Speaker 1: You're listening to History on Trial, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion advised. On October thirty first, nineteen eighteen, Nina
Speaker 1: McCall's life changed. Nina, who had turned eighteen only two
Speaker 1: months before, was running errands in Saint Louis, a small
Speaker 1: town in central Michigan. Outside the post office, she ran
Speaker 1: into Saint Louis's deputy sheriff, Lewis Martin. Nina knew Martin.
Speaker 1: He had a daughter, Bernice, who was close to Nina's age.
Speaker 1: Nina had even been over to the Martin home to
Speaker 1: visit Bernice. The Martins had always been nice lately, though,
Speaker 1: Deputy Martin had been acting strangely. He was always talking
Speaker 1: to girls and young women, having tense conversations with them
Speaker 1: on the street, and sometimes even taking them away in
Speaker 1: his car. Nina didn't know what he was up to,
Speaker 1: but it made her uneasy. When Martin approached, she was
Speaker 1: right to be frightened. Martin had bad news for her.
Speaker 1: A state health official, he said, needed to examine her
Speaker 1: for sexually transmitted infections, and they needed to do it
Speaker 1: right away. Nina was confused and upset. She had never
Speaker 1: had sex, so how could she have a sexually transmitted infection,
Speaker 1: but the sheriff had ordered her so Nina went home
Speaker 1: and asked her mother Minnie, to accompany her to the
Speaker 1: office of doctor Thomas J. Carney, the health official in
Speaker 1: nearby Alma. When the McCalls got to Carney's office, the
Speaker 1: doctor told Nina that somebody had reported her as having
Speaker 1: an STI and that he needed to examine her. Nina refused,
Speaker 1: but Carney insisted, and when Nina still said no, he threatened,
Speaker 1: telling Nina that she would be sent to prison if
Speaker 1: she did not submit to the examination. Reluctantly, Nina agreed.
Speaker 1: She had never had a gynecological examination before. The exam
Speaker 1: was terrifying and painful. After examining slides he had taken,
Speaker 1: Carne informed Nina that she was quote slightly diseased. She
Speaker 1: had gone rhea. Nina couldn't believe it, neither could her mother.
Speaker 1: They argued, with Carney saying that Nina had never shown
Speaker 1: any symptoms of an STI and had never even had sex.
Speaker 1: Carney was obstinate Nina had gonorrhea and she needed to
Speaker 1: receive treatment. Not just any treatment, either, Nina would have
Speaker 1: to be locked away for it. Taken to a detention
Speaker 1: hospital and treated there. Why couldn't the treatment be done
Speaker 1: at home, Minnie asked. It was too expensive for a
Speaker 1: single mother like Minnie, Carney explained. Nina said she would
Speaker 1: get a job to help with the costs. Not possible,
Speaker 1: Carney replied, either she agreed to go to the detention hospital,
Speaker 1: or he would hang a red placuard on the front
Speaker 1: of her family home, declaring in all capital letters that
Speaker 1: someone inside had a venereal disease. Nina recoiled. The shame
Speaker 1: would be unbearable. She couldn't put herself or her family
Speaker 1: through that, so she agreed to be committed to the
Speaker 1: Bay City Detention Hospital. Seven days later, Carney's assistant, Ida Peck,
Speaker 1: escorted Nina to the hospital in nearby Bay City, Michigan.
Speaker 1: It was an imposing, three story brick building. Nina would
Speaker 1: be kept in the hospital for three months, forced to
Speaker 1: do manual labor, while also enduring agonizing, ineffective treatments. Even
Speaker 1: when she was finally declared disease free, state health officials
Speaker 1: would continue to harass her and force her to get
Speaker 1: further treatment. Nina's story sounds like something else out of
Speaker 1: a horror movie, but it was very real, and it
Speaker 1: was not unique. Across the country. In nineteen eighteen, thousands
Speaker 1: of women were being detained on the suspicion of having
Speaker 1: an STI, forcibly examined, and imprisoned without due process. Health
Speaker 1: officials were empowered to do all of these things under
Speaker 1: a program that became known hauntingly as the American Plan.
Speaker 1: Originally put in place during World War One to protect
Speaker 1: soldiers from STIs, the American Plan would linger on even
Speaker 1: in peacetime. In some places, women were detained under American
Speaker 1: Plan laws even as late as the nineteen seventies. The
Speaker 1: American Plan enjoyed broad popular support. Some of the most
Speaker 1: famous public figures of the twentieth century Fiorello LaGuardia, Earl
Speaker 1: Warren and Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, to name just a few,
Speaker 1: were enthusias bastic, proponents and enforcers of the Plan. They
Speaker 1: believed that the Plan kept Americans safe, But the women
Speaker 1: who suffered under the American Plan felt anything but safe.
Speaker 1: They had been stripped of their rights, hurt and humiliated,
Speaker 1: so they fought back. They escaped from detention, hospitals, held
Speaker 1: hunger strikes, set fires, and some of them sued. One
Speaker 1: of those who pursued the legal path was Nina McCall,
Speaker 1: who filed suit against doctor Thomas Carney, his assistant Ida Peck,
Speaker 1: and the superintendent of Bay City Detention Hospital, Mary Corrigan,
Speaker 1: for abusing her. The resulting trial, which took place in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, would put the central tenets of the plan
Speaker 1: to the test. Could public health concerns outweigh civil rights?
Speaker 1: Welcome to History on trial. I'm your host, Mira Hayward.
Speaker 1: This week Rock v. Carney. On April sixth, nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: the United States declared war on Germany and entered World
Speaker 1: War One. By July nearly two million American men had
Speaker 1: been called up as part of the medical exam. Upon
Speaker 1: entering the military, soldiers were tested for syphilis and gonorrhea.
Speaker 1: Many of them tested positive. Between August nineteen seventeen and
Speaker 1: August nineteen eighteen, the Surgeon General of the Army reported
Speaker 1: that nearly thirteen percent of all soldiers were admitted for
Speaker 1: treatment for STIs. Sdis were costly and dangerous for the military.
Speaker 1: Sick men needed treatment and could not fight. To combat
Speaker 1: the problem, the government attempted to reduce sex work around
Speaker 1: military camps. In May nineteen seventeen, Senator Wesley Livesey Jones
Speaker 1: introduced an amendment to the Selective Service Act, the act
Speaker 1: that invoked the draft, called Section thirteen. Section thirteen empowered
Speaker 1: the Secretary of War to quote do everything by him
Speaker 1: deemed necessary to suppress and prevent the keeping or setting
Speaker 1: up of houses of ill fame, brothels, or body houses
Speaker 1: within such distance as he may deem needful of any
Speaker 1: military camp. Secretary of War Newton Baker wrote to officials
Speaker 1: in locales with military camps and informed them that sex
Speaker 1: work should be shut down within a five mile radius
Speaker 1: of every camp. The federal organization leading STI policy was
Speaker 1: the Commission on Training Camp Activities, or the CTCA. The
Speaker 1: ctca's law Enforcement division deployed investigators across the country to
Speaker 1: look into whether cities were complying with the federal government's requests.
