I was born and raised in Memphis, and I still live in the suburbs today. Yet there’s a story that happened practically in my own backyard that I never heard a word about until I was an adult.
Most of the time, the books I read whisk me away to fictional towns, cozy bookshops, and small communities full of mystery and heart. But every now and then, a story reaches into real history, the kind that sits quietly beneath the surface, and it hits much closer to home than I ever expected.
That’s exactly what happened when I picked up Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate.
I was born after Georgia Tann had died and after the Tennessee Children’s Home Society was shut down and demolished. Still, reading this book felt like uncovering a hidden chapter of my own hometown, one I didn’t even know existed. And once you learn about it, you can’t unlearn it.
A quick note before we dive in: Before We Were Yours is a novel about a fictional family. But the inspiration behind it, Georgia Tann and the adoptions run through the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis, is very, very real.
Who Was Georgia Tann?
Georgia Tann was the director of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, an adoption agency that operated in Memphis from 1924 until 1950. On paper, it looked like a charitable organization helping children find loving homes.
In reality, it was one of the most notorious child-trafficking rings in American history.
Tann used her position, along with protection from powerful figures in Memphis, to take children from their families, falsify records, and sell them to wealthy families across the country. Many of the adoptive parents had no idea the children they received had been taken from loving families. Tann even placed children with famous Hollywood names, including Joan Crawford.
What Really Happened in Memphis
The truth is heartbreaking:
- Children were taken from hospitals, front porches, and poor families.
- Birth certificates were destroyed or rewritten.
- Siblings were separated and renamed.
- Families searching for their children were told they had died.
- Judges, social workers, and politicians looked the other way or helped cover it up.
- Conditions inside the orphanage were terrible, and many children died in her care.
It’s estimated that more than 5,000 children passed through Tann’s hands, and many were victims of kidnapping, coercion, or fraud.
This wasn’t some distant, faraway history. It happened in the city where I grew up, in neighborhoods I know, on streets I’ve walked. And for decades, Memphis barely spoke of it.
Why So Many of Us Never Learned This History
Like many Memphians, I didn’t learn about Georgia Tann until adulthood. It wasn’t taught in school. It never came up in local history lessons. It wasn’t something families sat around the dinner table discussing.
After Tann’s death, the scandal was quietly buried. Records were sealed, the building came down, and the city moved on without ever fully acknowledging the trauma left behind. It took books, documentaries, and the voices of survivors to bring the story back into the light and help people understand the scale of what happened.
The Part That Makes Me Angriest
Georgia Tann never answered for her crimes.
She died of cancer on September 15, 1950, just three days after a state press conference exposed the black-market baby-trafficking operation she ran through the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. She never went to trial and was never prosecuted. The full findings of the investigation weren’t even made public before she was gone.
And here’s what really gets me: people knew. Important people, including those in Memphis government, knew.
The Local Corruption
Tann didn’t operate in a vacuum. E.H. “Boss” Crump, the political boss who controlled Memphis and much of Tennessee for the first half of the 20th century, was her powerful protector. According to historical accounts, that protection, along with other well-connected friends, let her operate with near-total impunity.
Judges played a part too. Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley worked hand in hand with Tann, removing children from poor families under false claims of neglect and brushing aside complaints. Law enforcement and local leaders shielded Tann from lawsuits and investigations, which allowed her to build a fortune and run the Tennessee Children’s Home Society for decades, until everything finally began to crumble just before her death.
How Before We Were Yours Connects to the Truth
Lisa Wingate’s novel is fiction, but the emotional core of the story reflects what so many children actually lived through:
- Siblings torn apart
- Stolen identities
- Families searching for answers
- Lifelong trauma
- Secrets carried into adulthood
Reading this book made me want to learn more. It made me want to understand what happened in the city I call home, and to honor the children whose stories were lost, hidden, or silenced.
If you’ve read Before We Were Yours, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Did you know about Georgia Tann before the book? And if you’re a Memphian like me, I’d especially love to hear whether this was part of your family’s history or came as a surprise to you too? Tell me in the comments
Here is the link to my book review of Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingat (Link here)
Further Reading:The Baby Thief by Barbara Bisantz Raymond is the go-to nonfiction book on Georgia Tann. I couldn’t find a Kindle version, but it’s available in paperback. Here is the Amazon Link if you are interested in reading it: https://a.co/d/0ifq3418
Read my Review of the Novel, Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate: Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate Book Review
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