Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Recently on the show, we talked about Ellen
Speaker 1: Swallow Richards, and one of the things that came up
Speaker 1: in that episode was the eugenics movement. The eugenics movement
Speaker 1: has come up several times on the show over the
Speaker 1: last year or so, and every time we've tried to
Speaker 1: give kind of a straightforward but also very brief explanation
Speaker 1: of what that movement was all about. But that is
Speaker 1: really not something you can just be through or nuanced
Speaker 1: about in a couple of sentences. We do have a
Speaker 1: whole episode about this, though, which came out on August nine,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, and it is Today's Saturday Classic. One of
Speaker 1: the things we talk about in this episode is people
Speaker 1: being pressured or coerced into sterilization. After forced sterilization programs
Speaker 1: were generally ended in the US, there have been additional
Speaker 1: allegations of this in the years since we recorded this episode,
Speaker 1: including in twenty twenty when migrant women who were held
Speaker 1: by ice at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia
Speaker 1: reported that they had been given hysterectomies or other invasive
Speaker 1: procedures without their full knowledge or consent. We usually say
Speaker 1: enjoy at the end of this intro, but this episode
Speaker 1: involves just a particularly infuriating and upsetting period of history,
Speaker 1: So instead we hope your day is going well. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production of iHeartRadio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Frying. Several episodes of our show have touched
Speaker 1: on the Progressive era in the United States and the
Speaker 1: span from the late nineteenth into the early twentieth centuries.
Speaker 1: The Progressive era was really focused on trying to make
Speaker 1: society better and to counteract the downsides of industrialization and
Speaker 1: urbanization and rapid growth. So just as examples, we've talked
Speaker 1: about people like Atoms, known as the mother of social work,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about movements for women's suffrage, temperance, and
Speaker 1: organized labor. And the temperance movement did lead to prohibition,
Speaker 1: which was a spectacular failure. But other than that, these
Speaker 1: episodes have generally talked about overall positive reforms and education
Speaker 1: and public health and workplace safety, human rights. But the
Speaker 1: Progressive era also had a focus on making humanity better
Speaker 1: through eugenics coined by English anthropologists Sir Francis Galton in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three. Eugenics began with positive eugenics, and this
Speaker 1: was encouraging the people who were considered the healthiest and
Speaker 1: the most intelligent to have more children for the betterment
Speaker 1: of the species. But in a few countries, including the
Speaker 1: United States, the focus turned toward negative eugenics, or stopping
Speaker 1: people who were considered not as good from reproducing, spurred
Speaker 1: by the same fears and prejudices, and societal issue is
Speaker 1: that we're driving the progressive movement in general. The eugenics
Speaker 1: movement in the United States focused on identifying, sequestering, and
Speaker 1: even sterilizing people who were deemed to be unfit. So
Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about a family who became
Speaker 1: a case study for the eugenics movement, purportedly providing evidence
Speaker 1: for the idea that feeble mindedness was an inherited trait
Speaker 1: and that it would be best to keep people who
Speaker 1: had that trait from reproducing. This family is known as
Speaker 1: the Calikas. And just as a note, a lot of
Speaker 1: the language that was used to talk about disability at
Speaker 1: this time was insulting. And we're going to be reading
Speaker 1: from and referring to a bunch of material. It's just offensive.
Speaker 1: So anytime we say feeble minded or unfit or similar
Speaker 1: words like that's in air quotes. These are not real
Speaker 1: things to describe people, right. Also, heads up, it's a
Speaker 1: little loggy. It's a little longer than normal. So you're
Speaker 1: one of the runners who listens and new time your
Speaker 1: run to the episode. If you go the whole way,
Speaker 1: you've gone too far. Probably so, and that's probably the
Speaker 1: last jesty thing you'll hear in this episode. Yeah, yeah. So.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twelve, the McMillan Company published a book by
Speaker 1: Henry Herbert Goddard, director of the Research Laboratory at the
Speaker 1: Vineland Training School for Backward and feeble minded Children in Vineland,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. It was called the Calikak Family, a Study
Speaker 1: in the Heredity of feeble Mindedness. It was just one
Speaker 1: in a whole genre of literature called eugenic family studies.
