to die out.
There needs to be human intervention into it.
And so he developed the theory of eugenics,
where scientists would intervene
in the sake for human betterment.
- Of course, the concept goes way back.
I mean, Oedipus sat out on the hillside
because of his defective foot.
And a long tradition of that
and of course speaking of Darwin
and going back into the animal kingdom too.
Mothers killing defective children and all that.
But where do we actually see it
consciously practiced under the name of eugenics?
- Do you mean in the 19th Century?
- [Norman] Mm-hmm. - Early?
Eugenesis, now with this theory of eugenics, what do we do?
With Sir Francis Galton, what he came out with,
the eugenic theory, there were family histories
that were published.
The most famous was a Dr. Dugdale.
And he did a study of the Jukes, this family in New York.
They had a history of promiscuity, criminality, poverty.
It's like if we could curtail the procreation
of this family, we would save the State of New York
over a million dollars.
- Is he making any kind of distinction between
physiological traits, which might be passed on,
and behavioral traits, which may or may not be passed on?
- That's a very interesting point with Dr. Robert Dugdale
was that he did believe that
with a change of environment,
especially the children, we take the children
out of that environment, give them an education,
that they won't turn out
like their relatives or their parents.
- Okay, that's a - [Phyllis] So he did
- far cry from eugenics. - [Phyllis] Yes.
He did believe in inheritable traits, however.
But he said that something can be done
when it comes to pulling them out of the environment
and educating them.
But the people at the time in the late 19th Century
focused on the inheritable traits.
During that time too, we have the imperialism.
The United States starting to go out in the world
and conquer these colonies, these inferior people
and bringing Western Civilization to them
to improve society, those colonies.
And also that's the lessez-faire,
if I'm pronouncing that correctly,
that you have like J.P. Morgan and the Rockefellers
and all these very rich, ostentatious
people that, you know, a monopoly is forming.
And them becoming richer and taking up
more and more of the wealth. - [Norman] Sure.
- And that deflection from them, it's like
it's not this capitalism gone amuck.
It's not us.
Eugenics gave them a way to say that "It's not us.
"It's these defective people.
"They're just producing more of their kind.
"It has nothing to do with environment.
"It has nothing to do with capitalism, what's going on
"in the industrial society and what comes with it."
- So pretty quickly there's a political component
to the eugenics debate, assuming there is a debate, even,
at this point.
- Mm-hmm, yes.
And the political debate, yeah.
There is more of the scientists, the upper classes.
They're supporting eugenics because, again,
it's not we are,
we get the fruit of capitalism.
And so why not?
We're the superior class. - [Norman] The fittest.
- The fittest.
Now with eugenics, it's scientifically proven.
And we just produce more of our kind.
That's why more of our kind get richer and richer.
They get more affluent while the poor get poorer.
So that was a really good rationalization for them.
- Let's start with Indiana and this law
- [Phyllis] Yes. - in 1907.
What was the purpose of it?
- The purpose was to curtail the unfits.
With eugenics laws, there wasn't
like a Federal eugenics law, except for immigration.
It depended on the states and what the doctors,
the legislatures believed, what they perceived
or what they got out of the eugenic theory.
For Indiana, they focused more on
the mental defectives, the criminals.
Some states didn't.
They didn't focus on their criminals.
They just, who they deemed as mental defectives.
Usually that's the people who are dependent on the states,
who got aid from the states, financial support, welfare,
the welfare recipients, and the promiscuous people,
people who broke like societal transgressions.
- Okay, so again there seem to be two things going on.
- [Phyllis] Okay. - One of them has to do
with behavior. - [Phyllis] Yes.
- The other has to do with what we call defects or
physiological defects.
So in this law in Indiana, what are they
actually doing to implement it?
Who they target were the inmates in the state institutions
who were there, who were diagnosed as insane
or having a mental defect.
They just called them mental defectives.
For women, like a sexual transgression,
if they were like a prostitute
or they just had illegitimate children.
So there's that sexual transgression,
that societal transgression.
- They have a whole - [Phyllis] Yeah.
- set of state prisons.
But they're not going there.
And they're not assuming that because somebody is
a criminal and incarcerated - [Phyllis] I'm not
- that they would be subject - [Phyllis] Yeah.
- to a eugenics, just the more,
those considered to be mentally defective somehow.
Yeah, with Indiana I'm not sure.