Speaker 1: These investigators were supplemented by agents from the Bureau of Investigation,
Speaker 1: the predecessor of the FBI, private groups, and members of
Speaker 1: the American Social Hygiene Association or ASHA. By the fall
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventeen, thanks to these collaborations, the CTCA had
Speaker 1: hundreds of investigators. At first, the ctca's work was limited
Speaker 1: to the areas around military camps, but soon Army medical
Speaker 1: officers determined that approximately five out of every six cases
Speaker 1: of sexually transmitted infection in soldiers had been acquired before
Speaker 1: the soldier arrived at camp. If the army wanted healthy soldiers,
Speaker 1: they needed a healthy civilian population. The federal government began
Speaker 1: encouraging states and cities to expand their repression of sex
Speaker 1: work into areas outside of the five mile radius surrounding
Speaker 1: military camps. This encouragement came with strong incentives. If cities
Speaker 1: did not try to reduce STI rates, the military would
Speaker 1: declare them off limits to soldiers or military camps, enormous
Speaker 1: economic blows. In order to ensure compliance, the federal government
Speaker 1: also encouraged local jurisdictions to pass laws that allowed health
Speaker 1: officials to detain, examine, and quarantine women. To provide guidance
Speaker 1: for states, federal officials met in DC in March nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen to draft a model law which states could adapt
Speaker 1: and enact. The law contained twelve recommendations. These included a
Speaker 1: requirement for physicians to report all STIs to the state
Speaker 1: quarantine and compulsory treatment, prohibition of drug stores selling treatment
Speaker 1: for STIs, thus requiring infective people to interact with physicians
Speaker 1: and government officials to get treatment, and most critically, empowering
Speaker 1: local health officers to examine Quote persons reasonably suspected of
Speaker 1: having syphilis, gonorrhea, or shancroid. The term reasonably suspected was
Speaker 1: extraordinarily broad. A woman could be reasonably suspected of having
Speaker 1: an STI for activities as innocuous as walking with a soldier,
Speaker 1: speaking to another woman thought to be a sex worker,
Speaker 1: or even eating lunch alone. Women who were detained and
Speaker 1: tested positive for syphilis and orgonrhea were sent to detention
Speaker 1: hospitals or houses, which were essentially jails. Most had barbed
Speaker 1: wire fences, armed guards, or both inside in often squalid conditions,
Speaker 1: The women were forced to perform taxing domestic labor, like
Speaker 1: scrubbing floors or cleaning bathrooms. Administrators saw this work, besides
Speaker 1: being unpaid labor that benefited the institution, as part of
Speaker 1: a larger program of moral reform, and I wish you
Speaker 1: could see how big the air quotes I'm doing are.
Speaker 1: It was not enough for inmates to be treated for
Speaker 1: their physical conditions. Many officials involved in the American Plan
Speaker 1: believed that these women needed instruction in conforming to a
Speaker 1: specific set of moral and social norms. As part of
Speaker 1: this program of behavioral correction, some detention houses used a
Speaker 1: silence rule. Women there were not allowed to speak to
Speaker 1: or even smile at one another. If they disobeyed this
Speaker 1: prohibition or any other orders, they could face corporal punishment.
Speaker 1: The women did receive treatment for their sdis they usually
Speaker 1: had no choice in the matter. These treatments were largely
Speaker 1: ineffective and often dangerous, since they were usually arsenic or
Speaker 1: mercury based. Women also had their intelligence assessed with inaccurate,
Speaker 1: discriminatory IQ tests. If a woman was bound to be
Speaker 1: quote feeble minded, she could be imprisoned indefinitely. Feeble minded
Speaker 1: women were seen to be prone to immorality. In the
Speaker 1: worst cases, some of these women were sterilized, usually without
Speaker 1: their consent. At this point, you might be one ding
Speaker 1: why I'm only talking about women. After all, sexually transmitted
Speaker 1: infections don't discriminate on the basis of gender, but not
Speaker 1: everyone is as enlightened as a syphilis bacterium. Although the
Speaker 1: Model law was gender neutral, its application never was very
Speaker 1: Very few men were ever examined or quarantined under these laws.
Speaker 1: There was a common misconception that women spread STIs more
Speaker 1: than men did. As one federal public health official put it,
Speaker 1: quote men take more precautions. Women are very negligent. It
Speaker 1: was an obviously sexist assumption. But as the historian Scott W.
Speaker 1: Stern writes in his book The Trials of Nina McCall,
Speaker 1: these laws were based entirely on assumptions. Assumptions that quote,
Speaker 1: young women were responsible for the indiscretions of young men,
Speaker 1: That promiscuity in women was worse than it was in men.
Speaker 1: That STIs merited jail time for women, That women could
Speaker 1: not merely serve their time as men did, but that
Speaker 1: they had to be cured of disease and be reformed
Speaker 1: in order to merit release. Enforcement was also racist. CTCA
Speaker 1: investigators were instructed to focus on black women and black neighborhoods. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: many local officials saw no problems with any of these
Speaker 1: assumptions or biases. States began passing the model law quickly.
Speaker 1: You might also be wondering about the constitutionality of these laws.
Speaker 1: Surely people could not be locked up without due process
Speaker 1: right wrong, at least according to United States Attorney General
Speaker 1: Thomas Watt Gregory. On April third, nineteen eighteen, Gregory wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to every United States attorney across the country
Speaker 1: ordering that people arrested for prostitution should first be sent
Speaker 1: to health officials for STI examination. If a woman was
Speaker 1: found to be infected, she should be quarantined and treated.
Speaker 1: Prosecution for her crimes should be suspended until she completed
Speaker 1: this quarantine, meaning that she would be locked up without trial.
Speaker 1: Gregory called the constitutionality of this plan quote clear. He
Speaker 1: also told the US attorneys to report any local officials
Speaker 1: who refused to go along with the plan. Gregory sent
Speaker 1: a similar message to all US district judges. Even before
Speaker 1: the creation of the model law, some states had used
Speaker 1: their own initiative to make regulations. In October nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: the Michigan State Board of Health ordered physicians to report
Speaker 1: all cases of gonorrhea and syphilis and to apprehend, detain,
Speaker 1: and treat anyone found to be infected. The secretary of
Speaker 1: the board, Richard m Ollen, also met with pharmacists associations
Speaker 1: and got them to agree to stop selling STI treatments.
