Smoke Signals from Samarcand

The 1931 Reform School Fire and Its Aftermath

Barbara Bennett

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781611178609
• eBook ISBN: 9781611178616
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

A case study and dramatic retelling of young girls on trial for arson at a reform school

In 1931 sixteen poor, white girls—all teenaged inmates at Samarcand Manor, officially named the State Home and Industrial School for Girls, in Samarcand, North Carolina—were accused of burning down two campus buildings in protest against living conditions. Barbara Bennett offers not only a dramatic retelling of this historic case in Smoke Signals from Samarcand, but also reveals a case study of the misguided social engineering schemes—fraught with racism, classism, and sexual stereotypes—that churned through North Carolina and other southern states during this time.

The girls, who became known as the "Samarcand Sixteen, " were described by administrators and the media as incorrigible and troublesome. Bennett additionally reveals their grim backgrounds and details the harsh disciplinary methods, including savage whippings, that were dispensed at Samarcand and other reform schools in the early twentieth century. Arson was a capital offense in North Carolina at the time, and the girls were put on trial for their lives.

The sensational trial took place in the midst of a strong eugenics movement that was sweeping the state and the South. The girls' newly minted lawyer, Nell Battle Lewis, argued that the treatment the girls endured at Samarcand had forced them to take drastic action and therefore should result in lenient sentences. Instead the state of North Carolina used bogus "scientific" theories—such as "bad blood genetics"—to create legal policy and criminal justice practices that were heavily prejudiced against powerless people, particularly girls and women.

In the end the girls received sentences of eighteen months to five years in the state penitentiary, although the trial and its publicity did lead to improvements in the physical conditions and disciplinary methods at Samarcand and other juvenile facilities in North Carolina.

Part One

THE SAMARCAND SIXTEEN

ONE

To comprehend fully why the Samarcand Sixteen ended up at the school and why they would risk their lives and reputations to get out, it is necessary to consider the social environment of North Carolina in the 1930s. The girls were living out patterns established by people they could not imagine and were tied by cultural restraints that had been put on them long before they were born.

North Carolina was in the powerful throes of a eugenics movement. Eugenics was based on the belief that the quality of a society could be improved by encouraging the strong, intelligent, and economically and genetically superior members of that society to produce more children and by discouraging the poor, ignorant, and physically weak members from reproducing. The Samarcand Sixteen fell squarely in this second category. They were generally poor white girls who held the potential for breeding more poor white children—or worse, mixed-race children; North Carolina, along with much of the rest of the world, was determined to keep that from happening.

Many proponents considered eugenics to be a science rather than a social philosophy. It was held in high regard during the first decades of the twentieth century, supported by such prominent figures as Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Margaret Sanger, Theodore Roosevelt, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and H. L. Mencken, who once suggested that the U.S. government pay one thousand dollars each to all Americans deemed “undesirable” if they would be voluntarily sterilized.

Earnest Hooten, a physical anthropologist known for his racist and classist writings, likened eugenics to Noah’s Ark, in which in order to survive and thrive, some of the more “noxious creatures” must be left behind (398). The theory became popular, especially with people who believed themselves to be in the superior class. In a 1939 article, Julian L. Woodward, a leader in the field of public opinion research, delineated the goals of eugenics to be first “protecting man’s position in nature” by cultivating the traits that proved his “pre-cultural evolutionary value,” and second, breeding “a race that can attain a higher plane of living” (471). Others have defined it a bit more simply: for example, Gerald V. O’Brien stated that “eugenics policies can include any measures designed to ensure that the ‘best’ members of a society reproduce in greater numbers, or that the reproductive opportunities of the ‘worst’ members are limited, either voluntarily or, more often, by force” (3).

The origins of eugenics can be traced to almost seventy years before the girls at Samarcand decided to burn down two buildings, and the inspiration for it came from quite a notable source. In 1859, in his On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin posited that all creatures evolve in accordance with their heredity and environment. Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton was inspired by Darwin’s theories and began developing his own perspective on the ideas. Galton had traveled widely as a young man, gaining knowledge and acquiring prejudices. In the 1860s he returned to London with a firm belief in the hierarchy of human beings, with Anglo-Saxons securely established at the top. He began thinking about the state of humanity and how to improve it, and he theorized that people could be bred, like dogs and racehorses, to create better human beings and therefore a superior society. “What Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly,” he wrote in his Essays on Eugenics (Galton 24–25). By encouraging the right people to procreate and discouraging the wrong people from reproducing, humans could intervene in the process of evolution. He called his theory “eugenics,” from the Greek meaning “well born.” In fact Galton did not invent anything new but simply gave a name to popular theories of his day.

Galton focused much of his writing on positive eugenics—that is, the encouragement of the best and brightest people to reproduce more often. In the words of Ava Chamberlain, Galton gathered

hundreds of genealogies of judges, politicians, authors, musicians, scientists, clergymen, and turning his attention from “brain” to “muscle,” oarsmen and wrestlers. Analysis of this data led him to the two-part position that would define the eugenics movement throughout its history. From the observation that human ability “clings to certain families,” he concluded that intellect, talent, and even moral character were hereditary traits. This theoretical claim had an important practical application. “It would be quite practicable,” he asserted, “to produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations.” Just as horses could be bred to win races, the results of human reproduction were “largely, though indirectly, under our control.” (168–69)

It was not long, however, before the idea of negative eugenics—the discouragement of the poorest of the population pool to procreate—became more popular. The poor and ignorant were holding back progress and consuming resources at an increasing rate because hygiene, medicine, and social policies were helping them to endure and therefore reproduce. These factors had, in fact, become “rather dangerous enemies of human progress,” according to advocates of eugenics (Kuhl 13). Therefore the emphasis was put on stemming the tide of a growing population that was unwanted; as O’Brien described it, “eugenics interests were primarily stoked by dystopian rather than utopian considerations” (4).

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the experiments done by the Austrian scientist Gregor Johann Mendel in the 1850s and 1860s were rediscovered by eugenicists. Mendel had worked with pea plants and identified the role of dominant and recessive genes. He concluded that the plants were much more influenced by genes than by environment, and this fact inspired eugenicists in their quest for a better society. Because Mendel’s findings were that environment determined little, eugenicists came to discount the role of education and social programs in helping the underprivileged. The only way, it appeared, to improve the human race was by keeping inferior types from reproducing.

Support for this theory came from Richard L. Dugdale, who in 1874 became interested in “the genealogy of degeneracy” (Larson 19) after taking part in an inspection of conditions at a jail in upstate New York as part of a prison reform movement. While there, he discovered that six of the criminals he interviewed were related. He began to investigate the family—to whom he assigned the name “Jukes”—in an attempt to understand the origins of crime and criminals. He traced the family five generations back to six sisters. After interviewing 709 related people, he determined that over half were criminals, prostitutes, or relief recipients who had cost the public more than $2 million in the courts, in the prisons, and in relief aid.

Dugdale did not discount the role of environment in the development of families such as the Jukeses. He made a statement that undercut the tenets of eugenics: “Environment tends to produce habits which may become hereditary especially so in pauperism and licentiousness” (Dugdale 57). He further explained, “The tendency of heredity is to produce an environment which perpetuates that heredity: thus, the licentious parent makes an example which greatly aids in fixing habits of debauchery in the child” (Dugdale 65). The only way to “break a chain of hereditary degeneracy in humans,” then, “was to remove the children of social misfits from their families and give them vocational training in a healthy environment” (Larson 20).

A later analysis in 1915, however, changed the focus to mental acuity and increased the number studied to over twenty-eight hundred. This study categorized participants not by their “sins”—that is, poverty or licentiousness—but by mental ability. The analysis claimed that over half of those studied were feebleminded. As Larson explained, “This finding was crucial for eugenicists because they viewed ‘feeblemindedness,’ which included various levels of mental retardation, as an inherited unit characteristic” (21). Inherited feeblemindedness discounted, then, the role of the environment because no environmental change for the better could improve a feebleminded brain. The only solution, therefore, for families such as the Jukeses—a burden on society in numerous ways—was segregation and sterilization for each and every one of them.

