NC gov urges $10M to compensate eugenics victims

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – Gov. Bev Perdue is putting a $10.3 million request in her state budget proposal to help make amends for North Carolina's program of forcibly sterilizing the poor, minorities and others deemed unfit to have children, her office said Wednesday.

About two-thirds of the governor's request to the General Assembly for next year's state budget will go toward giving each living victim $50,000 in tax-free compensation, with the rest supporting the outreach and information services of the North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation.

North Carolina laws in force from 1929 to 1974 saw more than 7,600 people receive surgeries that left them unable to reproduce, though some chose to be sterilized as a form of birth control. Roughly 85 percent of the victims of North Carolina's eugenics program were women or girls.

Unlike most states, North Carolina ramped up its sterilizations after World War II, despite associations between eugenics and Nazi Germany. Around 70 percent of all North Carolina's sterilizations were performed after the war, peaking in the 1950s, according to state records.

A task force report said 1,500 to 2,000 of the victims may still be alive. The sterilization victims foundation said Wednesday it has verified 132 living survivors in 51 counties.

“We cannot change the terrible things that happened to so many of our most vulnerable citizens, but we can take responsibility for our state's mistakes and show that we do not tolerate violations of basic human rights,” Perdue said in a statement.

State lawmakers will determine if victims will receive any compensation, and how much. House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, said he wants lawmakers to vote on some sort of compensation plan. The Legislature could consider a bill during the annual session that begins next month.

Then-Gov. Mike Easley formally apologized for the program in 2002. About a half dozen other states have joined North Carolina in apologizing for past eugenics programs, but none of the others have put together a plan to compensate victims of involuntary sterilization.

An author who has studied state-sponsored sterilization programs that came before Nazi Germany adopted the practice is in North Carolina and said Wednesday that Perdue's proposal is a good first step. Compensation should be followed by medical attention for the victims' lingering troubles and an education campaign about what happened, said Edwin Black, author of the eugenics history “War Against the Weak.”

“All this is doing is taking the first step that the Legislature must take to have these moneys are paid to these poor victims who have been deprived of the basic human right of having a family,” said Black, whose talk was co-sponsored by the Campbell University law school. “Your state engaged in genocide against its own citizens. Legal genocide.”

Most U.S. states had eugenics programs by the early 20th century in an attempt to use the same observations of hereditary traits that farmers used to breed the best pork, cattle, wheat and peas, Black said.

More than 30 enacted laws mandating surgical sterilization for certain individuals, and as many as 100,000 people are estimated to have been sterilized nationwide. Coming at a time of heavy immigration from southern Europe and Asia and when much of the West was populated by American Indians and Mexicans, Black believes the project's ultimate aim was similar to Hitler's – to cultivate a white, blond population in America, he said.

Perdue's proposal met with approval of one survivor of the state's eugenics program. Tony Riddick, 44, of Hertford was born after his mother, Elaine Riddick, was raped. She was 14 years old when the Eugenics Board of the State of North Carolina ordered that she be sterilized.

“I think it's a start. I think that the monetary compensation is crucial because it helps people restore a lot of their lives,” Tony Riddick said. “the key is that we educate people in the Legislature, the people in the school systems, the medical field on this very devastating act that occurred on our watch.”

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Emery Dalesio can be reached at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio