Lip service paid in full to eugenics survivors

When first proposed, they seemed like such simple and relatively inexpensive things to do for the survivors of North Carolina's heinous eugenic-sterilization program.

Build a traveling exhibit detailing its history. Erect a monument to the survivors. Incorporate it into the teaching of state history in public school curriculum. And put up a highway marker in a prominent place.

The state of North Carolina actively pushed sterilization on some 7,600 of its poorest and weakest residents. Local boards slipped into God's shoes, making recommendations on who was fit to reproduce and who wasn't.

As the years passed — North Carolina carried on with its eugenics into the 1970s, long after most states recoiled in horror from theirs — the program increasingly targeted poor black women and girls, hundreds of whom are still living.

How hard could it be to do a few small things to honor survivors? Judging by recent events, the answer, sadly, is too hard.

A good start, it seemed

Almost from the minute details about the eugenics program were widely circulated — the Journal published a series entitled "Against Their Will" in the fall of 2002 — those in power have paid at least lip service to doing something to redress the wrongs.

Gov. Mike Easley took the first step by issuing a formal apology. A couple state legislators, most notably Rep. Larry Womble, a Democrat from Winston-Salem, started pushing for some sort of financial compensation.

Predictably, that idea — never mind that it's absolutely the right thing to do — went exactly nowhere.

In the middle of that discussion, a few lesser ideas — the monument, the traveling exhibit, the marker — came about and were actually acted upon.

The exhibit made a short tour around the state, making stops at some of the historically black colleges and universities. That made sense, because poor black women were overwhelmingly the targets of the boards that decided who was fit to reproduce and who wasn't.

The historical marker went up at the corner of Jones and McDowell streets. Start-up money for the N.C. Justice Sterilization Victims Foundation was set aside.

A few paragraphs about the sterilization program were approved for use in the teaching of state history, and the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources was asked to ride herd on the creation of a memorial to "ensure that no one forgets what the state of North Carolina once perpetrated against its own citizens."

It seemed like a good start.

Efforts faded through time

Outrage over eugenic-sterilization faded. Easley left office and fell into unrelated legal troubles of his own making. Bills introduced by Womble to compensate victims languished in the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.

Worse, the few things that were actually accomplished to honor survivors just went away.

The ballyhooed traveling exhibit grew outdated and fell into disrepair after just a few months of use. It's now mothballed in the basement of an old records building near the Capitol.

The historical marker put up at the corner of Jones and McDowell streets in downtown Raleigh was taken down for a road-improvement project, but it was damaged while being moved. The sign has not been put back up yet.

The history lessons in schools? That's spotty, too. Whether it is included in lessons boils down to individual decisions by teachers and schools.

And the foundation set up to help identify victims? Let's allow the task-force established to come up with recommendations for ways to compensate sterilization victims to explain that one.

"Funding for efforts other than set-up of the foundation has never been provided," reads minutes taken from a task-force meeting earlier this summer. "Foundation funding was divided over three fiscal years and will run out on June 30, 2012."

As to the larger question of whether to compensate survivors, figures between $20,000 and $50,000 have been mentioned.

Gov. Bev Perdue showed up for the tail end of a task-force meeting early in the summer and nodded sympathetically as victims told their stories. House Speaker Thom Tillis said in August that he supports compensation.

Those gestures are fine, but it begs the question: If the state can't manage to keep a traveling exhibit and an historical marker in place, why should anyone think it can follow through on compensation?