Study Notes on the North Carolina Eugenics Program

Duration and Scope: Operating from the 1930s to the 1970s, the Eugenics Board of North Carolina was the longest-running and most aggressive sterilization program in the United States.
Goal: To improve the population's genetic pool by preventing people labeled as "unfit"—including the impoverished, the "feeble-minded," and the "promiscuous"—from breeding.
Method: Irreversible sterilization performed on more than $7,600$ individuals, including men, women, and children as young as $10$ .

Philosophy: Dr. Gayle Turner identifies the core belief as treating human breeding like livestock breeding to create "better" human beings.
Robert Yorkies: A psychiatrist who conducted the first IQ tests for the US Army during World War I. His findings that Southerners with hookworm performed poorly led to biased conclusions about the intelligence of Black people and poor whites.
Buck vs. Bell (1927): A landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized sterilization. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously ruled that society should prevent those who are "manifestly unfit" from continuing their kind.

Structure: Created in 1933, the board consisted of five members: the Attorney General, the head of public welfare, and the heads of state mental hospitals.
Authority: The board held supreme authority over all state sterilizations, meeting once a month to "rubber stamp" petitions based on IQ tests designed for middle-class white children.
Progressive Roots: Paradoxically, the program had roots in the progressive movement, where proponents believed they were solving social problems before they started.

Post-WWII Acceleration: While other states scaled back eugenics after the atrocities of the Nazi regime, North Carolina increased its sterilization rates.
Racial and Social Disparity: By the 1950s and 1960s, the program disproportionately targeted Black women and girls on welfare, a trend described by editor John Ray Lee as an "American genocide."
Social Worker Power: Social workers acted as "minions" for the state, pressuring poor families into sterilization by threatening the loss of welfare benefits.

Nial Cox Ramirez: Sterilized in 1965 at age $18$ after being coerced by a social worker following the birth of her first child.
Annie Bulan: Sterilized in 1952 at age $13$ due to poverty and a low IQ test score; she describes the permanent emotional loss as "something that could never be replaced."
Dissolution: The board was dissolved in 1974 due to the availability of alternative birth control, the Roe versus Wade decision in 1973, and high-profile lawsuits by victims like Nial Cox and Elaine Riddick supported by the ACLU.
Restitution: In 2012, North Carolina attempted to be the first state to provide compensation for victims, but the package was struck down in the state Senate.