One of the deep, dark secrets of America's past has finally come to light. Starting in the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of American children were warehoused in institutions by state governments. And the federal government did nothing to stop it.
The justification? The kids had been labeled feeble-minded, and were put away in conditions that can only be described as unspeakable.
Now, a new book, "The State Boys Rebellion," by Michael D'Antonio, reveals even more: A large proportion of the kids who were locked up were not retarded at all. They were simply poor, uneducated kids with no place to go, who ended up in institutions like the Fernald School in Waltham, Mass.
The Fernald School is the oldest institution of its kind in the country. At its peak, some 2,500 people were confined here, most of them children. All of them were called feeble-minded, whether they were or not.
The people who ran Fernald back in the bad, old days are no longer alive, but many of the victims still are -- victims like Fred Boyce, who was locked up there for 11 years. He came back to Fernald with Correspondent Bob Simon
Oh, the horrors done in the name of social welfare. Eugenics, or controlled breeding, was an effort to apply science or social engineering to improve the genetic composition of a population. Forced sterilization of society's "undesirables" is a sick way of selecting one race or class over another for success. It removes the natural selection methods and spits in the eye of the concept of survival of the fittest. Eugenics is a disgusting practice that should never have been allowed to gain such widespread application. Shame on all who turned a blind eye to the practice.
America's Deep, Dark Secret - CBS News
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