What I remember is that I think it was
in the prisons, they would go to the prisons
and examine some of the prisoners
and see if they were deemed mental defectives.
Then they would transfer them
over to the state institutions.
Now when we get to a nice, progressive,
enlightened state like Wisconsin in 1913,
how did that compare in terms of its
implementation of eugenics laws?
With Indiana's passing the first
eugenic sterilization law, then other states followed.
So Wisconsin just picked up on that trail.
It's like we should have a law, too.
The person who very much wanted
a passage of a eugenic sterilization law
was Dr. Alfred Wilmarth.
He was the first superintendent for
the Wisconsin Home for the Feeble-Minded,
which that was the name of the, now it's
the Northern Wisconsin Center for
the Developmentally Disabled.
- [Norman] And what did the law actually say in Wisconsin?
- [Phyllis] It's any mental defective or epileptic
in inmates in a state institution,
they can undergo the operation.
They can undergo, that is to say--
Well they should.
Then who makes--
- [Phyllis] In fact any, yeah.
Who makes the decision? - [Phyllis] Well
Is there any kind of a safety valve for that?
What happened was when the law passed,
the state departments that oversaw
that whole sterilization program
was the State Board of Control.
So the State Board of Control,
along with the superintendent, Dr. Wilmarth,
would compile the list of potential
sterilization candidates.
What they did was, of course, look at each case file,
but also their family backgrounds.
And so they would research the family backgrounds
and see if there was any relatives or family members
who were either in other state institutions
or just a history of welfare,
receiving welfare from the states,
criminality, yeah.
Did this individual, whether it was a prostitute
just picked up last week, or an epileptic
who might have been institutionalized for a year,
have any kind of say or choice in this?
Or did this group of experts just make the decision
and there was no recourse?
They had very little say in it, of course.
Being poor themselves, being in a state institution,
obviously they couldn't afford a private institution.
So they had very little legal recourse.
Part of their procedures is once a person
was a candidate for sterilization,
they would send a notice to a family member,
a relative, or their guardian.
If they don't get an notification back,
that was considered consent.
- [Norman] Silence was considered consent?
Yes, and if there was a refusal of their ward
or their daughter or son to get a sterilization,
then they were an inmate of the institution indefinitely.
- Oh, so this sterilization was assumed to be, then,
kind of a credential for getting freed of
- [Phyllis] Very much. - the institution.
- Yeah, for discharge or parole, very much so.
So there is that coercion there.
- What do we know about Dr. Wilmarth?
Was his motive well-founded, do you think?
Because there were a lot of people around at this time,
pseudo-experts who did profit from doing
one of kind surgery or another on people.
- Back then, reputable doctors like Dr. Wilmarth
were very much respected in their addresses
to medical societies, to legislatures,
to women's clubs, to other social clubs.
They were believed. # They were trusted.
They would throw the statistical numbers.
Back then, in regards to eugenics, they weren't
under the scrutiny like we are now with research.
So they were readily believed,
maybe in the way they wanted to believe that.
- It was a time, of course, of authority figures
- [Phyllis] Yes.
- really right on through into the 50's probably
that if somebody was purportedly an expert in a field
- [Phyllis] Yes.
- he or she was credible.
Yes.
So kind of this instant credibility
we saw of course - [Phyllis] Right.
in advertising - [Phyllis] Right.
for years. - [Phyllis] Mm-hmm.
- And Dr. Wilmarth, didn't he have a,
I want to say confederate,
but that's not quite the right word.
But he had adherents and he had assistance
in this crusade for eugenics?
- Oh yes.
He was the chief supporter of it.
I know that there were at UW Madison,
or the Wisconsin State College I think it was,
or the university back then, here in Madison
there were professions who supported eugenics,
like E.A. Ross and Charles Van Hise,
so very much in the intellectual circles.
- Actually, I mean the president of the university,
Van Hise-- - [Phyllis] Yes.
- supported eugenics. - [Phyllis] Yes.
- [Norman] But I think there was also,
wasn't there a presidential candidate who supported it?
- [Phyllis] Theodore Roosevelt, yes.
Theodore Roosevelt, right. - [Phyllis] Yes.
Yeah, it's surprising, even Helen Keller, she
- [Norman] Oh no, really?
- Yes, she supported eugenics.
Surprisingly, shockingly, she supported
eugenical euthanasia of mentally-challenged babies.
