Georgia Tann: The Mastermind of a Black Market Baby Ring That Lasted for Three Decades
Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis and the horrors Inside
It is hard to believe that in Memphis, Tennessee, from 1924–1950, children were being stolen from low-income families and adopted out to wealthy ones for a price. But it did happen.
Who Was Georgia Tann?
Georgia Tann was the child of a powerful judge in Mississippi and a southern belle. “Social work was one of the few acceptable careers for women of Tann’s class, and despite having no empathy with the vulnerable, she saw it as an escape route from her staid home.” Georgia wanted to become a lawyer, but her father forbade her, even though she passed the bar exam, as it was not socially acceptable. Social work was.
Tann believed wealthy people were superior, and the poor should not have children, especially when they could not care for them properly. Tann, fired for removing impoverished children from their homes without cause when she started her career in Mississippi, took her beliefs and methods to Tennessee. Tann’s father’s connections were able to get her the job at the Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in 1922.
