I recently finished a haunting novel, Before We Were Yours, in which Lisa Wingate tells a fictionalized account of the true story of one of this country’s great scandals, the Tennessee Children’s Home Society and its director, Georgia Tann.
From the 1920s through 1950, Tann and her organization facilitated the adoption of thousands of children across the country. Tann was a prominent member of society, held up as the “Mother of Modern Adoption,” and consulted by Eleanor Roosevelt on issues of child welfare.
The truth about Tann is much darker. She actually ran a network made up of police, doctors, and social workers who illegally and immorally brought children to her to be adopted.
Children living in poverty, but with loving parents, were kidnapped by the police. Doctors told poor mothers that their children died at birth, then handed the infants over to Tann. Social workers helped at risk children disappear into the Children’s Home, where they were often mistreated and abused.
As Wingate notes, “Essentially, if you were poor and you lived, stayed, or stopped over in the proximity of Memphis, your children were at risk.”
Children were sold to those who were desperate enough for a child not to ask questions, many of them prominent entertainers and political figures, including the then-governor of New York.
To read the rest of The Rev. Templeton's message to the parish of St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church in Atlanta, GA on Father's Day, 2018 please click here.
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