Karin L. Zipf's Books

Bad Girls at Samarcand

Sexuality and Sterilization in a Southern Juvenile Reformatory

By: Karin L. Zipf

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Bad Girls at Samarcand

Sexuality and Sterilization in a Southern Juvenile Reformatory

By: Karin L. Zipf

Of the many consequences advanced by the rise of the eugenics movement in the early twentieth century, North Carolina forcibly sterilized more than 2,000 women and girls in between 1929 and 1950. This extreme measure reflects how pseudoscience justified widespread gender, race, and class discrimination in the Jim Crow South. In Bad Girls at Samarcand Karin L. Zipf dissects a dark episode in North Carolina's eugenics campaign through a detailed study of the State Home and Industrial School in Eagle Springs, referred to as Samarcand Manor, and the school's infamous 1931 arson case. The people and events surrounding both the institution and the court case sparked a public debate about the expectations of white womanhood, the nature of contemporary science and medicine, and the role of the juvenile justice system that resonated throughout the succeeding decades. Designed to reform and educate unwed poor white girls who were suspected of deviant behavior or victims of sexual abuse, Samarcand Manor allowed for strict disciplinary measures -- including corporal punishment -- in an attempt to instill Victorian ideals of female purity. The harsh treatment fostered a hostile environment and tensions boiled over when several girls set Samarcand on fire, destroying two residence halls. Zipf argues that the subsequent arson trial, which carried the possibility of the death penalty, represented an important turning point in the public characterizations of poor white women; aided by the lobbying efforts of eugenics advocates, the trial helped usher in dramatic policy changes, including the forced sterilization of female juvenile delinquents. In addition to the interplay between gender ideals and the eugenics movement, Zipf also investigates the girls who were housed at Samarcand and those specifically charged in the 1931 trial. She explores their negotiation of Jazz Age stereotypes, their strategies of resistance, and their relationship with defense attorney Nell Battle Lewis during the trial. The resultant policy changes -- intelligence testing, sterilization, and parole -- are also explored, providing further insight into why these young women preferred prison to reformatories. A fascinating story that grapples with gender bias, sexuality, science, and the justice system all within the context of the Great Depression--era South, Bad Girls at Samarcand makes a compelling contribution to multiple fields of study.

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281

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807162515

ISBN 13

9780807162514

Labor of Innocents

Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715--1919

By: Karin Lorene Zipf

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Labor of Innocents

Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715--1919

By: Karin Lorene Zipf

On an autumn day in 1866, Wiley Ambrose and Hepsey Saunders, two former slaves who lived as husband and wife, received a knock at their door. Three men from a plantation in Brunswick County, North Carolina, presented court-ordered apprenticeship papers authorizing the immediate seizure of the couple's daughters, fifteen-year-old Harriet and thirteen-year-old Eliza. After a brief stay in jail with other children, the sisters were sent to work as plantation servants and field hands until age twenty-one. With that startling example, Karin L. Zipf begins Labor of Innocents, the first comprehensive exploration of forced apprenticeship in North Carolina. Zipf refuses to nostalgically view apprenticeship as a benign form of vocational training for children and instead presents irrefutable evidence that the institution existed as a means to control the composition and character of families, to provide alternate sources of cheap labor, and to ensure a white patriarchal social order. Codified by law, involuntary apprenticeship allowed courts not only to define who was an unacceptable parent but also to indenture their children. Disproportionately affected were the poor. Zipf details the continual fluidity of the institution from its colonial origins to its twentieth-century demise. Over two hundred years, the definition of an unfit head of household variously included black men, any woman, and widowed or unmarried white women, depending upon the current social and political agenda of authorities. Parents of both races and sexes challenged the laws vigorously and repeatedly to no effect until progressive reforms ended apprenticeship in 1919 with passage of the Child Welfare Act. An impressive blend of legal, social, and labor history, Labor of Innocents illuminates past concepts of family and the realities families endured.

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248

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807130451

ISBN 13

9780807130452

Labor of Innocents

Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715--1919

By: Karin Lorene Zipf

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Labor of Innocents

Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715--1919

By: Karin Lorene Zipf

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Page Count

248

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807130451

ISBN 13

9780807130452

Bad Girls at Samarcand

Sexuality and Sterilization in a Southern Juvenile Reformatory

By: Karin L. Zipf

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Bad Girls at Samarcand

Sexuality and Sterilization in a Southern Juvenile Reformatory

By: Karin L. Zipf

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

281

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807162515

ISBN 13

9780807162514

Book's by Karin L. Zipf

Bad Girls at Samarcand

Bad Girls at Samarcand

Labor of Innocents

Labor of Innocents

Labor of Innocents

Labor of Innocents

Bad Girls at Samarcand

Bad Girls at Samarcand

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