Speaker 1: The first book in this genre was The Jukes, A
Speaker 1: Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity, and this book
Speaker 1: was by Richard Dugdale. Dougdale's study came about after he
Speaker 1: visited the Ulster County Jail in New York and learned
Speaker 1: that six people who were incarcerated there were related to
Speaker 1: each other. Looking into it further, Dugdale found more family
Speaker 1: members who had arrests and convictions on their records, and
Speaker 1: he traced more of the lineage all the way back
Speaker 1: to a woman that he dubbed Margaret, the Mother of Criminals.
Speaker 1: He found forty two connected families, with five hundred forty
Speaker 1: of their seven hundred nine members blood relatives. According to
Speaker 1: Dugdale's estimate, their combined criminal proceedings, social assistance, and healthcare
Speaker 1: had cost a total of about one point three million dollars.
Speaker 1: A second book by Arthur H. Estabrook at the Eugenics
Speaker 1: Record Office came out in nineteen fifteen, and this traced
Speaker 1: another two thousand, one hundred eleven family members who he
Speaker 1: described as rife with quote feeble mindedness, indolence, licentiousness, and dishonesty,
Speaker 1: and costing taxpayers about two million dollars. Goddard's study of
Speaker 1: the Calikaks followed Dugdale's original book on the Jukes, and
Speaker 1: like Jukes, Calicak was pseudonym was a portmanteau of the
Speaker 1: Greek words callos for beauty and cacos for bad According
Speaker 1: to Goddard's account, Deborah Calicac had been born in an
Speaker 1: almshouse and had arrived at the Vinolin School at the
Speaker 1: age of eight. Her mother had been through a convoluted
Speaker 1: series of relationships and marriages and had given birth to
Speaker 1: several children, both in and out of wedlock, and according
Speaker 1: to Goddard, no man in her life was willing to
Speaker 1: support the young Deborah. Goddard maintained that from her admission
Speaker 1: at the school in October eighteen ninety seven until nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: when he was compiling his study, Deborah had never tested
Speaker 1: above the age of nine on an intelligence scale. He
Speaker 1: described her as quote a high grade feeble minded person,
Speaker 1: the kind of wayward delinquent who quote fills our reformatories,
Speaker 1: generally causing trouble and creating a burden on society. So
Speaker 1: feeble minded was a catch all term used at the
Speaker 1: time to describe people who were, in one way or
Speaker 1: another behind their peers. It included everything from mental illnesses
Speaker 1: to disabilities and disorders that were noticeable but not necessarily severe.
Speaker 1: A person described as feeble minded might be able to
Speaker 1: take care of their own day to day needs while
Speaker 1: struggling with social interactions or academic skills or physical skills
Speaker 1: was considered to be a precise, medically and scientifically sound
Speaker 1: description at the time, but it is definitely not one
Speaker 1: we would use today to describe a disability, disorder, or condition.
Speaker 1: Goddard also coined a new word to describe people who
Speaker 1: fit this definition. That word was moron, defined as one
Speaker 1: who is lacking in intelligence, one who is deficient in
Speaker 1: judgment or sense, and like feeble minded, moron was adopted
Speaker 1: as an actual clinical term. Goddard claimed he had traced
Speaker 1: Deborah's ancestry all the way back to her great great
Speaker 1: great grandfather, who he dubbed Martin Calikak Senior. Martin Senior
Speaker 1: was described as having fathered a child with an unnamed
Speaker 1: feeble minded barmaid, Deborah's great great great grandmother. This barmaid's
Speaker 1: descendants were a family of quote an appalling amount of defectiveness.
Speaker 1: But then Martin Senior turned his life around and married
Speaker 1: a quote respectable girl of good family. His descendants from
Speaker 1: this marriage were, in Goddard's words, quote respectable citizens, men
Speaker 1: and women prominent in every phase of life. As printed
Speaker 1: in the book, the Calicac Lineage with its beautiful half
Speaker 1: and its bad half was accompanied by family trees emblazoned
Speaker 1: with ends and f's for normal and feeble minded, with
Speaker 1: ends in white and f's in black, along with notations
Speaker 1: of which ones were sexually immoral, insane, syphilitic, or criminalistic.
Speaker 1: All of these are words that God used, and the
Speaker 1: results are striking. One half of the tree, depicting the
Speaker 1: descendants of Martin Senior's children with the upstanding Quaker woman
Speaker 1: he married, is full of quote normal people flawlessly white,
Speaker 1: and then the other half, depicting the descendants of Martin's
Speaker 1: son with the unnamed barmaid, is dotted all over with
Speaker 1: black f's, with notations of undesirable traits all over the place.
