Nazis, Eugenics & California's Darkest Past: A Visit to Sonoma Home

In this video I take a trip to Sonoma Development Center, just East of Santa Rosa, CA. I explore its dark past in the hope of coming to grips with the horrors that were committed there in its early days of existence. This is a difficult story to report, mainly because of my love of Sonoma County, and California. But there is no denying the State holds a dark past. Ideas of Eugenics, or the creation of a "better" human being, through sterilization of undesirables, and elevation of desirables, found their roots in California, beginning in 1902, at Stanford University. Moving with these theories required a practical application, and the blunt instrument was wanton sterilization. And no where in America, or the world, were these theories more tested than Sonoma Home, founded in 1891, in Glen Ellen, CA. Over 5,500 forced sterilization were to occur from 1913 until 1960, allegedly in the name of science. Truth be told, though, sterilization eventually became a tool of evil, as juvenile delinquent boys and young women judged to be promiscuous, were also sterilized. In fact, the youngest to be sterilized was seven years old. Lest you think this was some kind of mad scientists' movie plot, one must remember that many of the world's leading personages were squarely behind the ideas of eugenics. These included Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Luther Burbank and institutions like Stanford, Carnegie Institute, and the Rockefeller Foundation, the last of which donated significant monies to the Kaiser Wilhelm Foundation in Germany, a think tank from which sprung some of Adolph Hitler's beliefs of a master race. Sources: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article... https://www.cnn.com/2012/03/15/health... The Black Stork Movie:    • Black Stork, by Harry J. Haiselden (1917)   Stanford University President David Starr Jordan, Eugenicist: https://www.calacademy.org/scientists... Sonoma Development Center History: https://www.sdcspecificplan.com/site-... #history #sonomacounty #rosieokelly