Speaker 1: Michigan's regulations closely mirrored what would appear in the Model Law.
Speaker 1: Less than a year later, Nina McCall would experience firsthand
Speaker 1: with those regulations meant. Nina McCall was born on September second,
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred to Abe and Minnie McCall. Two years later,
Speaker 1: Nina's younger brother, Vern arrived. The McCalls lived on a
Speaker 1: farm outside of Bethany Township in central Michigan until nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: when they moved to nearby Saint Louis. Saint Louis was
Speaker 1: a small town, one where everybody knew everybody. In nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: Abe McCall died, leaving his family in a difficult financial position.
Speaker 1: Within a year, Minnie McCall had to sell their home
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis. Minnie, Nina, and Verne moved to Alma,
Speaker 1: a neighboring town. It was at this point that seventeen
Speaker 1: year old Nina stopped attending school altogether. Her attendance had
Speaker 1: always been spotty, but after the move to Alma, she
Speaker 1: never went back. It was an exciting time to be
Speaker 1: a young woman, even in a rural town like Alma.
Speaker 1: More and more women were entering the workforce, giving them
Speaker 1: greater economic power and a new level of independence. Young
Speaker 1: women began to casually date more than they ever had before,
Speaker 1: and rates of premarital sex rose. Nina herself began dating
Speaker 1: a young man named Lloyd Knapp. In May nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: Nina and Lloyd filed for a marriage license, but they
Speaker 1: never completed the paperwork and never married. A month later,
Speaker 1: the McCalls moved back to Saint Louis. At the same time,
Speaker 1: soldiers were beginning to flood at Central Michigan. Alma was
Speaker 1: home to the Republic Motor Truck Company, which made trucks
Speaker 1: for the army, and soldiers arrived in droves to help
Speaker 1: drive the trucks east. The presence of so many new
Speaker 1: people met good things economically for the region, but there
Speaker 1: were concerns too. In May, the Alma Record wrote that
Speaker 1: the city council needed to quote do away with the
Speaker 1: present state of affairs in the city, where men seemed
Speaker 1: to think that they are privileged to accost ladies. Only
Speaker 1: some ladies were entitled to protection. Though the record also
Speaker 1: noted quote the presence of so many men is said
Speaker 1: to be bringing women of an unsavory reputation into the city.
Speaker 1: The record need not have worried the city's health officer,
Speaker 1: Doctor Thomas J. Carney, was on the case. The forty
Speaker 1: nine year old Carney, a NeDi of New Yorker, had
Speaker 1: arrived in Alma three years earlier. An inflexible, dogmatic man
Speaker 1: with strong beliefs, Carney was determined to root out any
Speaker 1: sources of ill health, from unpasteurized milk to promiscuous women.
Speaker 1: Carney would be aided in his work by Ida Peck.
Speaker 1: Peck had held a number of jobs all across Michigan
Speaker 1: in her fifty seven years. She had been a school teacher,
Speaker 1: a private nurse, and a factory foreman. But beginning in
Speaker 1: September nineteen eighteen, Peck would be a welfare worker. According
Speaker 1: to Peck, quote, a welfare worker is one who looks
Speaker 1: after the girls. In reality, it was less looking after
Speaker 1: than looking into. Thomas Carney hired Peck to help enforce
Speaker 1: Michigan's STI laws. Peck later described her work as identifying
Speaker 1: and following women who quote raised a suspicion in my mind.
Speaker 1: Then she would report these women to doctor Carney, who
Speaker 1: would have them detained and then examine them for STIs.
Speaker 1: If their results were positive, Peck would escort the women
Speaker 1: to the detention hospital in Bay City, fifty miles northeast
Speaker 1: of Saint Louis, Ida. Peck first heard Nina mccaull's name
Speaker 1: in early October nineteen eighteen. She was transporting women to
Speaker 1: Bay City when one of them mentioned Nina's name. Nothing more,
Speaker 1: just her name, but that was enough for Peck to
Speaker 1: put Nina on her radar. Less than a month later,
Speaker 1: on October thirty, First Deputy Martin brought Nina into Carney's office.
Speaker 1: Whether Carney and Peck had any reason for suspecting Nina
Speaker 1: besides the fact that another woman mentioned her name is unknown,
Speaker 1: but the reasons why didn't really matter one way or another.
Speaker 1: Nina had been sucked into the grinding machinery of the
Speaker 1: American Plan. As an aside, the term American Plan entered
Speaker 1: widespread use only after World War One. Federal officials used
Speaker 1: the term occasionally before that, but it was only in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen that American Plan became the name for this
Speaker 1: set of state and federal policies. The name American Plan
Speaker 1: paralleled other national plans for the control of STIs and
Speaker 1: sex work, like the French Plan, created under Napoleon. For example,
Speaker 1: Nina didn't know the plan as anything. She might not
Speaker 1: have even known how many other women were enduring what
Speaker 1: she was. There were thousands of them in Michigan alone.
Speaker 1: Between July one, nineteen eight eighteenth and June thirtieth, nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: one thousand, one hundred and twenty one people were forcibly
Speaker 1: detained for treatment, one thousand and seventy two of them women.
Speaker 1: But Nina felt so alone. She would later say that
Speaker 1: she only told her mother and her two aunts about
Speaker 1: her experience because quote I was ashamed of it. To
Speaker 1: contextualize Nina's reaction, STIs were so stigmatized at the time
Speaker 1: that many newspapers would not even print the words venereal disease.
Speaker 1: After Carney examined Nina, diagnosed her with gonorrhea and informed
Speaker 1: her that she would need and her detention hospital for treatment,
Speaker 1: he sent her home for the night. On the bus
Speaker 1: ride home, Nina discovered that, as a result of Carney's
Speaker 1: gynecological exam, she had bled through her trousers. The next day,
Speaker 1: Nina traveled back to Carney's office to report to the hospital.
Speaker 1: Carney told her that i'da pas was sick and could
Speaker 1: not escort her, so Nina would have to return later.
Speaker 1: He told her the same thing on every one of
Speaker 1: her return visits for the next seven days. Strangely, for
Speaker 1: a doctor who claimed that Nina was such a health
Speaker 1: risk to her community, Garney didn't seem too stressed about
Speaker 1: getting her quarantined. On November sixth, Ida Pek was well
Speaker 1: enough to take Nina to Bay City. The hospital had
Speaker 1: been constructed in nineteen eleven to hold patients with contagious
Speaker 1: diseases like smallpox and scarlet fever. In February nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: Richard Olan, the head of Michigan State Board of Health,
Speaker 1: had requested that the hospital be transformed into a detention
Speaker 1: hospital for women obtained under the American Plan. The city
Speaker 1: readily agreed, in part because the state would pay them
Speaker 1: for their services. Bay City would receive fifteen dollars per
Speaker 1: patient per week, more than enough to cover any expenses
Speaker 1: associated with the hospital. This kind of arrangement wasn't unusual.
