Aubrey Strode, the chief administrator of the State Colony and the legislator who had drafted Virginia’s sterilization law, himself challenged the right of the State to perform the operation. Years later, following Priddy’s death, Strode recalled his original participation introducing the sterilization law:
“Some eighteen years ago, as I recall it, the late Dr. A. S. Priddy, then Superintendent of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, who had shortly before that been sued in a Richmond court for a large amount of damages for having sterilized a feeble-minded woman patient in the Colony, and could successfully defend only on the ground that the operation was indicated for therapeutic purposes rather than eugenically, came to me as counsel for the Colony to convey the request of the State Hospital Board that I examine the question and advise the Board upon the prospect of having the Legislature legally enact that inmates of State Institutions for the Epileptic, Feeble-minded and Insane might, after proper proceedings, be sterilized for eugenical purposes.
In the several states in which the legality of similar enactments had been drawn in question in the courts, in every case that I could find, the Acts had been declared unconstitutional on grounds as being class legislation, if confined in operation to patients in state institutions, as not affording due process of law, if the sterilizing was done without proper previous notice and reasonable opportunity to defend against its need, and as depriving a person of the natural right of procreation beyond the power of the state legally to take away.
So, reporting to the Board, I added that several years before that I recalled that when I was a member of the State Senate, Dr. Carrington, Surgeon to the State Penitentiary, had come before the Committee on Public Institutions to suggest the advisability of legislation to allow the sterilization of selected prisoners, but got no favorable response in the light of public sentiment then existent upon the subject.
The Board for the time dropped the matter so far as I know, but, two years later, Dr. Priddy came back to me to say that the Board, in view of its importance to the institutions, and upon the advice of Governor Trinkle who was interested, requested that I draft a bill for presentation to the Legislature curing such defects as I could in the form of the Acts declared invalid by the courts, trusting that the growth of knowledge of the laws of heredity and eugenics and changing public sentiment might bring a more favorable attitude from the Legislature and the courts.
This, after further study, I did. The bill, at the request of Dr. Priddy and of the State Hospital Board, was introduced by Senator M. B. Booker of Halifax and enacted in 1924, I believe without a dissenting vote, so great had been the change of public sentiment upon the subject…I was instructed to take to court a test case. With the very active and helpful cooperation of Doctors A. S. Priddy and J. S. DeJarnette this was done, having as the subject of the litigation Carrie Buck, a typical 19-year-old, feeble-minded patient of the Colony having an illegitimate infant already giving evidence of feeblemindedness, and Carrie’s mother also being a feeble-minded patient at the Colony.
Thus we see the intricate and self-motivated origins of the Virginia law on sterilization. The law itself was born out of a perceived eugenic need, but the actual circumstances of its birth had become extremely personal in nature. Aubrey Strode, lawyer, politician, and war hero, was guided in his advocacy by his close personal friend, Albert Priddy. Priddy, a politician himself, suffering from his recent bouts with the courts regarding sterilization, was extremely anxious to legalize efforts he was already making through sterilizations, camouflaging them under the guise of medical necessity. It would be perfectly natural for him to call in favors he had done for Strode and his second wife, Louisa, who had shared with her husband-to-be her admiration for eugenic researcher Arthur Estabrook. Irving Whitehead, supposedly protecting the rights of Carrie Buck, was indeed a childhood friend of Strode’s, and even secured for him the military position he held during World War I. All of these characters would continue to play their roles in the drama of compulsory human sterilization.
All that was needed was a person through whom the law could be tried.
Albemarle County is set apart from other Virginia counties in the Piedmont. In the pre- and post-revolutionary eras the masters of its estates were men of unusual ability and breeding. Thomas Jefferson, by far the best known, is representative of the distinctive class. Many were the products of several generations of advantageous circumstances. Sons of aggressive, self-made, Tidewater gentry flocked to the Piedmont in the mid-1700s to develop tobacco land. They stayed on to grow other crops and discovered in Albemarle a comfortable existence which began to extend upon them a strange charisma which exists for many of their descendants even today.
The men were an intelligent, well-educated, lot. They built great houses appropriate to their extensive lands. Pre-revolutionary homes such as Edgehill Manor, Old Woodville, Edgemont and, of course, Monticello reveal the society they were well designed to serve.
These individuals excelled in agriculture, medicine, surveying, land speculation, politics, the military, theology and the mercantile trades.
Albemarle has long been known as Jefferson’s county, named for the most distinguished of the significant men who, by birth, choice or chance, came to live within its boundaries.
About half of the county lies in the Piedmont section and half in what is often called the Middle Virginia region. Stretching from east to west, the elevation varies from 400 to 3161 feet above sea level and there are said to be eighteen different soils, of which the best, Cecil Clay, was first used by the early settlers to grow the tobacco for which colonial Virginia came to be known.
Trapezoid-shaped, Albemarle is bounded by Fluvana and Louisa counties and the James River on the southeast, by Nelson County on the southwest, on the west by the Augusta County line along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the north by Greene and Orange counties. This was the region of Carrie Buck’s birth and childhood.
Further to the southwest of Albemarle, beyond Nelson County, lies Amherst County. In looking at a map, a traveler sees that most of the main roads and larger towns are in the middle of Amherst county. In the center is the wide and inviting valley which attracted early settlers and in which most contemporary development has occurred.
The village located in the valley, and which was chosen as the county seat, was known in the 1800’s as Five Oaks. Eventually it became known as the town of Amherst. The town today is quiet and appealing. Its proud homes and ancient trees give it an almost stereotyped appearance of a small Virginia town. The old white courthouse with its stately facade was built in 1870. It is still used every day for the official and judicial affairs of the people of Amherst. It was in this same courthouse that Carrie Buck’s case was first heard.
Before the case began, however, a report was to be submitted to the court by Harry Laughlin.
Harry Laughlin’s involvement in Carrie’s case was arranged by Strode and Priddy. He was a recognized expert on sterilization and the author of the model sterilization law used in the drafting of Virginia’s statute. His disposition in Carrie’s case would prove to be influential in the initial hearings, as well as in the appeals, even though there appears to be no evidence that he had ever had direct contact with the people about whom he was making critical judgments.
In an October 7th letter to Priddy, Strode spoke of wanting to send information to Laughlin:
…If you can assist us in getting together as much of the data as possible indicated by him, I shall be glad to forward it together with such questions as Mr. Whitehead and I may agree upon to obtain the desired deposition, all of which should be done as soon as possible