Speaker 1: There are also photographs both of Deborah in her day
Speaker 1: to day life and of the bad Calikacs and their homes.
Speaker 1: The photos of Deborah are clearly posed, and they show
Speaker 1: an attractive young woman in a variety of day to
Speaker 1: day scenarios. The photos of the other Calikacs look like
Speaker 1: they could have inspired the X Files episode Home. The
Speaker 1: buildings are all very ramshackle, the people's postuous slouchy, and
Speaker 1: the facial expressions and features are oddly atypical, and Goddard's
Speaker 1: words quote, how do we account for this kind of individual?
Speaker 1: The answer is, in a word, heredity bad stock. We
Speaker 1: must recognize that the human family shows varying stocks or
Speaker 1: strains that are marked and that breed as true as
Speaker 1: anything in plant or animal life. Citing Gregor Mendel's theories
Speaker 1: on hereditary traits, Goddard goes on to advocate that normal,
Speaker 1: healthy society keep the feeble minded from breeding and spreading
Speaker 1: their inherited deficiencies. He suggests a combination of segregation into
Speaker 1: institutions or colonies and sterilization. We will talk about the
Speaker 1: colossal influence of this book. After a quick sponsor break,
Speaker 1: the Calikak Family, A Study in the Heredity of Feeble Mindedness,
Speaker 1: became enormously influential. It was an immediate bestseller and was
Speaker 1: reprinted more than ten times between nineteen twelve and nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine. Although the book did have some critics, a
Speaker 1: number of academic journals, including the American Journal of Psychology
Speaker 1: and the Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law
Speaker 1: and Criminology, gave it glowingly positive reviews. Both Calikak and
Speaker 1: Juke became slang terms for people thought of as unintelligent,
Speaker 1: backward and inbread. The book's conclusions were also widely accepted
Speaker 1: as scientific truth, and this was in spite of this
Speaker 1: admission printed in its introduction quote, it is true that
Speaker 1: we have made rather dogmatic statements and have drawn conclusions
Speaker 1: that do not seem scientifically warranted from the data. We
Speaker 1: have done this because it seems necessary to make these
Speaker 1: statements and conclusions for the benefit of the lay reader.
Speaker 1: Soon the Calikaks were being cited in mainstream biology and
Speaker 1: psychology textbooks. If you've heard our podcast on the Scopes trial,
Speaker 1: you might recall that we read from a civic biology
Speaker 1: presented in Problems, and that was the widely used biology
Speaker 1: textbook that was part of that case. Chapter seventeen of
Speaker 1: the nineteen fourteen edition, titled Heredity Variation, Plant and Animal Breeding,
Speaker 1: explains the term eugenics before discussing both the Calikas and
Speaker 1: the Jukes. It basically boils down the idea of eugenics
Speaker 1: to the science of being well born. In its discussion
Speaker 1: of the Jukes, the book mentions Margaret, mother of Criminals,
Speaker 1: the more than one million dollar tax cost to the
Speaker 1: state of New York and the large number of quote
Speaker 1: feeble minded, alcoholic, immoral, or criminal persons that were purportedly
Speaker 1: in the family. It then moves on to the Calikax quote.
Speaker 1: This family has been traced back to the War of
Speaker 1: the Revolution, when a young soldier named Martin Calikax seduced
Speaker 1: a feeble minded girl. She had a feeble minded son,
Speaker 1: from whom there have been to the present time four
Speaker 1: hundred eighty descendants. Of these, thirty three were sexually immoral,
Speaker 1: for confirmed drunkards, three epileptics, and one hundred forty three
Speaker 1: feeble minded. The man who started this terrible line of
Speaker 1: immorality and feeble mindedness later married a normal Quaker girl.