- [Norman] So that's - [Phyllis] Yes.
- quite a surprise.
- Yeah, and also feminists, too.
Marie Stopes and I think
a local suffragist, Etta James.
- Were in favor of eugenics?
- Yes, mm-hmm.
- That's fascinating how-- - [Phyllis] Yes.
- it kind of splits out-- - [Phyllis] Yes.
- in these various factions that would you think
might be antithetical to each other.
- Yes.
Even through the 20th Century,
these people were in the same circles,
similar organizations, the same organizations.
So they talked to each other frequently,
probably about eugenics and sterilization.
They had connections to the legislatures.
So they had that influence and power.
So if they're going to believe this eugenic theory,
and say sterilization, that is a good idea,
they could do something with that.
Augustus Beier, was he one of the
figures in this also?
Yes, he was the second superintendent
of the Home for the Feeble-Minded.
He was the assistant superintendent to Dr. Wilmarth.
He also believed in eugenics.
He just continued the tradition.
Now he started to be the superintendent,
I think in the early 1920's.
That's when the Wisconsin Home for the Feeble Minded
turned from like a custodial institution to,
and they even changed the name to
the Northern Wisconsin Colony and Training School.
And everyone called it "the Northern Colony."
Instead of lifelong incarceration for these inmates
- It was - Right.
- a big transitional place.
- Exactly.
They were trained in gender-acceptable occupations,
the women for sewing, and then men in the wood shop
and making stuff like that, and being paroled
in the community to serve the community.
- This is an interesting bit of, I want to call it
"propaganda," but I'm not sure that's quite the right word.
In describing the concept behind eugenics,
this tree that shows - [Phyllis] Yes.
- [Norman] that with eugenics you can kind of
guide the development of the branches of the human race.
- [Phyllis] Yes, yes.
And it's very much interdisciplinary.
You have the genetics.
So you have the science.
You have the sociological factors.
You have the medical factors.
You have all these other different branches, too
coming together.
Then as they're working together,
out comes this wonderful tree, the betterment of society.
That was a logo for the Second Eugenics Congress
that was held in, I think it was in New England.
And that was like in 1912.
So this was very much a popular movement.
They had these national congresses and stuff like that
where they came together from all over the world
and talked about eugenics.
- I think really, I mean, when we're talking
about eugenics, is really - [Phyllis] Yeah.
- the main thrust of it just sterilization?
Or were there other components to it?
- The method that they really supported was sterilization.
At first it was segregation.
There were three main ways actually.
It was segregation, eugenic marriage laws,
and sterilization.
- Eugenic marriage laws? - [Phyllis] Yes.
- Okay, would that be where you'd have to prove
- [Phyllis] Yes, you'd have to prove
- you're healthy? - [Phyllis] That you're fit,
you're healthy in order to marry.
Yes, in Wisconsin, they first started with segregation.
Dr. Wilmarth was realizing that
we can't tall all who we deem mentally or unfit
and just stick them in institutions.
It would just be to many people.
Then the cost to the state would be too much, of course.
- So we can't do that.
So the second was the enactment of a
eugenic marriage law in Wisconsin.
I think that was around the same time,
I think it was 1910.
That was before the sterilization law.
But then there's this belief that
the people who propagated more their kind,
the unfit, they didn't marry.
So there was a lot of out-of-wedlock births.
So you're not really curtailing the unfit by--
- [Norman] Sure, yeah.
- They're seeing the, you know,
they were perceiving that as illogical.
- The eugenics marriage proponent?
- Yes, yes. - [Norman] Yeah.
- Actually that was overturned.
That law was overturned by the State Supreme Court.
- Really? What was the basis?
- The basis was--
- [Norman] Because this could--
- [Phyllis] Yeah.
- [Norman] Pertain on the whole outcome
of the eugenics thing in general if we get into any-- - [Phyllis] Yes.
- [Norman] Court challenges later on.
- Yes, yes.
It was struck down.
It just wasn't, some legislatures were saying that
doctors, they're just making money off of it.
- Right, that would be-- - [Phyllis] Yes.
- [Norman] That would be an understandable--
- [Phyllis] Right. - [Norman] Belief.
- Yes, and so eugenesis and eugenics supporters
are really supporters of sterilization
because looking at the program
where you admit so many people into the institution,
sterilize them, and then parole them,
you can get new admits.