Speaker 1: Cities received state and federal funding to detain women, giving
Speaker 1: them an economic incentive to enforce the plan. When Nina arrived,
Speaker 1: she met the hospital's superintendent, thirty six year old Mary Corrigan,
Speaker 1: a former nurse. She was given her first meal. She
Speaker 1: would later testify that the food was mainly potatoes and beets.
Speaker 1: Then she was shown into a small room with two beds.
Speaker 1: Nina would have to share a bed with another woman.
Speaker 1: The hospital was overcrowded. Its maximum capacity was only fifty,
Speaker 1: but there were closer to sixty or maybe even sixty
Speaker 1: five women there. When Nina arrived, A nurse drew Nina's
Speaker 1: blood and sent it off for testing. Two weeks later,
Speaker 1: the results came back. Nina had tested positive for syphilis.
Speaker 1: We should take this result with a large grain of salt.
Speaker 1: The test used at the time, the Wasserman test, had
Speaker 1: a false positive rate of twenty five percent, but the
Speaker 1: results were never questioned by the officials at Bay City.
Speaker 1: Nina began to receive injections to treat her syphilis. Treatment
Speaker 1: at this time consisted of injections of mercury and arsenic.
Speaker 1: Not only did these injections not treat syphilis, they actively
Speaker 1: harmed patients. Nina's hair began to fall out, her teeth
Speaker 1: became sore and loose. Her arm where she got the
Speaker 1: shots swelled up so much she could barely move it.
Speaker 1: Despite these painful conditions, Nina was still forced to work.
Speaker 1: While at Bay City. She washed dishes, scrubbed the operating
Speaker 1: room floors, and scoured toilets. The work was interminable, grueling,
Speaker 1: and unpaid. There was little time for fun, and even
Speaker 1: if there had been, the women at Bay City were
Speaker 1: kept mainly inside. There was a ditch in front of
Speaker 1: the hospital and inmates were not allowed past it. Nina
Speaker 1: had initially been ordered to the hospital because of testing
Speaker 1: positive for gonorrhea, but while at Bay City, she received
Speaker 1: only two treatments for this condition. Unsurprisingly, given the effect
Speaker 1: the mercury and arsenic shots had on her, Nina did
Speaker 1: not want to receive more treatment. When the doctor arrived
Speaker 1: to administer gonerhea treatments, Nina simply stayed away. She only
Speaker 1: received formal orders, which she did not disobey to receive treatment.
Speaker 1: Six weeks into her stay, a doctor applied a compounded
Speaker 1: silver cream to her vulva, another ineffective treatment. Nina only
Speaker 1: ever received two rounds of this topical cream. Despite the
Speaker 1: ineffective infrequent applications, Nina was declared quote free from syphilis
Speaker 1: and gottorrhea in the infectious stage. In January nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering how this is possible, you're not alone.
Speaker 1: Scott Stern writes, quote, even if we were to believe
Speaker 1: that she truly had syphilis and gonorrhea when Carney examined her,
Speaker 1: and that the two infections coincidentally advanced to layton and
Speaker 1: non contagious stages on their own, which was certainly possible.
Speaker 1: For this timeline to fit the timing of Nina's examination
Speaker 1: and incarceration exactly, would have had to be a remarkable coincidence.
Speaker 1: Whatever the cause, Nina was declared released from quarantine. She
Speaker 1: was given train fare home. After three months, she was
Speaker 1: finally free, but her ordeal would not end there. When
Speaker 1: Nina returned home, she found it difficult to find a job.
Speaker 1: Richard Olin, the director of the State Board of Health,
Speaker 1: claimed that there were programs to help women get employment
Speaker 1: after release. Nina, for one, did not receive any assistance
Speaker 1: of this kind. She eventually got a restaurant job in
Speaker 1: nearby Mount Pleasant, but lost that job a week later
Speaker 1: when someone informed her employers that she had been at
Speaker 1: Bay City. A week after Nina returned home, Ida Peck
Speaker 1: showed up at the McCall house. Nina needed to report
Speaker 1: to doctor Carney for further treatment, Peck said. Nina protested
Speaker 1: that she had been declared free of disease. Peck told
Speaker 1: Nina she could either get treatment or be sent to jail.
Speaker 1: Afraid of being sent away again, Nina began making the
Speaker 1: journey to Carney's office every five days, receiving more painful
Speaker 1: mercury injections. The shots made her body ache, she had
Speaker 1: trouble walking. Even though Nina was complying with Peck's orders,
Speaker 1: the welfare worker would not leave her alone. Peck showed
Speaker 1: up at her house regularly. Nina later said, quote, she
Speaker 1: was just hounding the life out of me, chasing me
Speaker 1: day and night. This was not an unusual experience for
Speaker 1: former detainees. Most women who were released were on a
Speaker 1: kind of parole. Social or welfare workers monitored the women
Speaker 1: closely and often dictated their life choices, from what jobs
Speaker 1: they could do to where they could live. Women could
Speaker 1: be declared parole violators for any number of my old
Speaker 1: things like breaking curfew or wearing makeup, and sent back
Speaker 1: to detention centers. After three months of harassment, Nina started
Speaker 1: thinking about her options. I'd a Peck might be willing
Speaker 1: to harass a teenager and her widowed mother, but maybe
Speaker 1: Nina thought Peck would back off if she had to
Speaker 1: answer to a man. So Nina decided to get married.
Speaker 1: I got married, Nina would later say, to get away
Speaker 1: from her. But tragically, Nina's new husband, Claire Rock, only
Speaker 1: posed new dangers. On their wedding night, Nina recounted, Claire
Speaker 1: told her quote, he just simply married me because I
Speaker 1: had been in Bay City. He thought he could do
Speaker 1: just as he pleased. He wanted to take me to Detroit.
Speaker 1: He wanted me to make his living by having The
Speaker 1: trial transcript is censored here, but we can read between
Speaker 1: the lines Claire wanted to pimp her. Ida Peck was
Speaker 1: furious that Nina had dared to marry without her permission.
Speaker 1: She showed up at the McCall home and told Minnie
Speaker 1: that she was going to send Nina to jail. After
Speaker 1: Nina returned from her honeymoon, a disastrous two day trip
Speaker 1: during which Claire had gone to see another woman in Detroit,
Speaker 1: she learned that Ida Pack had been harassing her mother.
Speaker 1: Was there no way to escape the shadow of Bay City. Desperate,
Speaker 1: Nina made the decision to run. After a zigzagging journey,
Speaker 1: she ended up in Detroit, where she stayed for the
Speaker 1: next several months, trying to make a living. Ida Peck
Speaker 1: kept after Minnie, demanding that she share her daughter's new address.
