1932 Democratic National Convention

Ethel Benson was just 22 years old when she died on December 16, 1932, after being institutionalized at the Delaware Colony for the Feeble Minded and subjected to the state’s brutal eugenics program. Labeled a “procreative menace” for having two children — now believed to have been conceived through repeated sexual assault — Ethel was forcibly sterilized at Beebe Hospital in November 1932, where doctors removed her fallopian tubes and mutilated her body in the name of so-called “correction.” She