The Eugenics Task Force met Tuesday to discuss its final recommendation for the General Assembly on monetary compensation for the estimated 1,500 to 2,000 surviving victims of forced sterilization between 1929 and 1974.
The state legislature officially authorized the practice of sterilization in 1933 with the creation of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, a branch of the Department of Human Resources. Until the abolishment of the board in 1977, an estimated 7,600 people were forcibly sterilized, many of them African American and women, according to Department of Administration records.
The task force, comprised of five members, approved the recommendation of paying $50,000 in compensation to the living victims. This compensation increased from the last proposal of $20,000, but an independent group of victims and their families lobbied for $1 million in compensation.
Dr. Laura Gerald, chair of the task force and a pediatrician from Lumberton , said no amount of money will repay for the harm done.
“We are not attempting to place a value on anyone’s life. However, we are attempting to achieve a level of financial services that can provide meaningful assistance to survivors,” Gerald said during the meeting.
According to the Gerald, compensation serves a collective purpose for the state to acknowledge its mistakes from the past.
“We do not tolerate bureaucracies that trample on basic human rights,” Gerald said.
Unofrtunately , this public apology came too late for survivor Elaine Riddick , 57.
Riddick , the victim of rape at the age of 13, gave birth to her son when she was 14 with the assistance of a Cesarean section. After the giving birth, doctors sterilized her, but she did not find out until experiencing severe hemorrhaging when she was 19.
“I was a victim twice,” Riddick said. “Once by the rapist and once by the state of North Carolina. Normally if you commit a crime you pay for it. They committed the biggest crime—a crime against God. A crime against humanity.”
The history of eugenics programs is not unique to North Carolina. In a the North Carolina Social Hygiene Society magazine in 1947, Dr. Clarence Gamble of North Carolina advocated eugenics programs throughout the country.
“Tomorrow’s population should be produced by today’s best human material,” Gamble wrote. “Along with 27 other forward-looking states, North Carolina has written that conviction into her laws.”
This conviction, according to the Eugenical Sterilization Law of North Carolina, served as the rationale behind the sterilization of the “feebleminded, epileptic and mentally diseased.” Gamble later on went to write in the North Carolina Medical Journal, calling eugenics an exemplary method preventive medicine.
For Riddick , the trauma of her sterilization won’t dissipate with compensation.
“Fifty-thousand dollars cannot replace what I lost,” Riddick said.
But even the $50,000 is no promise yet. The task force will formally issue its final report Feb. 1, which will then go under scrutiny by the General Assembly. For Riddick , that’s hopeful.
“All I want is closure now,” Riddick said. “I want to go on with my life.”