Speaker 1: Minnie refused to tell her. Then something shifted. In September,
Speaker 1: Minnie wrote to Nina, telling her that she should come home.
Speaker 1: A woman had come to see her. Minnie told Nina,
Speaker 1: and had given her advice about Nina's situation. Nina, this
Speaker 1: woman had had said, ought to sue the government. The
Speaker 1: woman was named Elizabeth Giffens. Her issues with the American
Speaker 1: Plan were faith based. A Christian scientist, Elizabeth objected to
Speaker 1: the government forcing medical treatment on anyone. A wealthy, passionate woman,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth told Manny that she would help the McCalls get
Speaker 1: justice in Detroit. Nina must have felt a faint glimmer
Speaker 1: of hope. It had been almost a year since Deputy
Speaker 1: Martin had stopped her on the street and upended her life. Finally,
Speaker 1: after all this time, there might be a way to
Speaker 1: fight back. But could a nineteen year old take on
Speaker 1: the state government. On November third, nineteen nineteen, Nina McCall
Speaker 1: filed suit against doctor Thomas Carney, welfare worker Ida Peck,
Speaker 1: and hospital superintendent Mary Corrigan for conspiring together to quote
Speaker 1: transgress the lawful rights of this plaintiff and alleged that,
Speaker 1: through quote wrongful assumption of power and authority, and by misrepresentation, coercion,
Speaker 1: and duress, caused this plaintiff to be assaulted, maltreated, abused, arrested,
Speaker 1: restrained and imprisoned, and grossly slandered, disgraced, and humiliated. The
Speaker 1: three attorneys who filed this suit on Nina's behalf were
Speaker 1: some of the most prominent lawyers in Michigan. Dean Kelly
Speaker 1: was a former prosecutor and judge. George Stone was also
Speaker 1: a former judge. Seymour Person was a state representative. How
Speaker 1: Nina came to have such high powered lawyers is unknown.
Speaker 1: Nina denied on the stand that Elizabeth Giffins, the wealthy
Speaker 1: Christian scientist who had encouraged her to sue, was funding
Speaker 1: her case. Elizabeth was supporting Nina in other ways, though
Speaker 1: Nina soon became her housekeeper and chauffeur. Nina also lived
Speaker 1: with the Giffens family at one point. She was by
Speaker 1: now completely estranged from her husband, Claire Rock, though she
Speaker 1: did keep his last name, which is why the case
Speaker 1: is known as Rock v. Carney. The trial date was
Speaker 1: set for Tuesday, June first, nineteen twenty, at the Grashat
Speaker 1: County Courthouse in Ithaca. The judge was Edward J. Money,
Speaker 1: a forty seven year old circuit court judge with an
Speaker 1: intense gaze and strong opinions. The jury consisted of twelve men.
Speaker 1: Though women had begun serving on juries in Michigan in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, somehow Nina ended up with an all male jury.
Speaker 1: All three of the defendants, Carneie, Peck, and Corrigan appeared
Speaker 1: along with their lawyers. Like Nina, they had brought in
Speaker 1: serious legal firepower. O. L. Smith was the Grashat County Prosecutor,
Speaker 1: acting in a private capacity here. Smith was also the
Speaker 1: former law partner of Nina's attorney, George Stone, and had
Speaker 1: recently beaten Stone in the race for county prosecutor. Alva Cummins,
Speaker 1: another defense lawyer, had been a county prosecutor in Ingham County.
Speaker 1: Nina herself was the first to testify. Lawyer Dean Kelly
Speaker 1: walked her through her story. The humiliating, painful gynecological exam,
Speaker 1: the confinement in the hospital, the excruciating injections, the harassment.
Speaker 1: Even after she was released, Nina spoke plainly, laying out
Speaker 1: the terrible details of her ordeal in a straightforward way.
Speaker 1: On cross examination, lawyer Alva Cummins pushed Nina on her
Speaker 1: romantic and sexual history. Hadn't she had frequent associations with
Speaker 1: soldier boys? No, Nina said. Didn't she know Lloyd Nap?
Speaker 1: Nina said that she did know Lloyd Nap, This was
Speaker 1: the young man she had once planned to marry, but
Speaker 1: she denied knowing another local boy and soldier or In Strauss.
Speaker 1: She denied that she and a friend had ever spent
Speaker 1: the night with Lloyd and Orin. She denied accepting rides
Speaker 1: from men. The accusation, Cummins concluded, is that you had
Speaker 1: improper relations with soldiers, Well, said, Nina, I didn't. Cummin's
Speaker 1: intent with these questions was not necessarily to prove that
Speaker 1: Nina was having sex with soldiers. It was to prove
Speaker 1: that people believed that Nina was giving Carney and Peck
Speaker 1: reason to suspect her of having an STI. Next to
Speaker 1: testify was Nina's mother, Minnie McCall. Minnie corroborated her daughter's narrative.
Speaker 1: She also detailed how Ida Peck had harassed her while
Speaker 1: Nina was in Detroit. After Minnie, Bay City Superintendent Mary
Speaker 1: Corgan testified, she disagreed with Nina's portrayal of Bay City.
Speaker 1: Nina said that the inmates were only served beats and potatoes.
Speaker 1: Corrigan said quote, the girls were provided with suitable food.
Speaker 1: We had red beats, but that was not the exclusive
Speaker 1: bill of fare. Corgan claimed that the women had more
Speaker 1: freedom of movement than Nina had said they did. Coregan
Speaker 1: also denied knowing doctor Thomas Carney on Cross. However, Dan
Speaker 1: Kelly got her to admit that she had placed a
Speaker 1: call to doctor Carney in January to notify him of
Speaker 1: Nina's release. Ida Peck testified next. Peck portrayed herself as
Speaker 1: a woman simply doing her duty. She said that Nina
Speaker 1: had never complained to her about the conditions at Bay City.
Speaker 1: She said that she only had visited Nina and Minnie
Speaker 1: a handful of times. She denied ever threatening Nina. All
Speaker 1: of her actions had been well within the scope of
Speaker 1: her welfare work. In Peck's story, but on closer examination,
Speaker 1: that story had holes. Peck claim the only reason she
Speaker 1: had continued asking Minni for Nina's address was because she
Speaker 1: was trying to help a jeweler's wife collect on a
Speaker 1: bill that Nina owed for a ring she had purchased.