And most of them are good eugenic
or sterilization candidates.
You can sterilize them
and then get them out into the community.
You had this program where they come in, but they go out.
- Right, right. - [Phyllis] Yeah.
- So this Northern Colony was where?
- In Chippewa Falls.
- Chippewa Falls? - [Phyllis] Mm-hmm.
- And it was established when?
- [Phyllis] 1897, very much an isolated parts of Wisconsin.
It still is.
I did visit there several years ago.
Some of the old buildings are still standing.
But it was very much a colony.
It was very much it's own village
and isolated from the world.
But that was the attitude towards
developmentally-disabled people at the time,
out of sight, out of mind.
- And just to skip ahead briefly though--
- [Phyllis] Sure.
- so the focus of it, the Northern Colony
has changed, obviously, from eugenics
to some other form of transition into--
- [Phyllis] Yes. - society?
- Yes.
In contemporary times now, they take on
more severe physically disabled clients, yes.
- Let's look at kind of the social fabric--
- [Phyllis] Sure.
- that was being addressed by these eugenic laws
in Wisconsin in 19-teens.
We talk about people who were sexually promiscuous.
- Yes.
- Primarily women? - Yes.
- Was the concern because they were the ones
who would be having children?
- But was there a male component to this concern also?
- The male component that was they had more rights.
They could probably assert themselves more
in getting legal protection as the woman.
The most vulnerable back at that time
was the sexually promiscuous woman
who would fall out of favor,
fall out of favor of society.
They were very much more vulnerable
to sterilization than men.
- I suppose it's harder to prove promiscuity
with the man anyway if he doesn't--
- [Phyllis] Right. - [Norman] Stick around.
- [Phyllis] Yes, yes.
- We have here a party scene.
- [Phyllis] Yes.
- [Norman] This is, I believe, Milwaukee, 1914?
- [Phyllis] Yes.
- [Norman] Would this group of people
be candidates for the kind of--
- [Phyllis] You know, they--
- [Norman] eugenics we've been talking about?
- [Phyllis] Yes, yes, the-- - [Norman] Why would that be?
- [Phyllis] I remember once case in particular
where a woman was admitted to the Northern Colony,
partly because she was caught in a saloon with a man.
You picture a woman in this dance hall back then.
They weren't the most, they would be looked at
as very pious women. - [Norman] Right.
- [Phyllis] In that particular county,
I think that was south of Milwaukee
in Racine County, she was arrested.
She was incarcerated at the Northern Colony.
- Okay, and what were the-- - [Phyllis] Yeah.
- What was she arrested for?
- She was caught with a man in a saloon.
And that's (laughs), she had well--
- [Norman] No children necessarily out of wedlock?
- As far as I can--
- [Norman] Certainly not selling sex?
- No, but back then in a saloon or a dance hall
that was very much where people saw women being confronted
with their own downfall, selling themselves.
- [Norman] Or giving themselves away.
- Right, right.
So being caught with a man in a saloon,
that could have meant, that could have went
both ways there, prostitution or just giving oneself away.
- [Norman] Right.
So it was considered kind of preemptive in this case,
which makes you wonder a little about
how preemptive they could get with a eugenics law.
If somebody is just in a situation
where they might have this downfall.
- [Phyllis] Oh yeah.
They might have the downfall or they committed it.
I remember case studies where there was
one woman who was admitted and then sterilized.
She was caught for prostitution.
Women who had illegitimate children,
and also the family history, they had family members
who were committed or receiving welfare from the states.
For some of these women, they were assaulted or raped.
And they were incarcerated while the men
may have gotten parole or may have gotten jail time,
but then sooner or later they would be released.
- Which is a reason why I'm kind of amazed
that the suffragists would support these laws
'cause they're so unfair.
- Yes, and it's also, you know, one of my professors
said that class trumps gender.
These women, these suffragists and other women too,
they were from the middle to upper classes.
They supported eugenics too, even though
they were of the same gender.
It's like, "Well, I'm keeping my piety.
"Why aren't they?"
Or something like that.
- [Norman] Yes.
- They must be defective. That was the attitude--
- [Norman] "I can do it, why can't they?" - Right, right.
They must be defective.
Why would you give yourself away?
Why would you prostitute?
There's something wrong mentally with you.
