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TRANSCRIPT
Eugenics: The Inhuman Practice that Took Many
Souls and Destroyed a Race.
By: Julia S. Glade
Instructor: Gabrielle Hodson, PhD
Health 110 Social Health & Diversity
URL: http://juliaglade.weebly.com
Published: December 13, 2011
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Eugenics is a belief in
racial superiority or pure
race. They used methods
that were intended to
improve the human race
by controlling
reproduction. The word
“eugenics” comes from
the Greek meaning “well
bred”(Reynolds). Thomas
Robert Malthus (Figure 1)
the father of modern
demography published an
essay on the Principle of
Population in 1798. The
main idea of his essay
was that as population
increases there will
eventually be a shortage
of food supply (Bloy). He
also talked about how if
parents wouldn’t limit the
size of their families’ war
Figure 1. Thomas Robert Malthus (Bloy)
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or famine would kill off the excess (Blakemore).
His ideas impressed Francis Galton (Figure 2) and made him introduce eugenics
in 1883. Soon after eugenics became accepted worldwide. A critical belief of the
eugenicists was cleansing the human race by sterilizing the “unfit.”(O’Keefe). People
who embraced eugenics believed that poverty, promiscuity and alcoholism were traits
that were inherited (Williams). To eliminate those society ills and improve society’s
gene pool, proponents of the theory argued that those that exhibited the traits should be
sterilized (Kessel).
In 1904 Galton established a research chair in eugenics at the University of
London. The American Eugenics Society was founded in 1922 and by 1931 sterilization
laws had been enacted in twenty-seven states in the U.S. Sterilization laws were then
enacted in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany in 1935. The efficiency
Figure 3 Adolf Hitler (Hall).
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of the German eugenicists caused trouble (Blakemore). Adolf Hitler (Figure 3) embraced
eugenics and his determination to establish his “Master Race” was embraced by German
eugenicists. Hitler killed millions of people; including one third of the Jews in the world.
He lost the war and his idea of building a master race became unpopular; however, the
practice of eugenics did not
die (O’Keefe).
By the early twentieth
century, most U.S. states had
eugenics programs, and more
than thirty enacted laws
mandating surgical
sterilization for certain
individuals. It is estimated
that as many as 100,000
people were sterilized in the
country before the practice was discredited. One of the states where sterilization took
place was North Carolina. From the 1920’s to the very late 1970’s, the state of North
Carolina forcibly sterilized 7,600 people. Most of them were poor women, and a
disproportionate number of them were black (Bakst). The American government has
perpetrated cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment on to young black girls denying them
the basic human right to be a mother and rationalizing that this action of forced
sterilization was to prevent future welfare costs.
At the time, the government justified the surgeries as the best interest of the state,
24%
71%
5%
Figure 4: Forced Steril-izations by Diagnosis, June 1929-July 1968
Mental DiseaseFeeblemindednessEpilepsy
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of those sterilized were classified as “feeble minded, promiscuous, mentally ill or had
epilepsy” as Figure 4 shows (Bakst). North Carolina wasn’t the only state to sterilize
people for their own good; it was one of thirty-one states that had similar programs
designed to control the birth rate of welfare recipients (Kessel). While it started as a way
to control the birth rate among many poor women who were on welfare, North Carolina’s
eugenics board took it in a decidedly racial direction and began sterilizing black women,
some as young as nine years old (Williams). Figure 5 is a bar graph that shows the age
the Forcible Sterilizations, by Age(Bakst).
Age 10-19 Age20-29 Age 30-39 Age 40-49 Age 50 and over
Unknown0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
30002761 2792
1408
16512 2
Figure 5 Forcible Sterilizations by Age
Series1
By the end of 1960’s more than 60% of the people sterilized under North
Carolina’s Eugenics laws were black and 99% were female (Bakst).
One of the many victims of this action is Elaine Riddick Jessie. Elaine is 5 feet, 2
inches tall and 115 pounds, and is about the same size as she was when she was
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sterilized. She was raised in Winfall,
North Carolina, a tiny town in Perquimans
County near Edenton. She describes it as a
place where flat fields of cotton and peanuts
fall of the Albermarle. It is known as a
beautiful but a hard place, a place where
many residents still live in crushing poverty (Railey). Elaine remembers her large family
sitting on their run-down porch, eating a “hoecake” and beans out of one pot.” We were
like…God, what were we like? We didn’t know anything about plates and spoons,” she
said (Railey). The Perquimans County Department of Public Welfare took custody of
Elaine (Figure 6) and her seven siblings. They sent her five other siblings to an orphanage
in Oxford. Elaine and another sister were sent to live with their grandmother, just down
the street from their parents home (Railey). Shortly after moving in with her grandmother
she was raped at age thirteen (Williams). “As she was walking home from school she
took the long road and the next thing that she knew a guy that lived across the street from
her had raped her. He snatched her off the street and molested her and threatened her life
and said that if she ever told anyone he would kill her”(Kaye). Elaine’s grandmother,
Maggie Woodward also known as “Miss Peaches”, was on welfare, and her social worker
learned during a routine visit that Jessie was pregnant. The social worker approached her
grandma and said that if she wanted to still receive supplement, food stamps and welfare
she would have to sign her name on the consent form. She also told her that if she didn’t
sign the “X” on the consent form for Jessie to be sterilized, then Jessie would be sent to
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an orphanage. Her grandmother was
illiterate. She had never gone to
school. She didn’t understand what it
said. So she signed the “X” and
Elaine was sterilized (Railey).