Speaker 1: From this couple, a line of four hundred ninety six
Speaker 1: descendants have come with no cases of feeble mindedness. The
Speaker 1: evidence and the moral speak for themselves. A civic biology
Speaker 1: goes on to say that if people were animals, we
Speaker 1: would probably just quote kill them off to prevent them
Speaker 1: from spreading. It goes on to explain, quote humanity will
Speaker 1: not allow this, but we do have the remedy of
Speaker 1: separating the sexes and asylums or other places, and in
Speaker 1: various ways preventing intermarriage. And the possibilities of perpetuating such
Speaker 1: a low and degenerate race. Through the Calikak family and
Speaker 1: other books and propaganda, the idea that defective people needed
Speaker 1: to be kept from breeding became common knowledge, and in
Speaker 1: the early decades of the twentieth century, more than thirty
Speaker 1: states passed laws allowing and regulating the involuntary sterilization of
Speaker 1: people who were deemed to be feeble minded or otherwise unfit.
Speaker 1: Often sterilization involved a vas ectomy or tubal ligation, but
Speaker 1: could also be as involved as a total hysterectomy. Many
Speaker 1: of these laws were patterned after a model law drafted
Speaker 1: by Harry H. Laughlin of the Eugenics Record Office at
Speaker 1: cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, who was one of Goddard's colleagues
Speaker 1: within the eugenics movement. Goddard himself consulted with states on
Speaker 1: their eugenics laws as well. Basically, states kept passing laws
Speaker 1: that were not being upheld in court, and so these
Speaker 1: guys got together to draft a law that would be
Speaker 1: upheld as constitutional. In nineteen twenty seven, one of these
Speaker 1: laws made its way to the Supreme Court in Buck
Speaker 1: versus Bell Carry Buck had been committed to the Virginia
Speaker 1: Colony for epileptics and feeble minded, and she was sterilized there. Carrie,
Speaker 1: her mother, and her daughter were all described as feeble minded,
Speaker 1: and Carrie and her mother were both described as immoral
Speaker 1: and promiscuous because they had had children out of wedlock.
Speaker 1: The Calikak family was entered into evidence in this case.
Speaker 1: Harry H. Laughlin provided expert testimony. Doctor Esterbrook, the one
Speaker 1: who revised the study of the Jukes family, did as well.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court found for Jenia's eugenics law to be
Speaker 1: constitutional and upheld it, with the opinion authored by Oliver
Speaker 1: Wendell Holmes, Junior, including the sentence quote three generations of
Speaker 1: imbeciles are enough. Involuntary sterilizations were also being performed on
Speaker 1: people convicted of crimes, but this generally ended after the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruled in Skinner versus Oklahoma in nineteen forty two.
Speaker 1: States had been sterilizing people convicted of some felonies but
Speaker 1: not others, and the Court ruled that this was a
Speaker 1: violation of the Fourteenth Amendments Equal Protection clause. But Buck
Speaker 1: versus Bell has never been overturned, meaning that the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court never officially reversed its decision on sterilization of people
Speaker 1: who were not convicted of a crime. Involuntary sterilizations of
Speaker 1: supposedly unfit people continued in the United States until the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, at which point at least sixty thousand people
Speaker 1: had been involuntarily sterilized, predominantly women. While there have been
Speaker 1: calls for reparations, North Carolina is the only state so
Speaker 1: far to pass legislation to do so. The idea of
Speaker 1: keeping bloodlines free from the taint of feeble mindedness also
Speaker 1: went hand in hand with the idea of keeping white
Speaker 1: bloodlines racially pure. Many of the same people who helped
Speaker 1: states write eugenics laws relating to the unfit also worked
Speaker 1: on legislation to protect white racial purity at the state
Speaker 1: and national level. For example, Harry H. Laughlin was a
Speaker 1: huge proponent of the Immigration Restriction Act of nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: which set quotas on immigration based on how many people
Speaker 1: already in the United States hailed from a particular place,
Speaker 1: so it allowed the most immigration from nations that were
Speaker 1: already the most similar to white Americans, which was Northwest
Speaker 1: Europe that allowed almost no immigration from Africa and barred
Speaker 1: immigration from Asia entirely. The Immigration Act was also influenced
Speaker 1: by Henry H. Goddard's work at Ellis Island, where he
Speaker 1: had set up an intelligence testing center to evaluate incoming
Speaker 1: immigrants and turn away the ones deemed insufficient in the nineteenteens.
Speaker 1: In his work intelligence classification of immigrants of different nationalities,
Speaker 1: he claimed that forty percent of immigrants were feeble minded,
Speaker 1: including eighty three percent of Jews, seventy nine percent of Italians,
Speaker 1: eighty percent of Hungarians, and eighty seven percent of Russians.
Speaker 1: These evaluations began with one tester identifying probable cases by
Speaker 1: sight and then referring the people she spotted to her
Speaker 1: colleague for an assessment. Goddard employed women for this purpose
Speaker 1: because he thought their intuition was better for it. As
Speaker 1: another example, Harry H. Laughlin also helped draft Virginia's Racial
Speaker 1: Integrity Act of nineteen twenty four, which defined race according
Speaker 1: to the one drop rule, meaning that anyone who had
Speaker 1: one drop of African or Native American blood was considered
Speaker 1: black or Native American by law. The only exception was
Speaker 1: for people who were one sixteenth or less Native American,
Speaker 1: and this exception was to allow prominent Virginians purportedly descended
Speaker 1: from Pocahontas to still be considered legally white. This act
Speaker 1: also prohibited into racial marriage, and there is more on
Speaker 1: it in our two part podcast on Loving Versus Virginia
Speaker 1: from twenty thirteen. In addition to the sterilizations of the
Speaker 1: unfit that were codified in state's eugenics laws, there were
Speaker 1: also involuntary and coerced sterilizations of poor people and racial
Speaker 1: and ethnic minorities, including Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and African Americans,
Speaker 1: stretching all the way into the nineteen seventies. Because these
Speaker 1: were not conducted under any particular law or official program,
Speaker 1: the exact numbers are harder to estimate. In many cases,
Speaker 1: these sterilizations were performed in conjunction with other procedures and
Speaker 1: without the patient's knowledge. This practice was so prevalent in
Speaker 1: the South that it was nicknamed a Mississippi appendectomy that
Speaker 1: was either coined or popularized by Fanny Lew Hamer, who
Speaker 1: is on the list for a future podcast episode. As
Speaker 1: with Buck versus Bell and the forced sterilizations of people
Speaker 1: considered unfit, cases regarding the forced or coerced sterilizations of
Speaker 1: minorities have also made their way through the courts. Two
Speaker 1: black teenagers, Mary Alice and many Relfh were sterilized without
Speaker 1: their parents' consent in nineteen seventy three. Their mother, who
Speaker 1: was not literate, had believed she was signing a consent
Speaker 1: form for birth control shots, and when the case made headlines,
Speaker 1: many more black and Native American women began coming forward
Speaker 1: with similar allegations. In his opinion on Ralph versus Weinberger,
Speaker 1: Judge Gerhard Guessel of the U. S. District Court for
Speaker 1: the District of Columbia wrote that federal programs had funded
Speaker 1: the sterilization of one hundred thousand to one hundred fifty
Speaker 1: thousand low income women during the previous few years. He
Speaker 1: went on quote, although Congress has been insistent that all
Speaker 1: family planning programs function on a purely voluntary basis, there
Speaker 1: is uncontroverted evidence in the record that miners and other
Speaker 1: incompetence have been sterilized with federal funds, and that an
Speaker 1: indefinite number of poor people have been improperly coerced into
Speaker 1: accepting a sterilization operation under the threat various federally supported
Speaker 1: welfare benefits would be withdrawn unless they submitted to irreversible sterilization.