- So something as simple as one instance of being
apprehended in a saloon with a man--
- [Phyllis] Yes.
- would get an individual into this Northern Colony
automatically subject to sterilization?
- Unfortunately, there was women from other institutions
who were transferred to Northern Colony to get sterilized.
Some of these women were in institutions
for a number of years, lived in their young lives
an institutionalized life.
With that, they have to go before the judge
'cause the judge can, they're the only ones
who can order their incarceration.
- [Norman] Right.
They can go before the judge and have the "witnesses"
come forward and "she did this, she did that."
According to where she was in her community, her status,
maybe she was a woman of bad repute
that the judge can, and it depended on the judge
and whether or not they knew of this program.
And probably most of them did.
Women were incarcerated or admitted
from all over the state.
So it's like this is where you need to be.
I'm going to send you to the Northern Colony.
- Let's follow this. - [Phyllis] Yeah.
- It's not hypothetical.
But we don't necessarily know everything
about her subsequent history.
- [Phyllis] Yeah.
- But this woman, arrested for being in a saloon with a man.
- [Phyllis] Right.
- We'll say 1914 or so.
And sentenced to incarceration by a judge.
- [Phyllis] Yes.
- Then somebody decides that she should go--
- [Phyllis] Right. - to the Northern Colony.
- Right, and so she's transferred
to the Northern Colony from probably the county jail.
Once she is there, they do examine her.
They are given an intelligence test.
Then they are put into, or placed into a cottage.
What happens then, if they are
a candidate for sterilization, how that's determined
is the sterilization committee.
That is made up of the superintendents,
the alienist which was, now we call him a psychiatrist.
- [Norman] (laughs) Alienist.
- Yes, and a medical doctor.
They would look at the case and probably interview her.
For a woman to go before a judge,
and having this exposed, or whatever,
and then having this shame, this past coming up again
for her, and then losing one's fertility,
it was just, what the women went through.
- [Norman] But-- - [Phyllis] Yeah, yes.
- she would have to though, she would have to go
through the sterilization in order to get out
of the colony, in order for her to be released?
- Yes, and so yeah.
- It just kind of reminds me of the way the
Humane Society is today.
But then, how long would she be in this colony
typically, sterilized or otherwise?
- The average time, I did calculate the average time of.
I think it was five to ten years.
- [Norman] Five to ten years?
- Yes, yes.
- Whether she'd been sterilized or not?
Or how did that work?
- The thing is, the average age of sterilization
was 21 years old for a woman.
So they could be sterilized.
And that was in the admission books that I examined,
they would have the date of the sterilization.
Then they would stay for a period of time
and then be paroled or discharged.
Some of them escaped.
Then so many years later, it could be
that someone just enters into that admission book
"Discharged from the State Board of Control."
So whether that was an actual discharge
or they just wrote it in just to close the case,
who knows?
- What was the actual sterilization procedure?
We have this operating room scene here.
- [Phyllis] Yes.
- [Norman] What did they actually do?
- [Phyllis] It was called a salpingectomy.
- [Norman] Salpingectomy.
- [Phyllis] Yes.
That was the cutting of the Fallopian tubes,
I believe it was, yes.
That was the main method.
- [Norman] And that would have been irreversible?
- [Phyllis] Right.
- Okay, so five to ten years in this Northern Colony.
- [Phyllis] Yes.
- Was it there was a mix of genders at this colony?
- [Phyllis] Yes, there was.
- There was.
- It was for the most part equal number of men
and an equal number of women who were at the colony.
- What did they do for their five to ten years?
- They did according to what society
would have men and women do.
Men were in the workshop.
They would be trained to do woodwork
or trained to repair shoes or work in agricultural
because they had their own farm there too
at the institution.
So they would be doing that.
The women would be in home domesticity
where they would be trained to wait tables
or they would be trained to
wash dishes and to cook, to sew.
- [Norman] Was it regardless of what their profession
may have been before they went in?
They were just kind of funneled through
this sort of job training program?
- [Phyllis] Yes, yes.
Especially that really took off in the 1920s with Dr. Beier.
He very much believed in that type of rehabilitation.
- Do we have a sense of any case studies in terms of
how these people did after they were released
from the Northern Colony?
Was this something that they would have
on their resume, that would make it
perhaps more difficult for them to get employment?
- I think they were placed.
I have read that they were placed
in different areas of employment.
