This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

On June 4th, 1924, a girl was admitted to the Virginia State Colony for epileptics and feeble-minded.

She was white, dark-haired, and 17 years old.

She became colony inmate 1692.

The medical superintendent of the colony examined her.

He declared her healthy, free of syphilis,

able to read, write, and keep herself tidy. And then he classified her as feeble-minded

of the lowest grade, moron class. With that designation, this young woman who had already lost more than many people could bear in a lifetime, was set on a path she didn't choose.

What happened next laid the foundation for one of the most tragic social experiments in American history, the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of people.

This story has resonance even today.

It's about how science and the law,

tools that we have created to help improve our lives,

can easily become instruments of prejudice and oppression.

It's a story of hubris and about good intentions gone awry.

Eugenics and the Science of Better Breeding

this week on Hidden Brain.

First of all, please tell me your name.

Carrie Elizabeth Dedimore.

In 1980, an NPR reporter Wendy Blair took a trip to a one-room shack outside Charlottesville, Virginia.

She'd come to interview a 78-year-old woman.

Her married name was Dedimore, but her given name was Carrie Buck.

You see, I was adopted when I was a little girl.

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