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| Headquarters of Tennessee Children's Home where adoptions took place |
By Marilyn Turk *Drawing for free book*
For thirty years, large-scale child abduction was carried
out in Memphis, Tennessee, thanks to a woman named Georgia Tann and her
political connections who benefitted from her child-selling business.
Hiding behind the pretense that she was rescuing poor,
neglected children, Georgia Tann was lauded for her innovative social work.
Only her accomplices and the people who had their children taken away from them
knew the truth. But for almost thirty years, Tann became wealthy by stealing over
5000 children and selling them to adoptive families at exorbitant fees.
Georgia Tann told the public she was giving the children
a chance for a better life, for education and opportunities they never would
have received at the hands of their natural parents. But these kids were stolen
– from hospital nurseries, as they walked home from school or even as they sat
on their own front porches. Often a birth mother was told her child had died at
birth, never knowing the child had been given to Tann.
Those parents who discovered their child had been taken
by Tann had no recourse to get them back. Tann told them the children had
become the property of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, and most of these
were too poor to pursue Tann in court. Those who tried ran into another
roadblock – Judge Camille Kelley, who was a friend of Tann’s and probably
getting a cut in the profits. Kelley would take Tann’s side and sign the
children over to the woman. Another one of Tann’s friends was the corrupt
Memphis politician, E.H. “Boss” Crump, whose pockets she lined.
Tann’s favorite “products” to sell were blonde, blue-eyed
children. She purchased newspaper ads displaying photos of these children,
advertising them for adoption as though they were puppies or kittens.
The adoptions were closed and secretive, preventing
adopted children from ever learning the identities of their birth parents. New
documents were created changing the children’s names, and other information
about the child and its parents was fictionalized. Tann believed children were “blank
slates” who could be made into any kind of person the adoptive parents wanted
to change them into.
In the state of Tennessee, the standard rate for adoption
was $75, so Tann found her greatest resource selling children across state
lines, especially to the wealthy in California who paid as much as $5000 per
adoption. Several well-known actors and actresses adopted their children from
Tann’s adoption society.
It is believed that most of the adoptive parents did not
know the truth about Tann’s black market of children. No doubt if they had, the
operation would have been shut down long before it was. Former victims of Tann’s
kidnapping have testified to the abuse and starvation of the children kept in
the home. More than 500 children are thought to have died as a result, but no
proof was found.
When Crump’s popularity declined, and a new governor and Crump
rival was elected in 1948, Tann’s business began to unravel. The new governor got
wind of the “baby racket” and ordered an investigation. However, Tann was only
charged with pocketing money from state-funded associations instead of
kidnapping, and she died from cancer in 1950, never having to pay penance for
her crimes. Her co-conspirators died just a few years later. And most of the
children taken never found out who their birth parents were.
I discovered Georgia Tann’s notoriety by reading Lisa
Wingate’s best-selling novel, Before We
Were Yours. Lisa’s book tells the story of several children taken from
their home on a houseboat by Tann’s people.
Lisa is giving away a copy of Before We Were Yours to one of you who enters the drawing by
leaving a comment (with their email address).
Marilyn Turk lives in and writes about the coast and people who lived there. Her books include Lighthouse Devotions, Rebel Light - a Civil War love story, and The Gilded Curse - a World War II romantic suspense. The sequel, Shadow of the Curse, will release July 2018. Connect with her at www.pathwayheart.com.
