The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison "Promiscuous" Women
Written by Scott Stern
Narrated by Erin Bennett
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
The nearly forgotten story of the American Plan, one of the largest and longest-lasting mass quarantines in American history, told through the lens of one young woman's story.
In 1918, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, Nina McCall was told to report to the local health officer to be examined for sexually transmitted infections. Confused and humiliated, Nina did as she was told, and the health officer performed a hasty (and invasive) examination and quickly diagnosed her with gonorrhea. Though Nina insisted she could not possibly have an STI, she was coerced into committing herself to the Bay City Detention Hospital, a facility where she would spend almost three miserable months subjected to hard labor, exploitation, and painful injections of mercury.
Nina McCall was one of many women unfairly imprisoned by the United States government throughout the twentieth century. The government locked up tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of women and girls—usually without due process—simply because officials suspected these women were prostitutes, carrying STIs, or just "promiscuous."
This discriminatory program, dubbed the "American Plan," lasted from the 1910s into the 1950s, implicating a number of luminaries, including Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Earl Warren, and even Eliot Ness, while laying the foundation for the modern system of women's prisons. In some places, vestiges of the Plan lingered into the 1960s and 1970s, and the laws that undergirded it remain on the books to this day.
Scott Stern tells the story of this almost forgotten program through the life of Nina McCall. Her story provides crucial insight into the lives of countless other women incarcerated under the American Plan. Stern demonstrates the pain and shame felt by these women and details the multitude of mortifications they endured, both during and after their internment. Yet thousands of incarcerated women rioted, fought back against their oppressors, or burned their detention facilities to the ground; they jumped out of windows or leapt from moving trains or scaled barbed-wire fences in order to escape. And, as Nina McCall did, they sued their captors. In an age of renewed activism surrounding harassment, health care, prisons, women's rights, and the power of the state, this virtually lost chapter of our history is vital listening.
Related to The Trials of Nina McCall
Related audiobooks
Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBreaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCelia, A Slave Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prison Guard's Daughter: My Journey Through the Ashes of Attica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Voices of Freedom: Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Other Women Abolitionists Who Shattered Chains Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsResistance to Slavery: From Escape to Everyday Rebellion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInfamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Time With The Kings: A Reporter's Recollections of Martin, Coretta and the Civil Rights Movement Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Carville's Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bloody Brilliant Women: The Pioneers, Revolutionaries and Geniuses Your History Teacher Forgot to Mention Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebels in the Making: The Secession Crisis and the Birth of the Confederacy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of Jonathan Blitzer's Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMr. Wilson's War: From the Assassination of McKinley to the Defeat of the League of Nations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Answer Them Nothing: Bringing Down the Polygamous Empire of Warren Jeffs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Angela Y. Davis's Women, Race, & Class Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMedical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of E.R. Bills's Texas Obscurities Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMurder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSojourner Truth: The American Abolitionist and Women’s Rights Activist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStalking the Great Killer: Arkansas's Long War on Tuberculosis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Nikole Hannah-Jones's The 1619 Project Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Women's Biographies For You
Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Down the Drain Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wake Up With Purpose!: What I’ve Learned in my First Hundred Years Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wild Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Dream House: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Uncultured: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Got Anything Stronger?: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hello, Molly!: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Own It All: How to Stop Waiting for Change and Start Creating It. Because Your Life Belongs to You. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Butts: A Backstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tell Me Everything: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Own Words Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Class: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letter to My Rage: An Evolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Trials of Nina McCall
0 ratings0 reviews