Martin's Must-Reads: 'The Calamity Club'

“As I was writing this book, a curious fact caught my eye. It was regarding a law passed in 1928 that made it legal to sterilize any person in Mississippi deemed an imbecile. The all-male board that decided who qualified for sterilization included in their criteria not only those who were deemed insane, idiots, imbeciles, or epileptics, but also the disabled, alcoholics, prostitutes, and sexually promiscuous women.”