The study concluded that idiots begat idiots and criminals begat criminals. In subsequent years many problems with the studies were discovered, but at the time it appeared that eugenicists were right: the poor and feebleminded were reproducing much faster than the well-to-do and educated were, and society was suffering because of this. The American Eugenics Society in the 1920s proved that sterilizing the initial Jukeses would have cost $150. The white race, eugenicists believed, could have been immensely improved for such a small cost, and society must keep such a tragedy from happening again.

In 1925 Clarence Darrow published an essay in the American Mercury disputing the results of the Jukes study and those of its polar opposite, a study of the family who came from the early New England theologian and evangelist Jonathan Edwards. Proponents of positive eugenics had long maintained that “greatness” had come from Edwards’s line, including “12 college presidents, 265 college graduates, 65 college professors, 60 physicians, 100 clergymen, 75 army officers, 60 prominent authors, 100 lawyers, 30 judges, 80 public officers, 3 governors, mayors, and State officials, 3 congressmen, 2 United States senators, and 1 Vice President” (Darrow 152). The problem with assigning greatness to the Edwards line and depravity to that of the Jukes family was an “elementary error in logic: ‘after this, because of this,’” and that if someone went looking for either greatness or depravity, he would probably find it. On the question of feeblemindedness in the Jukes family, Darrow argued, “But what is feeble-mindedness, anyway? I submit that it is entirely out of the question to find out whether a person is feeble-minded fifty or a hundred years after his death. The only way that feeble-mindedness can even be approximately determined is by a thorough and elaborate mental test, which could not possibly have been given in these cases” (Darrow 156).

Darrow compared the Edwards and Jukes families and determined that “some men may preach hell-fire sermons, or make speeches in the Senate and the court room. Others do the rough work of the world. Which are the most important in the scheme of life, assuming that there is any scheme of life?” If he were forced to choose either Max Jukes or Jonathan Edwards for a neighbor, he concluded, “I am free to confess that I would take Max without a moment’s hesitation” (157).

Despite arguments such as Darrow’s, however, the belief in eugenics, both positive and negative, persisted. In 1910 Charles Benedict Davenport, a biologist from Harvard, “transformed Galton’s theory into an American crusade” (Chamberlain 173). He opened the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Springs Harbor on Long Island and sent out eugenics field workers to “compile pedigrees of ‘feeble-minded’ families” to support the theories. The studies sometimes had visual aids: “Some included photographs that illustrated the ‘unmistakable look of the feeble-minded’” (Chamberlain 170).

By the 1920s these prevailing ideas about genetics and the worth—or lack of worth—of certain types of persons were embedded deeply in society. In The Fruit of the Family Tree, a best seller published in 1926, Albert Wiggam wrote frankly:

Finally, then, we see, actually and literally, that from dogs to kings, from rats to college presidents, blood always tells. The one central problem of progress, the endless task of statesmanship and education, is, therefore, to bring about those economic conditions, these social, political, and educational ideals and opportunities which encourage those of good blood to mate with their own kind and produce good families of children, at least more than are produced by stocks of mediocre blood; and to institute stern measures which will insure that those of positively bad blood produce no children at all. Such a race of people can easily run on through vicissitudes of time, creating ideals, building institutions of worth and grandeur, and developing a culture, all of which are simply the outward expressions of the ceaseless energy of noble blood. Such a people and only such can build great civilizations—civilizations that will continue amid happiness and achievement. (20–21)

But how could such a grand idea of improvement of the race be accomplished? Who gets to decide who is superior? What standards are used to determine who is allowed to reproduce? How does a society get one part of its population to reduce its number?

Alfred Ploetz, a German race hygienist, offered one rather drastic solution during World War I when he suggested that “the mentally and physically weak” should be put on the front lines as “cannon fodder” (Kuhl 31). While shocking, this suggests how poorly regarded and easily dismissed the underprivileged and mentally challenged were during these years. This is hardly the only time in history that such thinking occurred. Similar dehumanization of a marginalized group was seen in the treatment of Native Americans and African slaves. In addition, of course, it could be seen to an extreme degree in the 1930s and 1940s in Germany’s treatment of the Jews.

