Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded

Dr. Albert Priddy, a central figure in the legalization of the sterilization of the mentally feeble was the first superintendent of the colony.[1] Priddy had long been a proponent of sterilization as a potential method for controlling the harm the feeble minded could have on a society.[6][1] Priddy in fact performed roughly 80 sterilizations between 1916 and 1917 and thought that these procedures yielded favorable results.[6] Carrie Buck, a poor, pregnant teenager from a broken home arrived at the Colony on June 4, 1924.[6] Her mother, Emma Buck was already a patient of the colony, thus joining both mother and daughter in the camp.[1] Priddy sought Carrie to be a patient of the camp as a way to showcase eugenic ideas of heredity to support Virginia's sterilization law and eventually move the law all the way up to the supreme court.[7][1] The three generations of the Buck family and Carrie's impending sterilization became the focus of the landmark supreme court case Buck v. Bell. Dr. Priddy died before the case reached the Supreme Court, but nonetheless on May 2, 1927 the Supreme Court decided that Virginia's sterilization law was constitutional.[8][9]

Following the decision upholding the constitutionality of Virginia's sterilization law in 1927, sterilizations began to take place at the Virginia Colony itself.[7] Carrie Buck was sterilized on October 19, 1927 and this began a long run of sterilizations at the colony.[10][5] In the six years following the decision in Buck v. Bell, the state of Virginia performed 1,333 sterilizations.[11] The last reported sterilization at the colony occurred in 1956.[5] Shortly after the death of Dr. Priddy in 1926, Dr. John Bell took over as superintendent of the Virginia Colony.[12] Under his leadership, the colony not only doubled in size, but increased its educational efforts to aid the feeble-minded population of Virginia.[12] The name was changed to Lynchburg State Colony in 1940, Lynchburg Training School and Hospital in 1954, and since 1983, has been known as the Central Virginia Training Center. The records of Central Virginia Training Center can be found at the Library of Virginia.[13]

The Virginia State colony was a center for feeble minded whites only. Blacks were not admitted to the colony throughout its early years. However, the state of Virginia in 1939 created the Petersburg Colony for the care of blacks who were deemed either “insane” or “feebleminded.”[14] The poorly-funded colony was a work camp for its 182 patients who were deemed as having “borderline intelligence.”[15][16]