Under the Guise of Protection: Eugenics and Wayward Girls in Twentieth-Century Virginia

A shocking story of social engineering in the era of Jim Crow

The eugenics movement, in which the state claimed the right to determine who could and who could not have children, was a dark, shameful chapter in American history. Virginia was infamous as an epicenter of eugenic thought; the case of Buck v. Bell, which resulted in one of the Supreme Court’s most notorious decisions, originated there. In Under the Guise of Protection, Erin Bush describes how state programs designed for “delinque...