The state of North Carolina is trying to atone for one of the more heinous acts in its history. The Republican controlled House passed a bill that would compensate victims of a sterilization program with a one-time, tax free payout of $50,000. Many believe it won’t pass the Senate. The simple fact is the state is broke.
The eugenics movement started during the Progressive era. The self-proclaimed elite wanted a program to identify and weed out the defectives, mainly the mentally ill and retarded. They needed a state sponsored board to review the worthiness of suspect citizens. North Carolina created the Eugenics Board which consisted of the following agencies:
In 1933, under the new law, the General Assembly created the Eugenics Board of North Carolina to review all orders for sterilization of “mentally diseased, feeble-minded, or epileptic patients, inmates, or non-institutionalized individuals” (State Library, “History”, p. 1). This centralized board included five members: the commissioner of the Board of Charities and Public Welfare, the secretary of the State Board of Health, the chief medical officer of a state institution for the feeble-minded or insane, the chief medical officer of the State Hospital at Raleigh, and the attorney general. In the hearings of patients or inmates in a public institution, the head of that institution was the prosecutor in presenting the case to the Eugenics Board.
And we all know the nature of a governmental beast. They wanted more power and decided to expand their authority over the general public.
By the 1950s, some in the white majority were becoming anxious about supporting blacks through welfare. The heads of the agencies of welfare departments agreed on the value of sterilization for reducing general welfare relief and ADC (Aid for Dependent Children) payments (Winston-Salem, “Wicked Silence”). Some erroneously believed that blacks accounted for the majority of illegitimate births that were “subsidized” by ADC. The state threatened to remove welfare benefits if the person did not submit to the operation. The fears about the rising cost of the ADC program was a major factor in leading to the shift in racial composition of those targeted for sterilization. As the attention shifted away from the structural causes of poverty and crime to placing the blame for urban poverty and social unrest on blacks, sterilization of blacks was facilitated (Schoen, Choice and Coercion; see also Schoen, "Reassessing," p. 149). It was believed the control the reproduction of ADC recipients was necessary; as a result, the percentage of Blacks sterilized rose from 23% in the 1930s and 1940s to 59% between 1958-60 and finally to 64% between 1964 and 1966 (Schoen, Choice and Coercion, p. 108; "Reassessing," p. 149).
Sterilization also accelerated because it expanded to include the general population when the state gave social workers the authority to submit petitions for sterilization. Therefore, the amount of eligible people increased drastically. “The North Carolina Board-which initially targeted those who were deemed mentally ill, expanded its program to include the general population.” In fact, “the majority of those sterilized had never been institutionalized, and 2,000 were younger than 19” (Wiggins, p. 1). In addition, the fight against poverty in North Carolina led to sterilizations in the general population. As this fight intensified, a new policy was created that led to an increase in the number of non-institutionalized people who were sterilized. Sterilizations of the non-institutionalized rose from 23% between 1937 and 1951 to 76% between 1952 and 1966 (Schoen, Choice and Coercion, p. 109, "Reassessing," p. 151).
Five people were prominent proponents of eugenics in North Carolina. They were: Dr. William Allan, Dr. C Nash Herndon, Ira M. Hardy, and Kate Burr Johnson.
Dr. William Allan was a pioneer in his field. He wrote or co-wrote numerous papers on genetics. Here is an excerpt from one:
"It seems to me that the only way to attain the goal of positive eugenics is to actually practice negative eugenics - the prevention of the birth of the mentally and physically unfit," he wrote in a paper presented to the Eugenics Research Association in New York in 1936.
Does that language sound familiar? President Barack Obama has stated something very similar when it comes to governmental actions on the citizenry.
It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf…
And we’ve seen what the government has done on our behalf. I shudder to think what the Progressives will do to us when Obamacare is fully implemented. After all, these are the same people who’re big advocates of the successor to the eugenics movement.
http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/NC/NC.html
http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/commentary/602/entry
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