Speaker 1: In another case, Madrigal versus Quilligan was a class action
Speaker 1: lawsuit with ten plaintiffs who alleged that Los Angeles County
Speaker 1: USC Medical Center had either coerced or misled them into
Speaker 1: being sterilized during a cesarean section, with the option being
Speaker 1: presented to them after hours of difficult labor. Nearly one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty Spanish speaking women had come forward with
Speaker 1: similar allegations. In nineteen seventy eight, Judge Jesse W. Curtis
Speaker 1: ruled in favor of the hospital, calling it quote a
Speaker 1: breakdown in communications between the patients and the doctors, and
Speaker 1: although the plaintiffs didn't win in this case, it did
Speaker 1: ultimately lead to laws requiring Spanish speaking staff to explain
Speaker 1: procedures and obtain consent from Spanish speaking patients. Coerced sterilizations
Speaker 1: have also continued well beyond the nineteen seventies. Buck versus
Speaker 1: Bell was cited as precedent in the two thousand and
Speaker 1: one case Vaughan versus Utz, heard in the Eighth Circuit Court,
Speaker 1: in which a social service worker at a hospital coerced
Speaker 1: a woman who had been diagnosed with a mild intellectual
Speaker 1: disability into getting a tubal ligation by telling her that
Speaker 1: it would help her regain custody of her children. A
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen report by the Center for Investigative Reporting detailed
Speaker 1: the sterilizations of at least one hundred forty eight incarcerated
Speaker 1: women in California prisons, which had been performed without the
Speaker 1: required state approvals, even though California banned forced sterilizations in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. Numerous women described being coerced and pressured
Speaker 1: into the procedure while incarcerated, and in July twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: news Channel five in Tennessee reported that General Sessions Judge
Speaker 1: Sam Benningfield allowed incarcerated people who either got of aasectomy
Speaker 1: or a contraceptive implant to get a thirty day credit
Speaker 1: towards jail time. Judge Benningfield rescinded this order on July
Speaker 1: twenty sixth after it made headlines. While the story of
Speaker 1: the Calikaks was just one part of the eugenics movement,
Speaker 1: the studies of the Calikaks, the Jukes, and other families
Speaker 1: were widely cited heavily used pieces of evidence of the
Speaker 1: eugenicists idea that it was better to keep so called
Speaker 1: defectives from breeding, and by extension, that sterilization could be
Speaker 1: used to help guarantee white racial purity, and the same
Speaker 1: people writing books about the Calikaks and the Jukes were
Speaker 1: actively working with lawmakers to create policies to do exactly that.
Speaker 1: The book's influence spread beyond the United States as well.
Speaker 1: A German language translation of The Calikak Family was printed
Speaker 1: in Germany in nineteen fourteen, and it was reprinted in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three. Germany's own eugenics law law for the
Speaker 1: Prevention of hereditarily Diseased Offspring, was passed in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: three as well, and was also based on Harry H.
Speaker 1: Lachlin's model law that was being used as a template
Speaker 1: in the United States. And it wasn't just a matter
Speaker 1: of Nazi Germany picking up and repurposing Lachlan's work. Lachlan
Speaker 1: actively corresponded with eugenicists in Germany, writing in one of
Speaker 1: his letters how pleased he was that Hitler understood that
Speaker 1: quote the central mission of all politics is race hygiene.
Speaker 1: In Nazi Germany, more than one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: Germans with disabilities were involuntarily sterilized under this eugenics law
Speaker 1: between nineteen thirty four and nineteen thirty nine. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, the focus shifted from sterilization to extermination, an
Speaker 1: eighty thousand disabled Germans were murdered in a little less
Speaker 1: than two years. It was only in the face of
Speaker 1: this atrocity that the eugenics movement in the United States
Speaker 1: started to fall out of favor, although the sterilizations that
Speaker 1: the movement had advocated have continued for decades. On top
Speaker 1: of being used to support policy that led to involuntary
Speaker 1: sterilizations and in Nazi Germany murders, much of the story
Speaker 1: of the Calikaks wasn't even true, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk more about that. After a sponsor break, Henry H.
Speaker 1: Goddard began publicly refuting his previous opinions about the quote
Speaker 1: feeble minded and eugenics, beginning in the late nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: and into the nineteen thirties. He made a number of
Speaker 1: public statements that his intelligence testing had been incorrect and
Speaker 1: that he had been wrong to believe that feeble minded
Speaker 1: people could not be educated, and that feeble minded people
Speaker 1: should be allowed to have children if they chose, and
Speaker 1: should not be segregated from the rest of society. But
Speaker 1: this reversal came too late to stop the eugenics movement,
Speaker 1: or even to change the life of the star of
Speaker 1: his most famous work, Deborah Calikak was really Emma Wolverton,
Speaker 1: and she really did arrive at the Violent School in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety seven at the age of eight, and it's
Speaker 1: not clear if there was a specific reason for her
Speaker 1: to be institutionalized. Although the book does seem to have
Speaker 1: embellished her mother's life in relationships, it's very likely that
Speaker 1: it boiled down to poverty. Even the wording in the
Speaker 1: book is really cage here quote on the plea that
Speaker 1: the child did not get along at school and might
Speaker 1: possibly be feeble minded. She gained admission to the training school,
Speaker 1: but by the time Goddard published The Calikak Family, the
Speaker 1: Violent School and Goddard himself were using Emma as an
Speaker 1: example of a success story for the school. In addition
Speaker 1: to being in the book, her picture and that pseudonym
Speaker 1: appear in the school's reports and fundraising materials as a
Speaker 1: shining example of their work. When she was transferred to
Speaker 1: a facility for adults across the street at the age
Speaker 1: of twenty five. Her quote acquisition was viewed as a
Speaker 1: success for them. A social worker described it this way.