Speaker 1: Why would a jeweler ask an acquaintance of his wife
Speaker 1: to serve as a bill collector. Peck also denied confronting
Speaker 1: Minnie on the day of Nina's wedding, saying, it is
Speaker 1: not true that within twenty four hours, hours after I
Speaker 1: heard of the girls being married, I was over there
Speaker 1: to her mother's house, But only minutes later Peck admitted
Speaker 1: that she saw them a calls quote the day Nina
Speaker 1: was married. Peck's justification for bringing in women for examinations
Speaker 1: also seemed vague. She simply said that if a girl
Speaker 1: had a quote suspicious character, she would send them in.
Speaker 1: Peck determined character, she said, by watching women and seeing
Speaker 1: quote where they went and what they did. As for Nina,
Speaker 1: Peck claimed that she had admitted to having sex with
Speaker 1: Lloyd Nap. Plaintiff's lawyer, Seymour Person brought Nina back on
Speaker 1: the stand after Peck's testimony to push back on this claim.
Speaker 1: It is not true. Nina said that I told her
Speaker 1: that I had sexual relations with this boy. I did
Speaker 1: not have sexual relations with him. It's impossible for us
Speaker 1: to know more than one hundred years later the extent
Speaker 1: of Nina's relationship with Lloyd Nap, But I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty unlikely that she would openly admit to having sex
Speaker 1: with him to Peck, a virtual stranger who was in
Speaker 1: the process of locking her up. Once Nina had finished testifying,
Speaker 1: and once Alva Cummins had recross examined her and brought
Speaker 1: up even more boys who he accused her of dating,
Speaker 1: Nina denied all these claims. The plaintiff's side rested before
Speaker 1: any defense witnesses testified. Alva Cummins made emotion asked the
Speaker 1: charges be dismissed. Carney, Peck, and Corgan had acted within
Speaker 1: their authority, he said, and they had not conspired to
Speaker 1: do wrong. Their actions had all been taken individually. Dean
Speaker 1: Kelly for the plaintiff, argued that the three defendants had
Speaker 1: exceeded their authority. Judge one A took fifteen minutes to
Speaker 1: consider the arguments. When he called the lawyers back in,
Speaker 1: he announced that there was quote no proof in my judgment,
Speaker 1: which shows a conspiracy between the three defendants. Thus, he
Speaker 1: instructed Nina's lawyers to choose only one of the defendants
Speaker 1: to proceed against. The lawyers chose Carney, believing that his
Speaker 1: forced examination of Nina was beyond his authority. The defense
Speaker 1: only called one witness, Richard Olan, the former head of
Speaker 1: the State Board of Health and the current head of
Speaker 1: the newly formed State Department of Health. Olan's job was
Speaker 1: to rebut the plaintiff's argument that Carney had exceeded his authority.
Speaker 1: He testified that he had employed doctor Carney as quote,
Speaker 1: a medical inspector for the purpose of the venereal disease
Speaker 1: campaign within his county. Dean Kelly objected that Olan did
Speaker 1: not have the authority to employ doctor Carney in this way.
Speaker 1: Cummins said he did. Judge Money told Olan to continue.
Speaker 1: Cummins walked Oland through the state's policies through the creation
Speaker 1: of detention hospitals, the enlistment of doctors to examine women,
Speaker 1: and the enforced treatment of disease. After a cross examination
Speaker 1: in which Dean Kelly unsuccessfully tried to get Ollen to
Speaker 1: admit that women were supposed to have the option of
Speaker 1: at home treatment Alva. Cummins made another motion. He asked
Speaker 1: for a directed verdict. A directed verdict is ordered by
Speaker 1: a trial judge when the judge believes that there is
Speaker 1: only one reasonable decision that a jury could make based
Speaker 1: on the evidence presented. In this case, Cummen said, quote,
Speaker 1: we contend as a matter of law that doctor Carney
Speaker 1: was within his authority and that there is no cause here.
Speaker 1: Dean Kelly shot back that doctor Kearney was not within
Speaker 1: his authority. In fact, Kelly said Carney had violated the
Speaker 1: Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution and Article two, section
Speaker 1: sixteen of the Michigan Constitution, both of which declared that
Speaker 1: no person shall be quote deprived of life, liberty, or
Speaker 1: property without due process of law. The jury had been
Speaker 1: absent for these arguments. Now Judge ONEA summoned them back
Speaker 1: in and made his ruling on the motion. This is
Speaker 1: a very important case, he said, and involved some very
Speaker 1: important legal principles. Did the state have the right to
Speaker 1: police its citizens for the sake of public health? Jooney
Speaker 1: believed it did. Within the statute. Joanne said, the local
Speaker 1: health officer had the powers and acted within his authority
Speaker 1: at the time. He did what it is claimed in
Speaker 1: this case that he did do given that MONEE concluded,
Speaker 1: you will, therefore, by direction of the Court, return a
Speaker 1: verdict here of no cause of action. Nina had lost
Speaker 1: her case. She was ordered to pay the defendants legal fees,
Speaker 1: and her name was splashed across newspapers around the state,
Speaker 1: but even still she was not ready to admit defeat.
Speaker 1: A little over a year later, on June twenty third,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, her lawyers submitted an appeal, citing thirty
Speaker 1: six errors they believed Judge Monette had committed during the trial.
Speaker 1: By this point, Nina had more on her mind than
Speaker 1: just her legal case. Five months after the trial, her
Speaker 1: estranged husband, Claire Rock, was shot and killed in Detroit
Speaker 1: by the angry ex husband of a girl he was seeing.
Speaker 1: In April nineteen twenty one, Nina married again, this time
Speaker 1: to Norman Hess, a plumber from Saginaw. On June twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: six days after her lawyers filed the appeal, Nina gave
Speaker 1: birth to a son, who she named John, after both
Speaker 1: of her grandfather's. Heartbreakingly, John died only hours later. In December,
Speaker 1: the Michigan Supreme Court issued their ruling on Nina's appeal,
Speaker 1: They found in her favor. Justice Grandfellows, writing the opinion
Speaker 1: for the majority, declared that quote, doctor Carney had the
Speaker 1: power to make the examination, but he could not exercise
Speaker 1: such power unless he had reasonable grounds to believe that
Speaker 1: plaintiff was infected. Such good faith on his part was
Speaker 1: a necessary prerequisite to the exercise of the power. I
Speaker 1: am unable to follow the contention of defendant's counsel that
Speaker 1: this record establishes such good faith. The Supreme Court overturned
Speaker 1: Juanna's ruling and ordered a new trial for Nina's case.
Speaker 1: This was a victory for Nina, to be sure, but
Speaker 1: in a dark turn, Nina's victory may very well have
Speaker 1: turned out to be other women's loss, because it set
Speaker 1: a dangerous precedent. To explain how Rock v. Carney impacted
Speaker 1: future American plan cases, we have to return to Justice
Speaker 1: Fellows's Michigan Supreme Court opinion. Fellows had found that Carne
Speaker 1: did not have reasonable grounds to examine Nina, but he
Speaker 1: hadn't objected to the law that granted Carne his powers.
