One of the first to testify was Harry Laughlin, who had traveled down from the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor. Laughlin said that Carrie was “immoral, untruthful, and a low-grade moron,” even though he had never met her. At the time of the hearing, Carrie routinely read the newspaper and did the crossword puzzles. Laughlin said that Carrie’s ancestors belonged to “the shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of anti-social whites in the South,” arguing that the Bucks were living proof of “Mendelian inheritance.”
