Marked by Birth

In 1927, Carrie Buck was sterilized under Virginia’s eugenics law—labeled “feebleminded” and unfit to reproduce. Decades earlier, Amanda Dickson, the mixed-race daughter of a Georgia plantation owner and an enslaved woman, inherited her father’s fortune but not society’s acceptance. Both woman’s lives reveal how law and lineage were used to police purity and power in America. Some marks aren’t chosen—they’re marked by birth.