Speaker 1: Quote Deborah at this time was a handsome young woman
Speaker 1: twenty five years old, with many accomplishments, though her academic
Speaker 1: progress had remained stationary, just beyond second grade. For our part,
Speaker 1: we knew we had acquired distinction in acquiring Deborah Calikak,
Speaker 1: for by this time the story of her pedigree was
Speaker 1: becoming well known, and such a capable, well trained, and
Speaker 1: good looking girl must be an asset in terms of
Speaker 1: well trained. Emma Wolverton was excellent at embroidery, woodworking, basketry,
Speaker 1: and gardening. She made and repaired costumes for the school plays,
Speaker 1: was in charge of the Violin School's kindergarten, and worked
Speaker 1: as a nurse's aide in the school's hospital. She also
Speaker 1: played the coronet beautifully. Was an avid reader and a
Speaker 1: devoted correspondent, and bred Persian cats and her adulthood. Visitors
Speaker 1: to her institution often mistook her for a staff member.
Speaker 1: She distinguished herself to the point that she was allowed
Speaker 1: to work for the Family of Violence. Superintendent along with
Speaker 1: others in the community. And to be clear, although working
Speaker 1: for the superintendent's family was framed as a privilege and
Speaker 1: a reward, all of this work was actually compulsory. It's
Speaker 1: difficult to diagnose historical figures who aren't alive to be examined,
Speaker 1: and this is even more difficult in Emma Wolverton's case,
Speaker 1: since her school records are often contradictory and the institutions
Speaker 1: caring for her had a vested self interest in people,
Speaker 1: simultaneously believing that she needed to be institutionalized while also
Speaker 1: demonstrating a success story in terms of what the institution
Speaker 1: could accomplish. But by cross referencing school records with witness accounts,
Speaker 1: modern research suggests that she probably had a learning disability.
Speaker 1: Whether she had a disability or what that disability was
Speaker 1: has no bearing on her worth as a human being.
Speaker 1: But it's clear that the institutions housing her were using
Speaker 1: her for their own ends, and that her portrayal in
Speaker 1: the book that made her famous was far from the truth.
Speaker 1: The photos of Emma will in the Calikak Family clearly
Speaker 1: served to show her as both a success and a warning.
Speaker 1: She's neatly dressed either shown in association with something productive
Speaker 1: like sewing or serving a meal, or with something considered intelligent,
Speaker 1: like reading a book. These are in contrast with the
Speaker 1: photos of the Calikacs in their homes, which are clearly
Speaker 1: meant to suggest something nefarious. The pictures of the other
Speaker 1: Calikacs have definitely been retouched, and there's some debate about
Speaker 1: whether that retouching served to deliberately exaggerate them or just
Speaker 1: to prepare them for publication. Regardless, the book is making
Speaker 1: a very clear implication and a very clear value judgment
Speaker 1: on all the Calikacs based on their physical appearance and
Speaker 1: their surroundings. It's that without the constant care, supervision, and
Speaker 1: custody in an institution, Emma Wolverton would have been just
Speaker 1: another degenerate living in a hovel, and without keeping her
Speaker 1: segregated from society, she would have just made more of them. However,
Speaker 1: that dichotomy between Emma Wolverton and the rest of the family,
Speaker 1: or between the families quote good and bad branches, just
Speaker 1: doesn't add up. The bad line of Martin Calikax Senior's
Speaker 1: descendants purportedly begins with Martin Junior. I was really John Wolverton.
Speaker 1: John Wolverton was the son of Gabriel Wolverton and Katherine Murray,
Speaker 1: but the Calikax study presents his father as a different
Speaker 1: John Wolverton, just thus the Martin Senior and Martin Junior.
