Sublime

Eventually she reaches the hospital, which used to be the Royal Infirmary. Now they’re calling it the Thora Silverthorne People’s Hospital.

even at one of the world’s great academic medical centers you can easily declare yourself an expert in a condition that no one else wants to deal with.

1965 alone, an estimated sixty Black women were forcefully sterilized at the hospital in Sunflower County immediately after giving birth.78

40 percent were women of color—most of whom were African American.70 During the Jim Crow era, impoverished Black women in the Deep South were frequently subjected to hysterectomies or tubal ligations against their will and without their knowledge.

Those who supported forced sterilization devalued Black life, but they also hoped to profit from Black women’s suffering in whatever form it took. White medical professionals and staff stood to financially profit when completing forced sterilizations. By one estimate, Fannie Lou Hamer’s initial procedure to remove a small tumor would have grossed