Memories Logo
Log in
  • Memory board
  • About
    Image

    Carrie Buck's memory board

    Carrie Buck was the first person involuntarily sterilized under Virginia's eugenics laws. The colony's superintendent decided to use Buck as a test case for the state's new sterilization law. In Buck v. Bell (1927), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Virginia's law was constitutional and that Buck should be sterilized. Her sterilization was the first of approximately 8,300 performed under state law... more

    Join Memories to request access to contribute your cherished photos, videos, and stories to Carrie's memory board with others who loved them.

    Join Memories

    Carrie Buck is born in Charlottesville, the daughter of Frank W. Buck, a tinner, and Emma Adeline Harlowe Buck.

    Joshna Karki2 Jul 1906

    Authorities deem Emma Buck a "low grade moron" and promiscuous for having a child out of wedlock and commit her to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Madison Heights, near Lynchburg.

    Joshna KarkiApr 1920

    John and Alice Dobbs's nephew Clarence Garland allegedly rapes Carrie Buck, their foster child, and she becomes pregnant.

    Joshna Karki1923

    Responding to a petition by her foster parents, a court in Charlottesville adjudges the pregnant seventeen-year-old Carrie Buck to be feebleminded.

    Joshna Karki23 Jan 1924

    The General Assembly passes a bill that allows for the state-enforced sterilization of those deemed genetically unfit for procreation.

    Joshna Karki8 Mar 1924

    Judge Bennett T. Gordon, of the Amherst County Circuit Court, hears arguments in the case of Buck v. Priddy, appealing the order to sterilize Carrie Buck.

    Joshna Karki19 Nov 1924

    Dr. John H. Bell performs the operation to sterilize Carrie Buck several months after the U.S. Supreme Court upholds, in Buck v. Bell, the constitutionality of a Virginia law allowing state-enforced sterilization

    Joshna Karki19 Oct 1927

    Carrie Buck marries William Davis Eagle, a widowed carpenter. Three months after, Vivian Dobbs, the daughter of Carrie Buck, dies of enterocolitis at the age of eight.

    Joshna KarkiMay 1932

    Carrie Buck Eagle marries Charles Albert Detamore, of Front Royal after the death of her husband, William Davis Eagle.

    Joshna Karki25 Apr 1965

    Virginia repeals its 1924 law allowing state-enforced sterilization. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling Buck v. Bell (1927) affirming the law's constitutionality has yet to be overturned.

    Joshna Karki1974

    Carrie Buck Eagle Detamore dies in a nursing home in Waynesboro and is buried in Charlottesville's Oakwood Cemetery with her husband, Charlie Detamore.

    Joshna Karki28 Jan 1983

    Governor Mark Warner apologizes for Virginia's eugenics program, and a state historic highway marker in Charlottesville is dedicated to Buck v. Bell.

    Joshna Karki2 May 2002