Why Buck v. Bell Still Matters: The Blueprint for Eugenics Was Written on Black Women’s Bodies
And they tested it on Black women before they exported it to Hitler. Buck v. Bell is still law. Let’s talk about it.
Eugenics Didn’t Start in Germany. It started in America.
Black women weren’t just caught in the crosshairs of American eugenics. We were the target. The policy. The data. The obsession.
Before the Holocaust. Before Hitler. Before the world cried, Black girls in America were sterilized.
Let’s rip off the whitewashed band-aid: Hitler didn’t invent eugenics. He copied it from us.
The Trial That Opened the Floodgates
In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Buck v. Bell. The ruling? The state had every right to sterilize people deemed "unfit" without their consent.
Carrie Buck, a poor white girl, was institutionalized after being raped by her foster father. Instead of being protected, she was labeled feebleminded and sterilized. But Carrie wasn’t the point—she was the test case.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. delivered the death sentence for bodily autonomy:
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
And just like that, the floodgates opened.
Over 60,000 people were sterilized under this precedent. And guess who got hit the hardest?
Black women. Poor woman. Disabled women. Women in prisons. Women in labor. Girls in state schools. Our bodies became the blueprint.
The Men Behind the Scalpel
Albert Priddy wanted his name attached to a landmark eugenics case. He targeted Carrie.
Harry Laughlin drafted sterilization laws so clean and bureaucratic that Nazi Germany translated them for its use.
Madison Grant published The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler reportedly called his Bible. His ideas shaped immigration laws, zoning policies, and sterilization guidelines.
These weren’t backwoodsmen. They were Ivy League. Funded. Published. Rewarded.
In 1936, Laughlin was given an honorary doctorate by the Nazis. Meanwhile, the Nazis were sterilizing Black girls in the American South behind hospital curtains and in welfare offices, telling them they were having appendectomies.
This wasn’t science. This was the strategy.
Buck v. Bell Is Still the Law. Sit With That.
Let’s not play. That ruling has never been overturned. It’s still on the books.
While they hand out "parental rights" bills and ban books, let’s be clear: they’re not hiding the scheme. They’re recycling it.
This isn’t about morality. It’s about control.
And Now: Florida
Ron DeSantis isn’t leading a conservative movement. He’s beta-testing a eugenic revival.
❌ Abortion banned after 6 weeks ❌ Medicaid slashed. ❌ Black history erased from classrooms ❌ Book bans targeting anything that tells the truth
And while he’s building his presidential profile on the backs of Black mothers, his wife, Casey DeSantis, is running "Hope Florida" with millions in redirected state money and zero receipts. Where’s the money, Ron? Could you please let me know where the receipts are, Casey?
But that’s a separate article. That's a topic for another day.
We Were the Control Group
This wasn’t a coincidence. This was a coordinated, bipartisan, century-long erasure.
They didn’t just fear us. They studied us. Regulated us. Cut us.
The situation isn’t history. It’s still an active policy.
They called it public health. We lived it as genocide.
Read that again.
Receipts. This is because I'm not just talking—I'm also reading.
• Lombardo, Paul A. Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. New York: Anchor Books, 2016.
• Stern, Alexandra Minna. Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. University of California Press, 2015.
• Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. Dialog Press, 2012.
• Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Harvard University Press, 1985.
• Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
The U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized sterilization without consent.
Still. Hasn’t. Been. Overturned.
• Center for Genetics and Society. “United States Eugenics Programs.” geneticsandsociety.org
• University of Vermont. Eugenics Survey Archive. uvm.edu/~eugenics
• The Nazi Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (1933).
Modeled after Laughlin’s U.S. sterilization laws. You read that right.
• Tampa Bay Times & Politico reports on Hope Florida Foundation, Medicaid funds, and missing financial audits.