Published 11:05am Friday, May 18, 2012

RALEIGH Its been referred to as North Carolinas version of the Holocaust.

Now, state officials are attempting to verify those individuals still alive today following their involuntary sterilization decades ago.

On Wednesday, legislation was introduced in the North Carolina House of Representatives to officially compensate victims of the former N.C. Eugenics Board program. The bill (HB947: Eugenics Compensation Program) reflects the recommendations of the Governors Eugenics Compensation Task Force, which filed its final report in January. It will establish a $10 million fund from which to issue a lump-sum, tax-free payment of $50,000 to eligible recipients and sets a deadline of Dec. 31, 2015, to file a claim.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers backed the proposed legislation, to include Rep. Larry Womble, House Speaker Thom Tillis and Reps. Earline Parmon and Skip Stam. A Senate companion bill is expected to be filed shortly.

I am encouraged that legislators are working together in the best interests of citizens who were affected by this repugnant program, said Gov. Bev Perdue. We owe it to those who were harmed so many years ago that we take action now, during this session, and provide compensation and services to eligible recipients.

Currently, 132 individuals, one of which resides in Bertie County, have been verified by the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, of which 118 (about 90 percent) are living. More verification requests are being researched with assistance from State Archivists as it is believed that as many as 2,000 sterilization victims are still alive.

According to the North Carolina Department of Administration website, from 1929 until 1974 an estimated 7,600 North Carolinians, women and men, many of whom were poor, undereducated, institutionalized, sick or disabled, were sterilized by choice, force or coercion under the authorization of the North Carolina Eugenics Board program. That program made the determination that thousands of North Carolinians were not fit to reproduce and ordered they undergo the sterilization process. A 1937 state law was approved, which authorized the temporary admission of those unfit individuals into state hospitals for the purpose of sterilization.

Each county in the state had sterilization victims, according to a map that was part of the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundations website. During the Eugenics Board programs peak years of June 1946 until June 1968, a total of 5,368 sterilizations were performed. Several hundred more victims were sterilized between 1968 and 1974 when the program ceased operations.

According to the map, of the Roanoke-Chowan area counties where local citizens were subject to undergo involuntary sterilization, Hertford County topped that list with 106 procedures during the peak years of 1946 to 1968. Forty-four Bertie County residents suffered that fate; as did 41 in Gates and 37 in Northampton.

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Legislation filed to compensate Eugenics victims