Speaker 1: But according to a genealogy of the family that was
Speaker 1: published in the nineteen eighties, the second John Wolverton was
Speaker 1: not his father. They were second cousins, so the book's
Speaker 1: entire premise is not correct. In addition to the two
Speaker 1: John Wolverton's not being father and son, both parts of
Speaker 1: the family really had their share of troubles, as every
Speaker 1: family does. But Goddard and field worker Elizabeth S. Kite
Speaker 1: had set out to compile their study with the goal
Speaker 1: of finding a hereditary thread for feeble mindedness. So consciously
Speaker 1: or unconsciously, when piecing together the history of the family members,
Speaker 1: some of whom had long since died, they ignored evidence
Speaker 1: of people in the good line who they might have
Speaker 1: described as feeble minded, and they flagged people in the
Speaker 1: bad line based on just the thinnest of evidence. Claud
Speaker 1: of this was based on stuff like family gossip. They
Speaker 1: would very scientific, right, They would interview elderly family members
Speaker 1: about people on the other side of the family and
Speaker 1: folks would be like, oh, yeah, he was totally a drunk,
Speaker 1: so that person would be marked down as feeble minded,
Speaker 1: even though if you looked at things like tax records
Speaker 1: and property records, it seemed as though this person was
Speaker 1: like a landowner, not fothering anyone, perfectly living their life
Speaker 1: just fine. So in reality, going back to the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: the Wolverton's were overall not particularly affluent, but mostly self
Speaker 1: sufficient farmers living in rural New Jersey. In the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization led several of them to
Speaker 1: move from the country to Trenton and other cities. As
Speaker 1: with so many other people who moved from the country
Speaker 1: to the city during this time, they found themselves in
Speaker 1: an unfamiliar environment, with a totally different social structure and economy,
Speaker 1: and without a lot of resources or education. So when
Speaker 1: they lost jobs, as Emma's mother, for example, did, they
Speaker 1: no longer had an extended family network nearby to turn
Speaker 1: to for support, instead often winding up in jail or
Speaker 1: in a poorhouse. So this was definitely not something that
Speaker 1: could be explained by some kind of hereditary taint. Similarly,
Speaker 1: some of Arthur h Esterbrook's papers containing the Jukes family's
Speaker 1: real names were found in the early twenty first century,
Speaker 1: and it turned out that many of them were respected
Speaker 1: citizens of Ulster County, New York. Their existence had conveniently
Speaker 1: been ignored in Esterbrook's study. Emma Wolverton died at the
Speaker 1: age of eighty nine in nineteen seventy eight. She knew
Speaker 1: that she had been written about as Deborah Calcak, and
Speaker 1: that she had been used as a widely read and
Speaker 1: even famous example of a quote high grade feeble minded person.
Speaker 1: It's not really clear whether she knew that that depiction
Speaker 1: had been at the heart of the eugenics movement or
Speaker 1: what that had ultimately meant. She was offered the chance
Speaker 1: to leave the institution toward the end of her life,
Speaker 1: but she didn't feel that she could because at that
Speaker 1: point she developed severe arthritis and she really needed a
Speaker 1: lot of medical care. She spent the last year of
Speaker 1: her life in a hospital, and at the time of
Speaker 1: her death she had been institutionalized for eighty one years.
Speaker 1: I normally say something to wrap up here, but mostly
Speaker 1: this whole episode makes me incredibly angry. Yeah, Like it's
Speaker 1: the it's the magical combination, right of like a poorly
Speaker 1: executed biased science and I'm using the air quotes there
Speaker 1: used to one work this whole like superiority angle as
Speaker 1: well as really damaged the lives of people without their consent,
Speaker 1: and most of those people were women. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: even the more the positive eugenics angle that we referenced
Speaker 1: very briefly at the beginning of the show, Like even
Speaker 1: that is founded on the idea that some people are
Speaker 1: better than others, and that the better people should have
Speaker 1: the most babies, which, like that might sound okkay at
Speaker 1: a surface level, but pretty quickly falls apart when you
Speaker 1: think about, like who's deciding who is worthy of having
Speaker 1: right more babies. My mom worked with people with a
Speaker 1: range of disabilities for a lot of her career, and
Speaker 1: it's like there are definitely complicated moral and ethical questions
Speaker 1: when people are capable of having a child but genuinely
Speaker 1: not necessarily capable of taking care of a child. Right,
Speaker 1: These conversations do not include things like telling a woman
Speaker 1: if she has her tubes tied, she can get her
Speaker 1: kids back, right that nothing like that. Yeah, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode
Speaker 1: is out of the archive, if you heard an email
Speaker 1: address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the
Speaker 1: course of the show that could be obsolete now. Our
Speaker 1: current email address is History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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