Speaker 1: The power exists in the boards of health. Fellows wrote
Speaker 1: to quarantine persons in affected with these diseases and to
Speaker 1: make such examination as the nature of the disease requires
Speaker 1: to determine its presence. This finding would later be cited
Speaker 1: in future cases to justify the state's power to examine
Speaker 1: and quarantine people, and there would be many such future
Speaker 1: cases because the American Plan was far from over. Even
Speaker 1: though it had begun as a wartime program, the Plan's
Speaker 1: architects and many Americans wanted the program to continue after
Speaker 1: the war ended in November nineteen eighteen. In April nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: the Michigan State legislature passed a bill that, per the
Speaker 1: Detroit Free Press, empowers the state Board of Health to
Speaker 1: continue what it has been doing throughout the war. By
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, every US state had passed similar legislation.
Speaker 1: There was some opposition to the Plan. Opponents believed that
Speaker 1: the oppressive, sexist enforcement of the Plan laws were harming
Speaker 1: women more than they were helping them, but there were
Speaker 1: limits to this opposition. Take this quote from journalist H. L. Menkin,
Speaker 1: a prominent Plan critic. Quote, if patrols go out after
Speaker 1: suspicious women in the manner indicated by the press accounts,
Speaker 1: a great many innocent women will be abominably persecuted. Many
Speaker 1: of these opponents saw no problem with sex workers being
Speaker 1: locked up without due process. Their concern was reserved for
Speaker 1: innocent women. Another group who had begun to speak out
Speaker 1: against the plan was the American Medical Association. The AMA
Speaker 1: opposed government intervention into healthcare. It was their lobbying, not
Speaker 1: the lobbying of people concerned about the sexist and unconstitutional
Speaker 1: aspects of the Plan, that would convince the federal government
Speaker 1: to step back from funding the plan. In December nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: Congress declined to provide money for Plan programs. But just
Speaker 1: because the federal government no longer funded the plan did
Speaker 1: not mean that it was dead. States and cities still
Speaker 1: had their own plan laws, however, reduced funding, and during
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, funding dried up almost entirely. Did disincentivize
Speaker 1: some institutions and states. Bay's City Detention Hospital, for example,
Speaker 1: was shut down in nineteen twenty one due to a
Speaker 1: lack of funding as well as concerns about the hospital's
Speaker 1: body accounting practices, but soon the money would return. In
Speaker 1: the late nineteen thirties, a new Surgeon General, Thomas Perrin,
Speaker 1: revitalized the federal conversation about STI prevention. In May nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Venereal Disease Control Act,
Speaker 1: granting millions of dollars of federal funding for STI investigations
Speaker 1: and control. The advent of World War II in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine further strengthened federal resolve to fund STI prevention programs.
Speaker 1: Even before the United States entered the war in December
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, measures were being taken to reinvigorate the
Speaker 1: American Plan. In spring nineteen forty one, a new federal agency,
Speaker 1: the Social Protection Division, was born. Tasked with getting local
Speaker 1: officials to enforce their Plan laws. The SPD acquired thirty
Speaker 1: abandoned civilian conservation core camps and turned them into rapid
Speaker 1: treatment centers. These centers functioned much like the detention hospitals
Speaker 1: of the earlier Plan, and they were filled almost exclusively
Speaker 1: with women, thousands of them. And once again, even when
Speaker 1: the original impetus for the centers the war ended, the
Speaker 1: programs continued. But now the plan faced a new obstacle,
Speaker 1: one more powerful than any political or moral objection. Antibiotics penicillin,
Speaker 1: discovered in nineteen twenty nine, could effectively and quickly treat
Speaker 1: both syphilis and gonorrhea. The antibiotic had initially been difficult
Speaker 1: to mass produce, and then even once this problem was solved,
Speaker 1: distribution was restricted in order to prioritize military use during
Speaker 1: the war, but in April nineteen forty five, restrictions on
Speaker 1: penicillin were removed. Given the widespread access to fast treatment,
Speaker 1: it became harder for officials to justify extended quarantines. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, Congress declined to fund the Social Protection Division,
Speaker 1: but still the American Plan would not die. It would,
Speaker 1: in fact, outlive Nina McCall hesse after the Michigan Supreme
Speaker 1: Court overturned Judge Ononai's ruling and granted Nina the right
Speaker 1: to a new trial. Nina filed suit again in January
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two, but for unknown reasons, she never pursued
Speaker 1: the suit, and the case was dismissed in November nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five. Nina and her husband Norman lived a quiet
Speaker 1: life after the death of her baby John. Nina had
Speaker 1: no more biological children, but she and Norman did raise
Speaker 1: her orphaned cousins. Tragically, these two children also died young
Speaker 1: one aged twenty the other nineteen. Nina herself died of
Speaker 1: a brain tumor on July twenty first, nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: age fifty six. She is buried in Floral Gardens Cemetery,
Speaker 1: a five minute drive from Bay City Detention Hospital. By
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, the year that Nina died, the world
Speaker 1: had changed in many ways since her detention in nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: but the American Plan was still in full force in
Speaker 1: cities as varied as Denver, Salt Lake City, and Terre Haute, Indiana,
Speaker 1: among many others. Women were detained and examined for STIs
Speaker 1: under Plan laws well into the nineteen seventies. The endurance
Speaker 1: of this program belied the fact that it was a
Speaker 1: failure in controlling STIs. During World War One, the only
Speaker 1: thing that had actually worked to reduce STIs amongst soldiers
Speaker 1: was chemical prophylaxis, prophylaxis administered not to female sex workers
Speaker 1: but to the soldiers. But ultimately, the American Plan was
Speaker 1: never really about reducing STIs. It was about controlling women's sexuality.
Speaker 1: When it became clear that penicillin could revolutionize treatment, some
Speaker 1: American Plan officials were upset. One high ranking official, Walter
Speaker 1: Clark said in nineteen forty four, quote the venereal disease
Speaker 1: problem cannot be solved by the fine them and treat
Speaker 1: them method alone. The New York Herald Tribune described Clark's conclusions, quote,
Speaker 1: more stringent methods must be employed by the authorities, he
Speaker 1: said in repressing the tendency to sex promiscuity. More than
Speaker 1: three decades later, in nineteen seventy seven, a Monterey County, California,
Speaker 1: police commander spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the
Speaker 1: county's practice of forcing sex workers to get STI tests.
Speaker 1: His message was stark, quote Venereal disease was not our concern.
Speaker 1: Cleaning up the streets was our concern more than anything else.
