"My grandmother and great aunt were victims of the North Carolina eugenics. For years they lived inside the mirrored walls of shame and guilt erected by this state. But here's the irony. Those walls the state built? They don't reflect on my grandmother, or my great aunt. Those walls reflect only on the state of North Carolina."
Image: Charles Holt, sterilized as an N.C. teenager, with ex-wife Janice Hedgecock.
North Carolina and Georgia: The two U.S. states that sanctioned eugenics the longest. You thieving, callous, arrogant fools.
An estimated 7,600 sterilized by the government in North Carolina alone, and as late as 1974. Yet the most enduring thing at today's hearing for North Carolina victims wasn't the sheer, shocking existence of these programs. It wasn't that each victim had such a similar story of lies, depression and difficulty finding a spouse.
It was that the children they did have were such obvious proof that man does not get to decide these things.
Victim testimony excerpts from the hearing:
"That's the only thing I hated about being operated on is I couldn't have kids. ... It's always been in the back of my mind."From an NC writer on Twitter:
- Willie Lynch, sterilized at 14, now 77.
"I couldn't get along well with others because I was hungry. I was cold. ... I was a victim of rape. ... My body was too young for what they did to me."
- Elaine Riddick, labelled difficult, promiscuous and feeble-minded, then sterilized after a Caesarean delivery at age 14.
"You harmed my mother and you killed her womb. Quite frankly, North Carolina, it's premeditated murder. ... You deserve to be punished."
- Elaine Riddick's only child, Tony.
"My momma could read. She could think. She loved her children. She taught school in the neighborhood. ... She was not feeble minded. She was not crazy. She was none of the things that people want to say. ... But she was sick. She was disabled by postpartum and depression. ... She was a victim of domestic abuse, and as she was taken to Cherry Hospital she was welcomed, because they needed a guinea pig. ... We took care of the shell that they sent back to us."
- Australia Clay, daughter of a woman sterilized at 40.
"Dottie and Flossie were just kids. They were people just like you and me and everyone else. They were little girls who would have played mommy if they'd had dolls. ... They were poor people judged unfit to reproduce. ... In a way my family is lucky. My grandmother's rape produced my mother, who grew up ... married my father and gave birth to four children. We are my grandmother's legacy."
- Karen Beck, whose grandmother and great aunt were sterilized.
"The state needs to reward us. 'Cause we got to carry on."
- Lela Dunston, sterilized after "somebody else signed my name."
"You have told these people that they mean nothing. ... It's still being said to my mother 47 years later. ... (My mother) taught me that no matter what was going on in my life, she always had my back. I have never been arrested, I don't use drugs and I have never been on public assistance. I purchased a house and I bought my mother a car and myself one as well. I pay my taxes and I love my family. My mother has everything to do with what I am."
- Deborah Chesson
Give the survivors ALL the lotto revenue for the next 12 mnths. Deal? Cuz I prefer full Nuremberg for any surviving perps #ncgaI must admit, that sounds more like justice than an apology.
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