How Buck vs. Bell began, Paul Lombardo

Interviewee: Paul Lombardo. Amherst County Courthouse was the first step of a legal case that would lead all the way to the Supreme Court. (DNAi Location: Chronicle > Trial of carrie buck > Trial > Amherst County Courthouse)

The building behind me is the county courthouse in the village of Amherst, Virginia. It was the site of the now infamous trial in the case of Buck vs. Bell. The Buck in this case was Carrie Buck, the young girl from Charlottesville who would eventually be sterilized, and John Bell, the doctor from the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and the Feebleminded, who performed the operation. This trial was the first step in the long road that ended up in the United States Supreme Court, with the constitutionality of Virginia's law being established at that high level.

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