North Carolina holds the title of the last state to end the practice of eugenics.
Edwin Black, author of “War Against the Weak,” spoke at the Freeman Center for Jewish Life Tuesday about eugenics—the pseudo-science of manipulating the genetics of a population to favor certain traits and minimize the prevalence of others for the betterment of society—and its role in North Carolina’s history. Following World War II, the term was applied to the Nazi goal of creating a master race. Before the practice ended, most researchers estimated 65,000 people were sterilized under mandated sterilization programs in the United States.
“The concept of eugenics was conceived here, on American soil, two to three decades before Hitler rose to power,” Black said. “The local tragedy of eugenics in North Carolina is actively connected to the Nazi movement in a genocide the state committed against its own people.”
Recently, North Carolina has experienced heated debates as researchers and historians are pointing fingers at the state for having engaged so actively in this controversial act.
Black’s book has been widely acclaimed for uncovering many perspectives on the issue that were not widely known. He said he firmly believes that the legacy of eugenics in North Carolina and nationwide stems from racism and a desire to create a utopia. Historically, others have contested this viewpoint, saying that the practice was a brainchild of good intentions.
The Supreme Court confirmed the legality of eugenics for certain people in the case Buck v. Bell in 1927. North Carolina passed its first sterilization law in 1919 and strengthened the law a decade later. In 1933, the Eugenics Board of North Carolina was created. Between 1950 and 1952—when most states were repealing their sterilization laws and shutting down their eugenics programs—North Carolina saw the single most active period of sterilization in its history.
“I cannot begin to fathom why it is that when most states saw the horrors of the Holocaust and took their own eugenics laws off the books, our state moved forward and gained momentum,” State Rep. Paul Luebke, D-Durham. “My guess is that influential people, the right people, were backing these programs and investing heavily in them.”
Throughout the course of the practice’s history, 7,600 people were forcibly sterilized in North Carolina, Luebke said.
According to the EBNC, 23.6 percent of those sterilized had mental diseases, 71.4 percent were feeble-minded and 5 percent had epilepsy. The most recent case of sterilization in both state and national history occurred in 1973.
“These people were considered unfit to reproduce by these pseudo-scientists and subjected to unofficial, unreliable intelligence tests that conveniently deemed members of lower socio-economic levels and colored populations as feeble-minded,” Black said. “The words ‘idiot’, ‘moron’ and ‘imbecile’ were coined during this period as medical diagnosis to justify sterilization.”
Black added that no movement can exist without proper funding and named the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington, D.C., and the Rockefeller Foundation in New York City as two of the most staunch supporters of eugenics. These groups provided the financial means to engage in eugenics research, experimentation and proliferation of the idea across seas, namely in Germany.
In the U.S., methods such as gas chambers and euthanasia were proposed to carry out the sentences of the Eugenics Boards, Black said. Although these sentences did not pass, 27 states did have legislation allowing these boards to mandate surgical sterilization and prohibit or nullify marriages. He pointed out, however, that the United Nations classifies all of these practices as genocide.
“The truly interesting thing is that the idea of genocide originated with a Duke affiliate, Raphael Lemkin, who contributed to this set of human rights regulations,” Black said.
He added that Duke contributed thousands of dollars to eugenics and founded the Eugenics Quarterly, publishing through 1969 when the journal changed its name to Social Biology.
“Many write this off as misguided scientists... who consider themselves liberal progressives trying to reform society and scourge it of its weaker members for the greater good,” Black said. “It was, in reality, state-sponsored genocide.”
The state may issue a formal apology and a possible $20,000 compensation to each of the living victims of the legacy. According to state officials, at least 1,500 people were sterilized and are still alive.
In 2003, Gov. Bev Perdue commissioned a study on North Carolina’s eugenics program—the same year legislators repealed the state eugenics law.
Durham Mayor Bill Bell said he believes the preliminary August report by the Eugenics Task Force in North Carolina speaks for itself and that there should be no opposition to the notion of compensating victims.
“It is in the hands of the state legislature,” Bell said. “I don’t know why they haven’t done it yet.”
Charmaine Fuller Cooper, executive director of the North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, said that this program is moving slowly but steadily due to the fact that victims are hesitant to reveal themselves.
“Their files are what deters them,” she said. “On record, they have information that claims they are feeble-minded or insane or could even reveal that they were raped or the child of incest.”
Luebke and Fuller Cooper said they have both been working to clear the confusion between fact and rhetoric surrounding this debate and hope to include this information—however dark—in the public school curriculum as proper acknowledgement of this history.
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