But very much once they were paroled or discharged,
they didn't check up on them.
- [Norman] They weren't tracked.
- They didn't keep track with them.
They didn't.
Throughout this research, I found very little voice
on account of the inmates' parts about it.
- Oh really?
Then there really wasn't any record,
any memoirs, any letters--
- [Phyllis] No. - from the--
- [Phyllis] Not that I could find, no.
- inmates, if we can call them that?
- There was one that I found where a woman was sterilized.
She was discharged.
I think it was in the 1940s.
This was maybe ten to 15 years later.
She got married during that time.
And she wrote a letter back to,
she wrote a letter to the Northern Colony.
It was like, I think I was sterilized.
I'm married now, and I wanted to have children.
But I can't.
And I wanted to know exactly what happened
when I was there.
- Oh, to know-- - [Phyllis] Yes.
- whether it could be reversed or not.
- Yeah, and it was just, to go back a little bit,
she was from the Southern Colony.
There was a Southern Colony in Union Grove.
They also transferred their inmates
to the Northern Colony to be sterilized.
Then they would be transferred back,
and then eventually be discharged or paroled.
And she was a Southern Colony inmate.
'Cause she was sterilized at the Northern Colony,
she wrote to the superintendent of the Northern Colony.
The superintendent's response was,
how I interpret it as rather terse,
was, "You were a Southern Colony inmate.
"You need to write to them. Thank you."
- Even though it was done up here.
- Yes, yes, yeah.
You need to write to them about this.
Sincerely, and that was it.
I did look up that particular patient
that they did have records of her sterilization.
They could have given her information.
For whatever reason, he just decided not to deal with it.
- We have some, I'll call them "domestic" scenes
here from the Northern Colony.
- [Phyllis] Sure, yes.
- [Norman] And some of the occupational training.
This, again, let's see, represents probably some
occupational training for men, that we're looking at here?
Or are we getting--
- We're looking at women who are being trained in sewing.
That was the sewing room.
- [Norman] The sewing room.
- [Phyllis] Very much the woman's world back then.
That was a culturally-appropriate thing
for a woman to be trained in.
And so that's how they were.
Sort of transgressing against society
by being promiscuous or being free in that way,
whatever they wanted to do, it's like,
"No, you can't do that" and "You have to do this."
This is what women do.
- This is another scene that would
be exactly as you would expect actually--
- [Phyllis] Right.
- [Norman] For a job training for a woman--
- [Phyllis] Yes. - [Norman] At this time.
That's kind of the kitchen work.
- [Phyllis] Yeah, kitchen work, very much so.
- [Norman] Then there's another one here too--
- [Phyllis] That was-- - [Norman] Which is similar.
- [Phyllis] Yeah, and that was serving people.
If they were going to be a waitress
or if they were in somebody's home
and they would be serving them.
- Do we have a sense of totals?
How many people were sterilized in Wisconsin
over what period of time?
- That's interesting because I didn't find
a consistent number.
I know it was over 1,800 people.
And about 80% of them were women.
- We still have very little record though
of what became of these people
and what the experience was like for them.
- Right, yes.
- Here's one more occupational--
- [Phyllis] That would be-- - [Norman] Scene.
- [Phyllis] Yeah, and I know the previous picture was sewing.
This is more needlework too that they could do and sell
or work for somebody else.
They would know that precise needlework to do that.
- Do you have a sense, Phyllis, of how many states,
by the time we're full force in Wisconsin
with eugenics, how many other states
had laws, similar ones?
- Up to about 30 states had eugenics sterilization laws.
Yes, and California sterilized, over the 20th Century,
over 20,000 men and women.
They were number one in total sterilizations.
And Wisconsin is ranked eighth.
- This goes out till what period of time this goes on?
- The majority of eugenic sterilization laws,
most of them were repealed in the 1970s.
Most of the states stopped sterilizing
men and women in 1963.
- Specifically that date, why?
- That year, yeah.
Yeah, that was very peculiar.
It's like, okay, why all of a sudden in 1963?
Unfortunately, I never found that document
that said, "We stopped sterilization because...".
- But the repeals of the laws?
There must be some documentation for that.
- For epileptics, I know that the sterilization law,
Wisconsin, when it came to epileptics,
that was repealed in 1955.
Of course, they had the medical studies that came out--
- [Norman] Right.