Soon after having her baby,
Elaine moved to Long Island, N.Y.,
to live with her aunt, leaving her son to be raised by her grandma. At age eighteen, still in
New York, she married. Her husband wanted children, but she couldn’t conceive. She
had also been hemorrhaging and having abdominal pain (Railey). Elaine (Figure 7)
decided to talk to a doctor and her sister about what was going on. After talking with a
doctor and one of her sisters, she finally realized that she had been sterilized. She
couldn’t understand why it had happened to her.
“ Out of all the people in the world,” she said. “I was, I am, a good girl, you know? I don’t think anybody knows how bad it hurts to want to have a kid and you can’t,” she said. “ I used to have a lot of friends, every time they got pregnant, I would not want to be around them. I would just leave them alone. I couldn’t stand to be around them when they were pregnant because I wanted a baby so bad”(Railey).
Elaine is one of the many victims today who shares their story and their desire and heart
ache to be a mother but had that right taken away from them involuntarily.
This is a major part in American history where the government interfered with
some of the most important and fundamental rights both in nature and in the law. In a
document that established our country it states; “The equality and rights of persons; We
hold it to be self-evident that all persons are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Figure 7 Elaine Riddick (Gilbert)
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Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of
the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness”(U.S Code). This right was
taken from these people because of how they were categorized by the government and
not treated as equals. For Elaine this is what her petition read:
“ 8. Delores Elaine Riddick - (N) - Perquimans CountySocial information: Age 13. Single. Pregnant. Psychological, April 5, 1967. MA 9-6: IQ 75
This thirteen-year-old girl expects her first child in March 1968.... She has never done any work and gets along so poorly with others that her school experience was poor. Because of Elaine's inability to control herself, and her promiscuity - there are community reports of her "running around" and out late at night un-chaperoned, the physician has advised sterilization.... This will at least prevent additional children from being born to this child who cannot care for herself, and can never function in any way as a parent. Diagnosis: Feebleminded”(Railey).
The government along with the doctors seemed to think that they owned these
individuals and that they had the right to take away their right to be a mother and to have
a family. Elaine says:
“I don’t ever think I can like myself. It is the most degrading thing, the most humiliating thing a person can do to a person is to take away a God-given right.” The state categorized Elaine as “feebleminded” as part of its justification, but she wasn’t an inmate at a state institution. She was just a poor young black girl, like the majority of people who were sterilized in the 1960s. Officials also justified their action by categorizing Elaine as promiscuous. The decision in Elaine’s case, just like in thousands of others like hers, was made by five strangers in Raleigh who reviewed a few paragraphs that reduced her complex life and the profound medical, legal and ethical issues at stake into a synopsis that seemed to always result in the same answer. About ninety percent of sterilization petitions presented to the eugenics board were approved and most cases were decided in less than fifteen minutes”(Railey).
The government also went against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
that was established in 1948. Article 6 in the Declaration of Human Rights states:
“Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”(UN).
Elaine was denied that right for a long time. She eventually filed a lawsuit against the
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members of the eugenics board, asking for one million dollars in damages on the grounds
that her constitutional rights had been violated (Railey).
Elaine went to the ACLU, the union had in 1973 filed a class-action suit on behalf
of another North Carolina woman who had been sterilized, and that case had attracted
widespread publicity in a time when issues of women's rights were gaining attention. The
legislature disbanded the eugenics board in 1974, but neither the board nor the state
issued any apologies, or even explanations, about its thousands of sterilization cases. The
state would continue to release few details about the eugenics program. Elaine finally got
her day in the U.S District Court in New Bern nine years later, the jurors didn’t’ hear
details about the long history of problems at the eugenics board. A wider focus on large-
scale abuses at the board might have bolstered her claim, but that evidence wasn’t
available, even if Judge W. Earl Britt had allowed it. So Elaine’s attorneys focused on the
events leading up to her sterilization “ It was not reasonable for the board to rule on that
petition without having Elaine come to talk to them, without having any kind of hearing
except looking at those papers and saying, “ Yes, we’re going to approve the petition to
sterilize,” said her attorney, Ken Flaxman in his opening statement. Under questioning
from Flaxman and George Daly of Charlotte, former members of the eugenics board and
its executive secretary testified they couldn’t remember Elaine’s case. But after reviewing
the records of it, they all said they were satisfied that they had made the right decision.
