Researching Mental Illness and Forced Sterilization at the California State Archives #1

Dear Readers,

I am writing to you from Sacramento, California! I arrived here last night and even though the time difference from the East Coast is only 3 hours later, I felt exhausted when I landed at 11:30 pm PDT. However, I made it to my Airbnb excited for the next day in Sacramento, visiting the California State Archives.

For those of you who don’t know, Sacramento is California’s State Capital. This was extremely apparent during my walk to the archives. During this walk, I passed nearly every state department, ranging from the Department of Transportation to the Department of Fish and Wildlife. I also walked through the grassy California State Capital Park and admired the State Capitol Building (see my selfie above)! I was also very excited to be in 95-degree weather-- quite a change from what we are all used to in Cambridge.

In California, I am studying the history of eugenics. Specifically, I am investigating the institutionalization and forced sterilization of  “defectives.” Believe it or not, that is what the mentally ill, the poor, and racial minority groups were labeled as during the 20th century. I am particularly interested in studying the aftermath of the institutionalization and sterilization of the mentally ill, or “feeble-minded” as they were labeled in the 20th century. That is, did the state follow up with or keep records of patients after they were “treated,” or were they disregarded after they were no longer “threats” to society?

I first learned about this topic in a History of Science class titled, “The Border: Race, Politics, and Health in Modern Mexico” (everyone should take it!). In this class, I learned that throughout the 20th century, over 60,000 individuals across the country were forcibly sterilized. An alarming 20,000 of these individuals lived in California, and a majority were black and Mexican-American women. These statistics struck me to my core. Even more, I was shocked to see a recent headline in USA Today that read, “Calif. Female Inmates Sterilized Illegally.” As I began to learn more about this hidden history, I knew that I needed to visit California to uncover the roots of this issue. 

So, I decided to start my research at the California State Archives. The archives, established in 1850, are home to thousands of records that detail the history of California and its people. Due to the vast amount of records, hardly any of them are digitized and many are restricted for public access, so I needed to go in person to uncover this information. When I arrived at the archives, I was struck with how modern the building was. I had a preconceived idea that this government building would be old and run-down, but that was not the case. The archives were housed in a modern building with a large glass lobby in one of the tallest buildings I had seen so in Sacramento.

The first thing that I noticed upon entering the building was that it was also home to the California Museum. The idea that this building housed both century-old, restricted records as well as public exhibitions reminded me of my visit to Harvard’s Natural History Museum, which holds both public exhibits and the ornithology collection. For a moment, I felt back at school in Cambridge.

I took the elevator up to the 4th floor, moving away from the carefully curated exhibits to the view the raw data in the archives. When I arrived, I was greeted by very friendly research staff who were excited to share the archives with me. The room was large and spacious, with many tables for researchers and a separate room that housed computers for viewing microfilm. I found a seat and felt very excited to begin my research.

However, I soon found the process of beginning archival research extremely difficult. Specifically, there was an overwhelming amount of records available, even within my topic of interest. I found this very daunting and I was unsure how to begin. Therefore, I took a step back and discussed my project with the reference archivist.

Although I had prepared for my visit using the database and carefully selecting the records, I needed to narrow down my search even more. Essentially, records are organized into record groups, then record series, then topics, and then the folders of records themselves. This means that a record group could contain hundreds of series which could contain hundreds of topics, and so on (I’m sure you get the point!). 

The reference archivist suggested that I look at the record aid to select specific topics. After narrowing down my search, I filled out request slips so that the archivist would be able to locate the records. Then, she organized a cart of my requests. I had settled on approximately 10 topics to start with. Some of these topics included many folders, which were placed in large boxes, while others were only a few sheets of paper that fit into one folder. The archivist made sure to explain to me the importance of keeping these records in order, not only within the folders but also between the folders. She gave me an “out” card to use to hold the spot of the folder whenever I took it out of the box. 

As I started looking at the records, I felt that I had organized well and chosen a good place to begin. Something that I found most useful was making sure I had an efficient way of tracking relevant records. I created a google sheet for this purpose, with columns for the record, including its citation, length, material, relevance to my project and other interesting features. I even included a column to upload a picture of the record, so that I could review it in the future. This tracking system helped me center my focus on my research questions and keep track of the many records at hand. 

So there you have it-- I was off, flipping (carefully) through hundreds of records from a century ago! I felt it was important to detail the inner workings of my research process in this blog for several reasons. First, I wanted to detail the complex nature of archival research. I have a newfound respect and awe for all of the historians who have spent countless hours looking through records in archives for their research. Second, I wanted to demonstrate my difficulties in starting the research process and the methods I used to overcome them. I hope that my experience and description might help any first-time archival researchers, I’ll definitely be using it to refresh myself before any future research projects!