- that this isn't genetic and it's treatable now.
And they can live productive lives.
So that was repealed.
A couple of factors that I found,
one was that now medical authorities,
like the American Medical Association
and the American Neurological Association
came out with a year's worth of studies.
This started in the 1950s to the early 1960s.
They were publishing these studies
where mental defectiveness wasn't inheritable.
There's no real solid evidence of this.
And they were questioning the legality of doing this.
- Well I was wondering about that
when this came up earlier in our conversation,
- [Phyllis] Yes.
- this reference to possible court cases.
You would think with these laws in the books
from 1907, 1913, for decades that
there would have been some.
- There was the Buck versus Bell.
That is the famous United States Supreme Court case
where the sterilization law, where was that,
in West Virginia, that Carrie Buck was sterilized.
Then after that happened, she brought suit
against the state.
It eventually went to the United States Supreme Court.
And they upheld the sterilization law.
- [Norman] Oh, did they?
Yes, they did.
- What as their reasoning?
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
the famous quote, "Three imbeciles,"
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
You had legislatures here.
You had judges here and judges in other states
that supported eugenics.
You had the United States Supreme Court
upholding that too.
And they believed in the eugenic theory back then.
That was in the, I think, late 1920s.
After that, there was a spike in sterilizations
because, oh, this is a constitutional--
- Protected by the United States Constitution.
- Yeah, yeah, right.
But in Wisconsin, it did rise, but not to a point,
it seemed like they wanted to be under the radar
and not get too much attention with what they were doing
because of the liability factor.
They wanted to protect the physicians
who were performing the sterilizations too.
- Was there any kind of, as we get later into this process
of sterilization-- - [Phyllis] Yeah.
- was there any kind of political consciousness,
social consciousness movement that would say,
I mean, we already know that the science was no good.
I mean that comes out later. - [Phyllis] Right.
- But what about just the whole ethics of it?
Is that questioned on any kind of systematic way?
The ethics of that, yes, because if it's not,
if studies are showing that this eugenic theory is just,
it's going to be disputed or it's not,
it's pseudoscience, then the ethics, the coercion,
you can't be discharged unless you're sterilized,
that very much is going to be questioned.
That was even more so in the 1960s in this state
with Frederick Kessler, our representative that introduced
a law to repeal the sterilization law.
I found it surprising that back then
it was the State Board of Control
and I think it was the State Department of Public Welfare.
I can't remember all the name changes.
But they really fought that.
It was in the legislature for a long time
to repeal that law.
It seemed like they were holding on to a fact that this,
what they were doing was right or ethic,
being ethical and defending themselves.
- I would suppose, science notwithstanding,
it would be hard to demonstrate a return
on this kind of investment in terms of
how can you demonstrate that--
- [Phyllis] Right, and that was--
- society is somehow better
for having sterilized all these people.
- And I wrote that at the end of my article.
It hasn't been proven.
It's not like they went back as like,
okay, has the human gene pool improved because of this?
It's like why have this program in the first place?
- There must be still-- - [Phyllis] Yeah.
- some thousands of people in Wisconsin,
hundreds of people, at least in Wisconsin,
who went through-- - [Phyllis] Sure, yeah.
- this process and they're-- - [Phyllis] Still alive, yes.
- just not talking about it?
- No, after the publication of the article,
I didn't hear of anyone coming forward to say anything.
Especially with, there was some,
well a lot of national attention at the time
with North Carolina, where especially African Americans
came forward and said, "We were sterilized.
"We were coerced."
Back in the 1950s and into the 1960s, and that's,
they wanted, I can't think of the right word,
but some sort of--
- [Norman] Like restitution?
- Restitution, yes, restitution from
the State of North Carolina.
- Have all the states then, all these 30 states
repealed the laws by now?
- I'm not sure about that.
I know that some states have,
of course North Carolina, Indiana, Wisconsin.
I would think they would have, yeah.
- Probably a chapter that's-- - [Phyllis] Yes.
- pretty well closed in-- - [Phyllis] Yes, yes.
- American health history.
- Very much so.
- Well Phyllis Reske, thank you for joining me
for the University Place Presents.
- Oh, thank you very much.
- [Norman] And telling us about this
chapter of Wisconsin history.
- Yeah, well thank you for having me.
- I'm Norman Gilliland, and I hope you can join me
next time around for University Place Presents.