The N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation receives hundreds of phone calls every month from people who were sterilized, but foundation officials don't always know what groups performed the procedures, the agency head said Tuesday night.
The foundation has records of sterilizations of victims of the state's eugenics program, which operated for much of the 20th century, said Charmaine Fuller Cooper, the foundation's executive director. It is likely that many people were sterilized in programs conducted by county health boards, nonprofit groups and private charities, she added.
"These people we don't doubt were sterilized," she said. "We don't know by whom."
Cooper participated in a panel discussion about the state's eugenics program and the Racial Justice Act at the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro.
The forum was sponsored by American Express Philanthropy. State Reps. Earline Parmon, D-Forsyth; Mary Price "Pricey" Harrison, D-Guilford; and Paul Luebke, D-Durham, also were panelists. About 30 people attended the discussion.
A five-member task force appointed by Gov. Bev Perdue recommended in January that victims of the state's sterilization program be paid $50,000 each in compensation.
Nearly 7,600 men and women deemed feeble-minded or otherwise undesirable were forcibly sterilized by state officials from 1929 to 1974. Only 72 verified victims have come forward so far.
The Winston-Salem Journal first reported details of the eugenics program in 2002. House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, has said that the N.C. House will consider the compensation legislation this year.
Parmon said that $50,000 isn't enough.
"I don't think we can come up with a dollar amount to compensate people whose rights were trampled upon," Parmon said. "I don't know why we haven't heard more outrage from the public."
The panelists also discussed the Racial Justice Act, which allows a death-row inmate to use statistics and other evidence to challenge his death sentence on the basis of racial bias and potentially get the sentence changed to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Parmon was one of the sponsors of the law, which was passed two years ago.
Luebke said that the law is necessary because prosecutors routinely remove qualified blacks from serving on juries in capital-murder cases.
"African-American jurors would be some of the greatest skeptics in a trial," Luebke said.
Voters must return Democrats to the majority in the state legislature in the November elections to prevent Republican legislators from repealing the law, Harrison said.
In early January, the N.C. House failed to override Perdue's veto of a bill that would have gutted key sections of the law.
"We were progressing as a state before those folks (Republican legislators) took charge," Harrison said.
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