The nazi chants and fascist symbols on display in Charlottesville last weekend were terrifying to many people. Among those feeling especially threatened — people with disabilities. The ideology on display evoked a time when the extermination of people with disabilities was a key element of the fascist movement in America.
The 1920s saw the rise of fascism in America and all over the world. With fascism came the eugenics movement. Together, they sought the establishment of a “superior” race, absent any “defects.” In Virginia, eugenics — forced sterilization of “defectives” — was legally and social acceptable. Just down the road from Charlottesville, at what is now known as the Central Virginia Training Center, superintendent A.S. Priddy carried out thousands of sterilization operations, with the intent to eliminate future generations of people with intellectual and other disabilities.
Perhaps most famously, Priddy involuntarily sterilized a young woman named Carrie Buck, claiming that Buck had diminished intellectual capacity. The United States Supreme Court endorsed this action, stating, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”
That was 1927. Those shameful days are long past now. Or so we hoped. The Eugenics law in Virginia was repealed, but it took 50 years to do that. Virginia’s legislature issued a statement of “regret” for the Eugenics movement, but even that did not occur until 2001.
A year later, Virginia erected a historical marker near the site of Carrie Buck’s home, and issued a statement concluding, “the eugenics movement was a shameful effort in which state government never should have been involved.” The legislation calling for the historical marker argued that eugenics and the supremacist movement underlying eugenics is “an embodiment of bigotry against the disabled and an example of using faulty science in support of public policy.” The marker stands as a reminder to us all of those very dark days in our history.
That historical marker is in Charlottesville.