In the early 1990’s there was a lot of publicity about Georgia Tann. In fact, there was a TV movie staring Mary Tyler Moore.

Georgia Tann organized the Tennessee Children’s Home society in Memphis to remove children from the slums and put them in the hands of the rich, who would educate them. She took children out of hospitals, homes, parks, anywhere she could find a poorly dressed or dirty child. Her system started doing what it was intended to do but the huge profits blinded her and turned the system into baby trafficking with little regard to what kind of person the purchaser was. Georgia Tann left behind a legacy of hate, broken families, stress, disease and other disruptions that would have put her in prison if she hadn’t died before the Tennessee Attorney General could finish the investigation.

In 1950, the Governor of Tennessee called for an investigation of the Tennessee Children’s Home black market baby operations, said to have grossed $1 million for Georgia Tann, the superintendent of the local branch of the Home. Georgia Tann was accused of fraudulently persuading pregnant mothers to relinquish their children. A number of Hollywood celebrities adopted children through the home and during the investigation; local attorneys and justices were found to be part of the scandalous network of adoption that allowed adoptive parent to be out of state residents. Thousands of children were placed in adoptive homes during the agency’s operation.

The definition of black market of adoption is the sale of infants by unscrupulous people for profit. An independent third party negotiates the child’s exchange between the biological mother and the adoptive parents. In a black market adoption the costs to the adoptive parents can be astronomical. The difference is that an agency adoption the state licensed organization specifically chooses the parents while in black market adoption, the adoptive parents pick and purchase the child.

There is an Adoptee Black Market Registry at http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Garden/2313/contents.htm The page states that it was last updated 2/2004 so it has been a while but you may want to check out the information.