Speaker 1: It was a harassing technique that falls within legal parameters
Speaker 1: for the police, so that we don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about the Civil Liberties Union or the Public Defender's Office
Speaker 1: or somebody like that issuing a court order against us. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: by the nineteen seventies, the civil liberties unions were beginning
Speaker 1: to fight back. During World War II, the American Civil
Speaker 1: Liberties Union had actually supported the plan, but in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four ACLU attorney Deborah Hinkle, working in tandem with
Speaker 1: the sex workers rights organization COYOTE, filed suit against the
Speaker 1: City of San Francisco for their practice of holding women
Speaker 1: arrested for prostitution or related offenses for seventy two hours
Speaker 1: and sssibly examining them for STIs. A month later, a
Speaker 1: San Francisco Superior Court judge issued an injunction halting enforcement
Speaker 1: of this practice. Hinkle filed a similar suit in Alameda
Speaker 1: County with similar results. County officials appealed. The director of
Speaker 1: California's state Health Department spoke out against these enforced holds, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: the Department of Health cannot support actions disguised as preventive
Speaker 1: health measures that are actually intended to achieve law enforcement objectives,
Speaker 1: particularly when they appear to constitute a denial of basic rights.
Speaker 1: The California Court of Appeal agreed, saying that the practice
Speaker 1: was discriminatory. Men who were arrested for soliciting sex workers
Speaker 1: were not similarly held and examined. Alameda County, uninterested in
Speaker 1: detaining men, ended their practice soon after, but as usual,
Speaker 1: like a persistent infection, perhaps the American plan kept popping back. Today,
Speaker 1: the laws that enabled the Plan. Laws that allow state
Speaker 1: officials to determine which diseases are suitable for quarantine are
Speaker 1: still on the books of every single state. Most of
Speaker 1: these laws include provisions that allow for the examination of
Speaker 1: people reasonably suspected of carrying quarantinable disease. Of course, there
Speaker 1: are legitimate cases of quarantine or other restrictive measures employed
Speaker 1: for public health reasons. That's why I think it's so
Speaker 1: important to distinguish the American Plan from other public health initiatives, because,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, as that Monterey police
Speaker 1: officer said, it was not truly about public health. If
Speaker 1: government officials wanted to control STIs, there were myriad other
Speaker 1: options that did not involve imprisoning women without due process.
Speaker 1: But none of these options would have allowed officials to
Speaker 1: police women's bodies and behavior like the American Planned. As
Speaker 1: Scott Stern writes in his superb book about both Nina's
Speaker 1: case and the Plan's overall history, quote, the plans legacy
Speaker 1: is not merely these laws and these precedents. It is
Speaker 1: the philosophy they helped to cement that women and promiscuous
Speaker 1: people are dangerous and morally inferior, that they need to
Speaker 1: be stopped, locked up, and reformed. This philosophy and the
Speaker 1: practice of policing the sex lives of stigmatized groups, especially women,
Speaker 1: has a long history. This philosophy endures to this day.
Speaker 1: That's the story of Rock v. Carney. Join me after
Speaker 1: the break to learn about one more recent recurrence of
Speaker 1: planned philosophy and how people fought back. In late nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, a poll found that a majority of Americans
Speaker 1: supported quarantining those with AIDS. Legislators across the country began
Speaker 1: introducing bills calling for laws that empowered the state to
Speaker 1: test anyone suspected of having HIV or AIDS and quarantining them,
Speaker 1: but support for these measures was not unanimous. Quickly, people
Speaker 1: began fighting back in opposing quarantine laws. Physicians, scholars, and
Speaker 1: activists turned to the past to show how quarantines wrongly
Speaker 1: applied were not only ineffective but dangerous. They wrote about leprosy,
Speaker 1: about yellow fever, about tuberculosis. They also wrote about the
Speaker 1: American Plan. The language of these AIDS bills, wrote scholar
Speaker 1: and activist Beth Bergmann in nineteen eighty seven, is strikingly
Speaker 1: similar and frequently identical, to that of syphilis quarantine and
Speaker 1: testing provisions written nearly a century ago, where medicine and
Speaker 1: science were lacking citizens, legislatures and courts based their actions
Speaker 1: on cultural stare rieotypes. Fortunately, though there were several cases
Speaker 1: of AIDS quarantines, no mass quarantine movement or policy ever
Speaker 1: came to be. The historian Alan Brandt also drew connections
Speaker 1: between the past and the present. In nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: Brandt published his book No Magic Bullet, A Social History
Speaker 1: of Venereal Disease in the United States since eighteen eighty,
Speaker 1: which explored the cultural contexts which shaped public health approaches
Speaker 1: to STIs. Two years later, he reissued the book, now
Speaker 1: with a new chapter addressing AIDS. Brandt emphasized the danger
Speaker 1: of connecting disease with morality, writing that quote, so long
Speaker 1: as disease is equated with sin, that there can be
Speaker 1: no magic bullet. After the publication of Brant's book, many
Speaker 1: AIDS activists reached out to him to learn more about
Speaker 1: the history of STI policy in the United States. Brant
Speaker 1: was touched by this effort, but also unsurprised. In his words,
Speaker 1: quote history does provide us with a way of understanding
Speaker 1: and approaching the present. I have been reflecting on this
Speaker 1: quote while writing this episode. I consider myself decently well
Speaker 1: versed in, or at least obsessed with American history, but
Speaker 1: I had never heard of the American Plan. Neither had
Speaker 1: Scott Stern, the author of the Trials of Nina McCall,
Speaker 1: before a professor mentioned it offhandedly in one of his
Speaker 1: undergraduate history classes. I am grateful to Stern and to
Speaker 1: all other historians of the plan for illuminating this dark
Speaker 1: chapter in our past. Without learning about it, how can
Speaker 1: we ever fully understand our present. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to History on Trial. My main sources for this episode
Speaker 1: were Scott W. Stern's book The Trials of Nina McCall,
Speaker 1: Sex Surveillance and the decades long government plan to imprison
Speaker 1: promiscuous Women, and Alan M. Brandt's book, Oh Magic Bullet,
Speaker 1: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States
Speaker 1: since eighteen eighty. Special thanks to Scott Stern for answering
Speaker 1: my questions about Nina's story, as well as providing some
Speaker 1: excellent photos which you can see on our instagram at
Speaker 1: History on Trial. For a full bibliography, as well as
Speaker 1: a transcript of this episode with citations, please visit our
Speaker 1: website History on Trial podcast dot com. History on Trial
Speaker 1: is written and hosted by me Mira Hayward. The show
Speaker 1: is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer
Speaker 1: Trevor Young and executive producers Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: and Mira Hayward. Learn more about the show at History
Speaker 1: on Trial podcast dot com and follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at History on Trial and on Twitter at Underscore History
Speaker 1: on Trial. Find more podcasts from iHeartRadio by visiting the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.