Remember this: ‘Eugenic Sterilization’ happened in America First and N.C. First State to Compensate Victims of Sterilization; $50,000 per Victim.

N.C. to Compensate Victims of Sterilization

North Carolina will become the first state to compensate victims of a mass sterilization program that targeted poor minorities in a 20th century eugenics program, offering a $50,000 a person.

In a vote today, the Eugenics Compensation Task Forcerecommended the lump-sum amount, putting a three-year statute of limitations on claiming those funds.

The task force also established a pool to fund mental health services for sterilization victims.

A final report on today’s recommendations will be given to Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue to consider. She will pass along her recommendations to the Generally Assembly, which will make a final decision about compensation.

Some lawmakers had urged as much as $1 million for each victim.

“The state recognizes that a wrong has been done and while these actions can never be reversed, the governor has made it a priority to reach out and help identify and compensate victims for their experience,” said Lucas.

The state sterilized more than 7,600 people in North Carolina from 1929 to 1974 — one of many other states in misguided attempts to weed out criminals and the mentally disabled.

 Elaine Riddick, a poor, victim of child molestation who was robbed of her ability to have children.

Pregnant by rape, young Riddick went into a North Carolina hospital in 1968 to give birth to her son. Years later, she learned she was sterilized.

The decision was made by the North Carolina Eugenics Board, a five-person state committee responsible for ordering the sterilization of thousands of individuals in the name of social welfare.

Deemed “promiscuous” and “feebleminded” by a social worker at the hospital, Riddick, who came from a black family on welfare, was recommended to the state for sterilization shortly after arriving.

September 5, 2004
 Victims of sterilization are still waiting for help from state 
Last year about this time, North Carolina seemed well on its way to making amends for the state-ordered sterilization of more than 7,600 adults and youth from 1929 though 1974.

November 4, 2003 – FOLLOW-UP REPORT
 WFU medical school apologizes again for role 
After 10 months of study, Wake Forest University School of Medicine issued a report yesterday about its role in North Carolina’s eugenic sterilization program, and repeated its apologies for its involvement.

September 28, 2003 – FOLLOW-UP REPORT
 Making Amends
State struggled to arrive at a consensus about what to do for those it sterilized and to keep if from happening again
 Suggestions abound; Wheels turning slowly
How do you compensate those who were sterilized by the state of North Carolina? Women who were sterilized, legislators, members of a study committee established this year by Gov. Mike Easley and the governor himself have spent months trying to answer the question.
 Offer ‘Too Little Too Late’
Woman says threats forced her to agree to operation and that she expects N.C. to provide compensation

May 31, 2003
 Panel calls for compensating N.C. eugenics victims 
After becoming the first state to create a commission to review its role in a statewide eugenic sterilization program, North Carolina could soon take another dramatic step to compensate unwilling victims of the program. See source for more

The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics

By Edwin Black

Mr. Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust and the just released War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, from which the following article is drawn.
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called “Master Race.”  But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn’t originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement’s campaign for ethnic cleansing.
Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed “unfit,” preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws,

Eugenical Sterilization In The United States  pdf

by Harry Hamilton Laughlin D. SC  Published December 1922

Thirty-one other states had eugenics programs. Virginia and California each sterilized more people than North Carolina. But no program was more aggressive.

North Carolina’s eugenics program lasted from 1929 to 1974 (it was disbanded in 1977), and was initially adopted as a way to control welfare spending on poor Whites. However, as the program progressed, Black women became targets. During North Carolina’s eugenics program, 7,600 people were forcibly sterilized, 85 percent of them female and 40 percent of them non-white.

Now read this headline from NewsOne for Black America, and remember it was only 40% non-white  that where sterilized as seen above. 

Finally! N.C. May Compensate Black Women For Forced Sterilizations

Next week, victims and their relatives will tell their stories to a state task force considering compensation to victims of sterilizations that continued into 1974. Roughly 85 percent of victims were women or girls, some as young as 10. North Carolina has more victims living than any other state because a majority was sterilized after World War II, said Charmaine Fuller Cooper, director of the state Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation.

Eugenics programs gained popularity in the U.S. and other countries in the early 1900s, but most abandoned those efforts after World War II because of the association with Nazi Germany’s program aimed at racial purity. However, North Carolina’s expanded, with sterilizations peaking in the 1950s and early 1960s. About 70 percent of the state’s 7,600 sterilizations occurred after the war, state figures show.source