Documentary tells stories of NC eugenics program

A newly released documentary centers around the efforts of Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., to pass legislation to compensate victims of North Carolina's forced sterilization program, which lasted until 1974.

"The State of Eugenics," directed by Dawn Sinclair Shapiro, tells the stories of individuals sterilized as part of the program — which sterilized over 7,600 women, men and children. 

In 2013, when Tillis was speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, the North Carolina budget set aside $10 million of the state budget for the compensation of sterilized victims.

Elaine Riddick, who is featured in the film, was unknowingly sterilized after her son's birth in North Carolina at age 14 and is now executive director of the Rebecca Project for Justice, a national advocate for women's health and safety. She had her first child as the result of a sexual assault and was deemed "feeble-minded" and "promiscuous" by the N.C. Eugenics Board. 

“It took me a long time to realize that I didn't do anything wrong — that I am not feeble-minded,” she said. “This is something that a white supremacist government did to me.”

Riddick said she was 19 years old when she discovered she was sterilized, and she was frustrated with the time it took for the state to recognize their offense.

“I wanted the world to know that they took something away from me," she said. "I started opening up my mouth about what was going on in North Carolina, and it took over 40 years for North Carolina and Virginia to bring justice for what they had done to victims." 

Johanna Schoen, a history professor at Rutgers featured in the documentary for her expertise on the subject, said compensation is controversial and rarely occurs. 

“I think states are worried about the public relations aspect — if they compensate one group, then other groups will try to be compensated," Schoen said. 

In 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court’s Buck v. Bell decision affirmed the constitutionality of eugenics programs. Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote at the time, “three generations of imbeciles is enough.” The decision has yet to be overturned.

The demographics of individuals targeted to receive sterilization procedures changed over time, but they were often in the lowest socioeconomic classes, said Anna Krome-Lukens, a lecturer in the public policy and history departments at UNC. 

“Our programs were born in the era of Jim Crow and absolutely reflected ideas about white superiority and racial purity and so on,” she said. “A sort of interesting byproduct of that is for the first roughly 20 years of the programs, it was actually white women who were sterilized more than black women, and then in the 1950s that shifted.”

While the documentary featured a powerful story, Schoen said it ignored that while Tillis fought for the compensation of sterilization victims, he also advocated for reduced access to abortion in the state.

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