Victims of Eugenics Program in North Carolina Finally Receive Compensation

State   |   Nora Sullivan   |   Aug 5, 2013   |   1:21PM   |   Charlotte, NC

Despite signals earlier this year that the State of North Carolina would once again not include planned compensation for the victims of the state’s infamous eugenics programs in the state’s budget, it seems that those who suffered forcible or coerced sterilization at the hands of the state will see some restitution after all as North Carolina is set to become the first state to provide compensation to victims of a government eugenics program.

On July 25th, the state Legislature passed a budget which would distribute $10 million among the remaining victims of the  forcible sterilization policy that existed in North Carolina from 1929 until 1974.  Discussion of compensation has been going on for a long time and the North Carolina Legislature has been wrestling with the issue for 10 years.  ”It’s been a long, hard fight,” said state Rep. Larry Womble (D).  ”We’re trying to correct a wrong.”

“There were challenges, we had to better educate our members – and then of course we had to work through the fiscal challenges – but at the end of the day, we’ve done something truly historic,” said State House Speaker Thom Tillis (R), who has led on this issue.  This tremendous effort has been supported by concerted bipartisan support.  Members of both parties, including a Democratic and Republican governor, had worked to see that victims of this gross violation of human rights see some compensation for the pain they have gone through.

According to Charmaine Fuller-Cooper, former director of the North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, fewer than 200 people have come forward.  That means each verified victim would receive about $50,000.

Over the course of 45 years, the infamous North Carolina Eugenics Board sterilized roughly 7,600 people.  As with similar eugenics programs throughout the country, the North Carolina program believed it was serving humanity by sterilizing the “unfit” – those who were in fact the poor, the uneducated, and minorities.

While eugenics is generally condemned as “pseudo-science” today, in the first half of the 20th century it found a great deal of support.  Those who supported the eugenic movement were not the uneducated and uncouth.  They were not led by a narrow worldview and limited access to information.  Rather, they were leading academics  at some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, men and women who shaped the policy of the country, and the progressives with opportunities to make positive changes.  They truly were the elites of America.  It was because of the influence of these leaders that people like Charles Holt, who was forcibly sterilized at 19 while living in a home for boys, were deprived of their human dignity.

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The persistence of these North Carolina lawmakers, as well as their ability to work together in spite of party lines, is to be greatly admired.  Those for whom they have long been seeking reparations and justice are not the influential or the strong.  The victims of eugenics programs in North Carolina and across the country were taken advantage of by their own home states when they were young and defenseless.  Now the victims who are still living must face their old age without the comforts of children or grandchildren and with a life full of memories tarnished by forced sterilization programs.  It is to be hoped that other states where similar atrocities have taken place will follow North Carolina’s example, seek to make amends to those whose dignity they have robbed, and see to it that they are provided for in their old age.

LifeNews Note: Nora Sullivan writes for the Lozier Institute.