I was surprised today to learn there may be a new “Georgia Tann” movie coming based upon the first book I ever read about her, The Baby Thief by Barbara Raymond. One of my favorite actresses, Octavia Spencer, has optioned it. I should not be surprised because it is a story that returns time and time again.
The story is personal to me. My mom was adopted from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, from the Memphis branch that Tann was in charge of for decades. The book is hair raising. I read it just one month after my dad died, only four months after my mom first died. All I could think of as I read so many horrendous and tragic stories was “thank god my mom and her brother ended up with the Dittmers”.
The truth is it was a comfortable placement. My grandfather was a banker, my grandmother a socialite. My mom disrupted their fondest hopes and dreams for her life when she conceived me out of wedlock while only a junior in high school. Thus my mom was never a debutante nor did she marry “well”. Instead we grew up the working class children of a oil refinery worker. Even so, we had good enough lives.
My grandmother was over the moon happy about both of her Georgia Tann babies, considering them to be geniuses and brilliant. As my mom grew up, tensions occurred. I understand, having spent some one-on-one time with my grandmother when she took me to Cambridge University in England with her for a summer session.
My grandmother was always very concerned about her body image. Her mom and sister were rotund Missouri farm gals. Not my grandmother, who artistically made herself into a remarkable woman. So my mom never felt she lived up to her adoptive mother’s expectations. Turns out biology gave us big bones and stocky frames from our Arkansas/Tennessee farm stock.
My mom died believing she had been stolen from her parents due to the stories she consumed about Georgia Tann and her methods and the odd circumstance of being born in Virginia but adopted as an infant in Memphis Tennessee.
Octavia Spencer with author, Barbara Raymond
After Good Housekeeping ran an article written by Raymond, she received many letters from people asking her if she could help them find their child who had been stolen. She decided to research and write a book about Tann. She placed ads in newspapers and received 900 replies.
Because of Tann’s ties to Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley and Memphis political Boss E H Crump, as well as other important people around town, she was able to falsify birth certificates as well as hide or destroy records. In my mom’s adoption file, I found clear evidence that Tann was certainly not above fudging some details. Tann’s efforts to hide her criminal activities were instrumental in the extensive use of sealed adoption records all over the United States. I have my mom’s records (which she was denied in the early 1990s) only because Tennessee decided to make them available to the victims.
Missing Mom 
Great post! We would love to reprint this blog post in our quarterly newsletter, The AKA Connection, with credit and pernission of course. Please email aka@adoptionknowledge.org if you are amenable. Thanks!
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Horrible, I was adopted to a wealthy family unfortunately not a good one. It look good on the outside but not good on the inside. Luxurious month long vacations went all over the United States from Florida to the east coast and west coast and even Canada . Climbed to the too of Pikes peak to the Grand Canyon to Sanfransisco. You would imagine that to be beautiful. Adopted father wrapped me starting at 9 years old. Come to find out after I grew up he molested my older brother. Some people don’t adopt children to care for them as their own. They adopt children for their own use. At 18 again I was thrown out just as my other two adopted siblings (were from other families.) at eighteen. Told to find a husband that would take care of me in the 70’s. Long story short and a baby later I was on my own. Like most birth parents they make sure their children are educated. The adoptees didn’t want us to be better than them. I turned out to be the most compassionate person had children and loved them dearly. They are grown but I am there for them. I have a grandson I dual parent with my daughter help her every step of the way.
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What a difficult journey you have had. How inspiring the way you parent and are there for your daughter and grandson. HUGS
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I too was a Georgia Tann baby, 1942. After the books were open in the 1989’s I received from the State all the information I needed. After having read my history and lived with an overbearing adopted mother, I too wrote the story of my life “Pidgeon Droppings”. Interesting the end result of my adoption. My adoption s was a great blessing in spite of great trauma.
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So is your story in book form or on a blog or somewhere I could read it. I would certainly be interested in doing so if you want to share it however. No one told my mom when the records were opened up for adoptees later in the 1990s. She was only a bit too early but she was absolutely denied. They slammed the door shut on her even though she protested. My cousin told me I would be able to get the records after she got her father’s. He was adopted through Georgia Tann prior to my mother. My grandmother was a repeat customer and got her Jill to go with her Jack – pretty much to specifications. Thank you for commenting.
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