oldrebel's blog

on the road again: samarcand

 abuse

The things we uncover on roadtrips. Out on Highway 211 in western Moore County, almost equidistant between Eagle Springs and Candor, of Montgomery County, is a small sign by the busy highway that says simply, Samarcand. I've always heard of the place, been by it scores of times, but I never really knew anything concrete about it. I still know very  little about the place. To research what it was, is to discover there is scant information available on the internet. Hopefully, someone on GOLO will add to this blog with what they know about Samarcand Manor.

The picture is a short, sandy roadway that leads out through an area where turf farming seems to be the financial mainstay. What had caught my eye was a stretch of small blue flowers by the roadside, for which I stopped and took some pix  and still haven't been able to identify them. (they're in the 'blooms everywhere' folder if anyone can identify them)

Samarcand:  From eugenics to an arson trial, this juvenile reformatory for females seems to have quite a bit of history, but it seems to be almost inaccessible.

Girls at state facilities in North Carolina were sterilized from the 1930's to the 1960's. These operations were ordered by the North Carolina State Eugenics Board. Who knows how many young women were sterilized over that period of time. Hundreds? Thousands? Poor, minority sexually active girls at these state facilities were sterilized because...

" white North Carolinians remained uncertain as to whether
the defendants were salvageable "good girls" or degenerate "low-class"
women, the state responded with harsh treatment that revealed an
abiding distrust of poor, sexually active adolescent girls."

 http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=98497567

In 1931, 16  girls detained at Samarcand were charged with arson, a capital crime in North Carolina, of two facilities on the grounds. These girls were between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, and they were on trial for their very lives. Nell Battle Lewis defended these girls in her first appearance as a trial lawyer. Eventually some were cleared , while others spent up to five years in  prisons as a result of plea bargains that had reduced the charges to noncapital offences.

And to think, all I was looking for were some pictures of wildflowers by the roadside. Perhaps  wildflowers that embody a hint of that untamed nature of those poor nameless girls from long ago, those who called Samarcand Manor their home, not by choice but by the inflexible will of the state. It could be that's why so many of those flowers were such a poignant shade of blue...