The reckoning: marker, regret, and the names restored

2007 — 2022

The state says it, a century later: Indiana's formal acknowledgment of its eugenics program came in 2007, the centennial of the law — not later, and it is dated here exactly. On 12 April 2007 the Indiana Historical Bureau dedicated a state historical marker, "1907 Indiana Eugenics Law," on the east lawn of the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis, alongside a public symposium, "Indiana Eugenics: History and Legacy, 1907–2007"; the marker, which stands as the state's permanent remembrance, records the law, its fall, its reinstatement, and its toll of approximately 2,500 people sterilized in state custody. In the same centennial month the Indiana State Health Commissioner apologized for the state's role in eugenics, and the 115th General Assembly adopted a concurrent resolution marking the centennial "and to express the regret of the Senate and House of Representatives... for Indiana's experience with eugenics." No Indiana compensation program for the sterilized appears in the record reached for this account. Fort Wayne's own reckoning came a decade and more later, and it was local work. In 2020 the History Center's exhibit for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act told the state school's history as part of the national story, and the Journal Gazette's "Days of a Forgotten School" (8 March 2020) gathered residents' and families' memories for a documentary — and reported the plan to replace the wording of the column marker on East State Boulevard, which describes the school's children in the era's terms ("retarded," "idiot," "feeble minded"), the old sign to be preserved at the History Center as evidence rather than erased. In December 2021 the school's statue was rededicated at the institution cemetery on St. Joe Road. In September 2022 PBS Fort Wayne broadcast The Forgotten: A History of the State Developmental Institutions in Fort Wayne, a two-hour, Telly Award-winning documentary, made with AWS Foundation support, built from interviews, newspaper accounts, and the institutions' own photographs and film. And the paper record itself has been carried into the open: the center's admission registers and a nearly complete set of its medical records, on microfilm, are held by the Indiana State Archives, which in 2023 was at work converting the developmental center's building and site records for preservation. The reckoning, such as it is, is a marker in Indianapolis, a resolution of regret, an apology by a health commissioner, a changed sign, a rededicated statue, a film, and 447 names recovered from the annual reports — against more than twelve thousand admissions. It is printed at that proportion.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, news release of 29 March 2007 and the marker "1907 Indiana Eugenics Law" — the 12 April 2007 dedication at the Indiana State Library, the accompanying symposium "Indiana Eugenics: History and Legacy, 1907–2007," and the marker text's account of the law and its toll.
2. Paul A. Lombardo, "Disability, Eugenics, and the Culture Wars," St. Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy (2008) — the concurrent resolution of the 115th Indiana General Assembly expressing the legislature's regret for Indiana's experience with eugenics, the marker's unveiling, and the centennial symposium; and the Washington Post, 13 April 2007 — the State Health Commissioner's apology for Indiana's role in eugenics.
3. Terri Richardson, "Days of a Forgotten School," Journal Gazette, 8 March 2020, as copied by ACGSI — the gathering of memories for the PBS documentary and the plan to change the East State Boulevard column marker's wording, the old sign to go to the History Center.
4. PBS Fort Wayne, The Forgotten: A History of the State Developmental Institutions in Fort Wayne (premiered 26 September 2022) — the two-hour documentary, its AWS Foundation sponsorship and Telly Award, and the December 2021 cemetery rededication it carries; the History Center's 2020 ADA exhibit account; and the Indiana Archives' records-conversion project for the Fort Wayne State Developmental Center (2023).