The search for a eugenics solution continued by other means. The first step was to identify the “undesirable” persons. In 1908 this was made easier by the new IQ tests that were brought to the United States from France by the American psychologist and eugenicist H. H. Goddard. The Benet-Simon test—later called simply the IQ test—became a way to quantify mental ability and identify people who, according to eugenicists, should not reproduce. Goddard identified three levels of disability: “high-grade morons”; “middle-grade imbeciles”; and “low-grade idiots,” terms that became commonplace in society, along with the more commonly used description “feebleminded.” These terms became useful with eugenicists as they searched for a way to keep the undesirables from reproducing. In fact, during the first decade of the twentieth century, feeblemindedness became the focus of eugenicists, and “eugenic unfitness came to be inextricably connected to moronity” (O’Brien 164).

Once inferior persons were identified, the question became how to keep such people from procreating. Larson listed four different methods for restricting the birth of children: “marriage laws, sexual segregation, involuntary sterilization, and limits on immigration” (22). Many states, including North Carolina, passed laws in the 1910s restricting the right to marry between the physically deformed, the ill, or the feebleminded, but eugenicists quickly realized that the act of prohibiting marriage would not keep people from reproducing.

Segregation of those deemed unfit became too cost prohibitive. There were simply not enough facilities to house all who needed them. Nearly all states attempted to segregate some people, however: the mentally ill, the feebleminded, and the criminal. Asylums, prisons, and training schools popped up all over the country in an attempt to restrict the sexuality of individuals as well as to give help to those in need.

With marriage laws and segregation working less than effectively and immigration restriction solving only part of the population problem, sterilization—either voluntary or forced—became the favored weapon of eugenicists. In the first two decades of the twentieth century many individual states passed sterilization laws, but when challenged in court, these were often overturned for violating human rights. Some states were more successful, however. California, for example, forcibly sterilized thousands of its citizens, resulting in more than 80 percent of national sterilizations by 1921; ultimately the state sterilized twenty thousand people before the law was repealed in the 1960s. Sterilization was “touted as a public health measure” in many places, “as if feeblemindedness were a virus that could be transmitted between people” (O’Brien 40). The Supreme Court even compared it to compulsory vaccinations.

Despite challenges to sterilization laws, the Supreme Court eventually upheld a state’s right to force sterilization in 1927’s Buck vs. Bell. Carrie Buck was born to her mother, Emma, in 1906. She had a younger sister, Doris, and a brother, Roy. Soon after the birth of her third child, Emma was committed to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded because, the state said, she was immoral and had syphilis. Carrie was adopted by John and Alice Dobbs and attended school until the sixth grade. At age seventeen she became pregnant and was committed to the same institution where her mother was held, sent there by her adoptive parents, who claimed they could not take care of her and that she had become “incorrigible.” The superintendent of the institution, Dr. Albert Sidney Priddy, filed a petition with the board of directors to forcibly sterilize Carrie because her mother had been tested and found to have a mental age of eight, and it was believed that Carrie was at risk for the same kind of immoral life her mother had presumably led—evidenced by the fact that Carrie had already become pregnant out of wedlock. In truth, it was discovered later that Carrie had been raped by her adoptive mother’s nephew and that the family had sent her to the institution to save their family’s reputation. Carrie’s illegitimate daughter, Vivian, was born and raised for a time by the Dobbses. She too was determined to be feebleminded—even though she later attended school in Virginia and was listed on the honor roll in 1931 before she died from complications from measles in 1932.

Carrie did not want to be sterilized. She got a lawyer, and the case ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled against Carrie 8–1. She received a form of tubal ligation. The court accepted that Carrie was promiscuous without any evidence and said that the sterilization did not deny her any rights since she was housed in a state institution—and anyway, the sterilization was not designed to be punitive, only helpful to Carrie in living a better life. In the ruling Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously concluded that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” “It is better for all the world,” he argued, “if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue: Fire
• Part One: The Samarcand Sixteen
• Part Two: The Trial
• Epilogue: Repercussions
• Works Cited
• Index
• About the Author