All Not Fit to Breed

"But you also had people that were, very fine people, on both sides." So we were told after the Charlottesville protests in 2017. A woman voicing her opinion on one side was victimized and killed by a white supremacist from the other side. Ninety years ago a small group of doctors, lawyers and judges sided against a young woman who had been raped. They were white supremacists of a different sort. In the Supreme Court's opinion, she was an "imbecile." She was sterilized against her will. Tens of thousands of forced sterilizations followed. Very fine people are capable of extraordinary evil. Carrie Buck lived in Charlottesville. Her story is illuminated by Helen McReynolds, her friend, a fictional counterpart. It is a story of eugenics in the American South in the 1920s. It is the story of two lives defined and altered by chauvinism and bigotry. Helen tells Carrie's story by telling her own.