![]() Given DeJarnette’s obsession with eugenics and his blatant disregard for human rights, what went on inside of his facilities should not come as a surprise. Then our race will be strengthened and bettered, His cringeworthy words give much insight into his mindset: Though the general assembly apologized in 2001 in a joint resolution, citing “a respectable, ‘scientific’ veneer to cover activities of those who held blatantly racist views,” forced sterilization will forever be a stain on the commonwealth’s past.ĭeJarnette penned a poem titled “Mendel’s Law: A Plea for a Better Race of Men” that he publicly recited a number of times in the 1920s and 1930s. If proper steps be taken, the unfit can be made to grow annually smaller and finally disappear entirely from our registers.”ĭeJarnette admired the eugenics program of Nazi Germany and often grumbled that the United States was not aggressive enough in dealing with the nation’s “defectives.” DeJarnette was influential in the 1924 passage of Virginia’s “Eugenical Sterilization Act.” Under provisions of the law, over seven thousand people were sterilized without their consent. DeJarnette strongly believed in sterilizing people with “undesirable” traits and said, “To this class of the unfit belong the insane, the epileptic, the alcoholic, hereditary criminal, the syphilitic, the imbecile and the idiot, and none of these should reproduce. Wikimedia Commons.ĭeJarnette was a well-known eugenicist in his day and helped found the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded in Lynchburg. In 1932, he opened the semiprivate DeJarnette Sanitarium near the Western State Hospital for middle-income patients who could afford to pay for their care. Joseph Spencer DeJarnette became the director of Western State Hospital, a position he held until 1943. ![]() San Antonio’s Haunted Hotels October 31, 2018 The Graveyard Inlet & the Absecon Lighthouse November 19, 2018 The Sandhill Crane Explanation December 4, 2018Ī Haunted Football Facility? November 26, 2018 The Haunted Mount Hope Cemetery July 2, 2019 Strange Tales From Virginia’s Mountains January 28, 2021 The Haunted Wayside Theatre September 15, 2021Ī Phantom Hitchhiker in the Smokies July 7, 2021ĭeadly Plane Crashes in the Appalachians April 27, 2021 Louis L’Amour and the Paranormal May 4, 2022
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