/Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia/
Elizabeth Catte
Belt Publishing, $26 (cloth)
<https://beltpublishing.com/products/pure-america>
When Elizabeth Catte began researching/Pure America/, her new book about
the history of eugenics in Virginia, her first act seemed, on its
surface, like a non sequitur: she spent a night at a new luxury hotel,
the Blackburn Inn, in her hometown of Staunton, Virginia. What
interested Catte was that, in its former life, the building that now
houses the Blackburn Inn had been the Western State Hospital—or, as it
was better known upon first opening in 1828, the Western State Lunatic
Asylum. It was where many Virginians deemed “feeble-minded” were
incarcerated under the directorship of Joseph DeJarnette and where,
between 1927 and 1964, hospital surgeons sterilized approximately 1,700
people without their consent. The sprawling, bucolic campus includes a
cemetery where the remains of more than 3,000 indigent inmates lie
buried in unmarked graves, now discreetly barred by “No Trespassing”
signs to dissuade hotel guests from accidentally discovering it during a
post-meal stroll.
http://bostonreview.net/race/ellen-wayland-smith-logic-eugenics-still-haunts-virginia
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