Koomen a person, who was associated with the eugenics board, testified that the
sterilizations were a favor of sorts. “The usual response was that we were doing a favor;
indeed, we were often asked-not often- were sometimes asked to sterilize those who had
not yet menstruated.” But in 1990 when he talked about his time on the eugenics board,
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he expressed doubt about the whole program, saying that members of the board “were
uncomfortable” in the role. "And we did it because the law obligated us to. It isn't
something we would have volunteered to do - or even suggested," He said. The jury took
just a short time to find that Elaine “was not unlawfully or wrongfully deprived of her
right to bear children as the proximate result of anyone of the defendants,” and her
attorneys lost on appeal. They petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision
but the high court declined. Elaine was devastated by the failure of the court case, and
remained so for years (Railey).
They also are still going against this right still today. The state of North Carolina
has records of every individual that was sterilized, yet the government will not go out and
find these people -- they are making the victims come to the government (Williams).
North Carolina is still trying to decide how they are going to help those victims and how
they are going to compensate for what happened to each victim realizing that whatever
they give will never be enough for what was done, or compensate for what was taken
from these victims.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 25 states: “Everyone has the
right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and of his
family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services
and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood,
old age or lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”(UN). This right was
denied from these families as well. In the story of Nial Cox Ramirez another victim that
was forcibly sterilized she talks about how “The State forced her to make an impossible
choice in 1965. If she did not “consent” to be sterilized, welfare payments would be
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denied to her family. She chose to be sterilized” (Begos). In the story of Elaine, the social
worker threatens her grandmother who was on welfare and was taking care of Elaine. The
social worker approached her grandma and said that if she wanted to still receive
supplement, food stamps and welfare she would have to sign her name on consent form.
In the United Nations Document Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article
5 states that: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment”(UN). The government and country also went against this
human right. Elaine Reddick Jessie and many others were forced against their will to be
sterilized. On Jan.23, 1968 Elaine was unknowingly approved for forced sterilization. On
March 5,1968 she entered a hospital in Edenton to deliver her son. At the time she did not
realize what was going to happen to her. She had just turned fourteen and did not
understand what sterilization was or meant. Hours after Elaine’s delivery she then had an
operation to be sterilized by Doctor Bindman. Elaine says; that some one should have
explained to her what was happening. She realizes that at that age she wouldn’t have
understood but feels that they could have made an effort to do something, to inform her.
She also says that along with telling her what was going to happen they should of
provided her therapy afterwards (Railey). All Elaine remembers about that day was that
she arrived at the hospital and they put her in a room and that's all she remembers. She
does remember what she saw when she woke up out of the surgery. "When I woke up, I
woke up with bandages on my stomach”(Williams).
The United States Constitution Amendment 14 was passed by Congress on June
13, 1866 and ratified July 8, 1868. It allowed blacks to be citizens in the United States. It
states; “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
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jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
No State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws”(U.S Code). North Carolina went against this Amendment
along with thirty-three different states.
The North
Carolina government
focused their attention
on those who were in
their minds incapable of
contributing to society.
They were trying to
eliminate federal
budgetary costs for
individuals who seemed to be a burden to society. They forced many young female
blacks to be sterilized. “The fewer black babies we have the better, that’s what some
people said, Professor Paul Lombardo told the BBC about the program. “They are just
going to end up on welfare”(Daniel). All states except for North Carolina ended practice
of eugenics after World War 2. Figure 8 shows the total of forced sterilizations in North
Carolina, before and after World War 2 (Bakst).
North Carolina kept practicing eugenics until 1977. Three thousand victims that
were affected are still alive today. “While North Carolina’s eugenics board was
24%
71%
5%
Figure 8: Forced Steril-izations by Diagnosis, June 1929-July 1968
Mental DiseaseFeeblemindednessEpilepsy
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disbanded in 1977, the law allowing
involuntary sterilization wasn’t officially
repealed until 2003” (Kessel). “In 2002,
the state issued an apology to those who
had been sterilized, but the victims have
yet to receive any financial compensation, medical care or counseling from the
state”(Reynolds). Since 2003, three task forces have been created to determine a way to
compensate the victims. North Carolina’s Governor Beverly Perdue (Figure 9) says;
“You can’t rewind a watch or
rewrite history. You just have
to go forward and that’s what
we’re trying to do in North
Carolina”(Kessel). She talks
about how she can’t even think
about the folks who went in to
the hospital not knowing that
they were going to be
sterilized. She also talks about how the victims were at an age where they didn’t’ have
the capacity to make the critical decisions or understand what sterilization was. She then
also says that “Those types of stories aren’t good for America and I can’t allow for this
period in history to be forgotten, that’s why this work is important”(Kessel). North
Carolina is still trying to come up with some way to contribute to these victims. One way
the governor is leaning towards is to give the victims money (Michaels). A check does
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heal the pain the victims carry with them daily.
This action of forced sterilization was an act in history that will haunt the victim’s
lives forever. What should be done is a park should be built in honor for the victims. The
park would represent them and their opportunity that was involuntarily taken away from
them to be a mother and go to the park with their children. There should be a statue of a
mother and child and statues of children around the park. Each statue having one or two
stories with a story of a victim so that their story can be read. The American government
encouraged inhuman and degrading treatment on to young black girls denying them the
basic human right to be a mother and rationalizing this action of forced sterilization to
prevent future welfare costs. History must be remembered some how, some way so that
it does repeat itself. As George Bernard Shaw said, “Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it.”
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