The Long Shadow of Eugenics in America

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/magazine/eugenics-movement-america.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/4awDR

I keep a sepia-tone photograph of the Relf sisters folded up and tucked in my wallet. It’s from a 1973 issue of Ebony magazine. The older of the two sisters, Minnie Lee, stares hard at the camera, her gaze direct and unsmiling but pleasant, almost quizzical. Her hair is freshly pressed, hot-curled and brushed into place, making her look older than 14. In a clean white dress with lacy zigzags, she seems ready for Sunday school. Her left arm is draped around her baby sister, Mary Alice, age 12, anchoring her in place. The younger Relf sister cracks a big, playful smile, her hair in braids — and not the usual three unruly braids from other pictures of the sisters during this time. Instead they are pinned down, neat and tidy for the Ebony shoot. The bottom of Mary Alice’s schoolgirl dress is hiked up as she reaches up to rest her right arm, the one that’s not fully formed, a disability she was born with, on her sister’s shoulder.

That same picture lay on the passenger seat of my rental car in February 2020 as I turned into the Westport Apartments, a cluster of brick homes situated behind a strip mall near the Mobile Highway in south Montgomery, Ala. When I knocked on the door of the Relfs’ home — a cramped single-story apartment that looks like all the others in the public-housing complex — Mary Alice yanked it open with a big smile, the same one in that picture from 49 years ago. She pulled me into the house and said something I didn’t quite understand, though after spending time with her, I would come to better comprehend what on that day was a raspy collection of sounds, resulting from a speech impediment and an intellectual disability that make communication difficult for her.
This article is adapted from “Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation,” published this month by Doubleday.

On that afternoon, Minnie Lee sat resting her elbows on their dining-room table, which was covered with glass to keep it from getting scratched. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t stand up for you,” she said politely, pointing down to her right foot. It was in a bulky gray cast. While reaching for a can of string beans in her kitchen cabinet the week before, she lost her balance and fractured it in three places.

Mary Alice pulled a chair close to her sister, so they were nestled next to each other as in the Ebony photo and nearly every other photo of the Relf sisters. They are now 61 and 63; looking at them pressed together as though attached, I could still see the faces of the two young girls forever memorialized a half century ago beneath the headlines “Suit Says Girls Were Sterilized” in The New York Times; “Sterilized, Why?” in Time magazine; and, in Ebony, “Sterilization: Newest Threat to the Poor.”

*snip*

[markie]

1. important information

NPR (Fresh Air) had great interview yesterday with Linda Villarosa... "historical myths about black bodies"

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/06/14/1103935147/linda-villarosa-under-the-skin-racism-healthcare


also great dismay that Vermont was at the forefront of the Eugenics Movement... last year Vermont formally apologized

https://www.vpr.org/vpr-news/2021-04-01/news-roundup-vermont-house-apologizes-for-role-in-eugenics-movement

[MLAA]

2. Omg. This brought tears to my eyes.

How fucking hard would it be for Alabama to at least acknowledge the extreme wrong and apologize to all their victims and especially to these two dear women? Let alone offer some remorse through a financial payment.

I didn’t know this awful practice was so extensive and occurred over such a large span of time. Thank you for making me aware.