On March 11, 1921, eugenic field worker Beatrice Lantz and Josephine R., a twenty-two-year-old institutionalized woman of Mexican descent living in California, faced each other for a clinical interview at Sonoma State Home for the “feebleminded” in Eldridge, California. Josephine told of her family members and how horribly they treated her. The field worker gazed and listened, alternating between disgust and admiration. She took notes of what the propositus – a word that refers to the first person to be the subject of genetic study in a given family line – said and did, but also wrote about what Josephine looked like, how her lips, mouth, brows, and eyes moved as she answered the field worker’s questions. Of special intrigue for the field worker and the state was Josephine’s cleft palate, and Josephine was well aware of how Lantz perceived her. She mentioned that her step-mother and step-sister “delighted in drawing attention to her deformity, making her overly conscious of the defect.” Her father, Josephine, continued, was also “unsympathetic,” “ha[d] no mind of his own,” and “might as well [have] be[en] a table as a father.” Due to this ostracization, Josephine told Lantz that she wanted to distance herself from her family and thus sometimes ran away. “‘They are funny people,’” Josephine stated, and “‘I’d rather get out and lose my relatives and then perhaps I’d have some peace!”

Eugenics, at its base, is about biological, mental, social, and environmental purification. So, even though the logic behind Josephine’s confinement was not due to intelligence or even her Mexican background, she was still thoroughly a victim of eugenic practices. Indeed, she was of “normal” intelligence and, according to the field worker, Josephine’s Mexican grandmother was the only source of dignity that Josephine possessed. And while Josephine’s intelligence wasn’t up for debate, the field worker did add that Josephine’s family had a history of deaths by tuberculosis, were dull, and “probably” feebleminded. Also, Josephine had a “very disfiguring cleft palate” and “present[ed] a decayed appearance” that made her speech “thick and peculiar.”

What matters here is not that the state dared to confine a “normal” person; whether of normative intelligence or not, the institutionalization of Josephine remains unjust. Rather, it highlights how California’s eugenicists found many ways to actively disable unwanted individuals in order to justify their confinement, surveillance, and/or sterilization. The field worker observed in Josephine a great work ethic and “one well worthy of a chance to make good” if given a square deal.” Sonoma’s psychologist stated that Josephine had “proven a stable girl, working as best as she [could] under decidedly adverse circumstances.” Her teacher admitted that Josephine, “humbly and readily [did] her best.” But it didn’t matter. In the eyes of the state, tubercular family members, feebleminded parents, and an unsightly appearance were factors too strong, too dangerous, and, in short, too dysgenic to let Josephine out lose into the world to reproduce with the rest of the population. Josephine’s genetic line had to be stopped.

The sterilization of Josephine, which Sonoma’s superintendent performed nine months after her institutionalization, the field worker explained away in one unelaborated sentence: “Double complete salpingectomy was performed because of the pathology of the tubes.” We do not know from the case file what the pathology was, but we do know from contemporary studies that a salpingectomy, though more invasive and dangerous, was the most effective sterilization procedure. Maybe so, but a study from 1929 found that “in more than 2,500 such operations in the California state hospitals, there ha[d] been three deaths.” For eugenicists, putting Josephine’s life at risk was worth the effort to prevent further reproduction of “unfit” individuals.

As the field worker considered this complex maze of information she gathered from various institutions, her family, and her neighbors, she concluded that the best place for Josephine was Sonoma State Home. After all, Josephine had found a “particular chum, Gladys G⸺,” and was “very well liked” by the “better girls of her own class,” offering much reprieve. But let us not forget the field worker’s and staff’s admiration for Josephine’s work ethic. She had “proven an exceedingly valuable worke[r] on the power sewing machines.” So good, in fact, that the principal, matron, and the field worker herself “considered [Josephine] so very valuable to the department that to the present date it has been impossible to secure her for daily gymnasium or class training. For the time being, Sonoma would continue to exploit Josephine’s body for labor.

With Josephine’s reproductive capacities destroyed, Sonoma State Home released her sometime in 1926. Paradoxically, the case history that explained how and why Josephine was disabled, unfit, and unwanted by her family and general population is the only window through which we can get a glimpse of her life. Based on Lantz’s report, Josephine did find refuge at Sonoma because it meant, by her own telling, being away from ill-meaning step-mother and unproductive, unresponsive father. She also found friendship and social support through peers and even the institution’s teacher and the psychologist. The field worker too showed a modicum of concern when she lamented Josephine’s looks. Perhaps these newly formed kinship ties justified for Sonoma’s administrators that Josephine stay an additional five years after her sterilization. At the same time, we must take into account that these writings were mediated not only by the field worker but also by the institution’s stenographer. We therefore do not know for sure what happened to Josephine, especially when Sonoma released her. But we can assume that Josephine did not step into a welcoming world. Eugenic ideology was still strong. Sterilizations of the purportedly unfit were still rampant. Only a few years later the nation would face the greatest economic catastrophe in its history, and, shortly after, the state would launch a so-called repatriation campaign that ousted, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of citizens and immigrants of Mexican descent living in California. Josephine could very well have been one of them.