Democrats killed bill to compensate mostly black eugenics victims
“Democrats killed my bill in committee,” Womble said. “The Republicans said they were going to support it, and if they do, I will be the first one to give them credit.”
Womble pleased by House speaker’s support for eugenics victims
Published: October 27, 2011
State Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, is giving props to the Republican speaker of the N.C. House for backing compensation for victims of a state-run sterilization program that operated from 1929 to 1974.
House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, will attend a meeting of the Governor’s Eugenics Compensation Task Force today and may speak to the group. On Tuesday, Tillis told the Winston-Salem Journal that he wants to “fast track” compensation during the 2012 session of the N.C. General Assembly.
Womble said backing from Tillis is an important step to getting compensation for sterilization victims into the pipeline.
“This is the very first time that any speaker, Democrat or Republican, has gone as far as he has gone, and I thank him on behalf of all sterilization victims,” Womble said. “This is the first time that the leadership, the power brokers have come out in support.”
The state’s sterilization program was part of a nationwide eugenics movement to stop people considered “unfit” from having children. Those sterilized included those who were blind, epileptic, “feeble-minded” or rumored to be promiscuous.
Over time, the program increasingly targeted poor black women and girls. About 7,600 people were sterilized. Fewer than half are still alive.
Womble said Democratic Govs. Mike Easley and Bev Perdue both took important steps on the path to compensation: Easley offered a formal apology, Womble said, and Perdue appointed the five-member task force to work on how to compensate victims. That’s the group Tillis is speaking with today.
Womble said he did not know why previous speakers did not bring compensation efforts to the House floor.
Democrats had controlled the General Assembly for more than 100 years until Republicans took over after the 2010 election. Womble has been pushing the compensation issue for years. A series by the Winston-Salem Journal in 2002 brought the program to light.
The proposed amount of compensation has not been decided, but a figure of $20,000 per victim has been discussed.
“Democrats killed my bill in committee,” Womble said. “The Republicans said they were going to support it, and if they do, I will be the first one to give them credit.”
Current House Minority Whip Ray Rapp, D-Madison, said Democrats were committed to moving forward on compensation and would have followed through.
“The unfortunate downturn in the economy combined with the cuts that were being made in the budget made it a bit more of a challenge,” Rapp said. “It was not a matter of not planning to do it.”
Rep. Dale Folwell, R-Forsyth, backs compensation for sterilization victims, a representative for Folwell said. Sterilization victims don’t care which party passes a bill, Womble said.
“Right now we are at the crucial point,” Womble said. “The big one is compensation. That has never been done.”
“They cut me open like I was a hog,” said Elaine Riddick, who was sterilized at age 14. “I didn’t even know nothing about this stuff.”
Riddick, now 57, said her only crime was being poor, BLACK, and from a bad home environment.
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Listen to what the State of North Carolina’s Eugenic Board (Funded by Margaret Sanger supporter- Clarence Gamble more below) did to this “African American woman” : Elaine Riddick
( this clip below from the powerful documentary on eugenics and black genocide called: Maafa21 )
Clarence Gamble a supporter and funder of the founder of Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger… funded the North Carolina Eugenics Society which sterilized this woman and many black women as well. Click Here : Clarence Gamble.
Gamble also supported Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Movement. Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood and she had many of her board members and presidents were members of the American Eugenics Society.
According to the North Carolina Winston-Salem Journal, “Clarence Gamble who helped found the Human Betterment League of North Carolina in 1947 did so to promote eugenic sterilization. Journal research shows a long history of abuses in the N.C. sterilization program – abuses that Gamble consistently glossed over..” Gamble wanted sterilizations to increase rather than decrease, and increase they did.
Think the targeting of blacks for sterilization was coincidence? Just like they way they are targeted today for abortion??? Think again:
Read what Planned Parenthood Founder, Margaret Sanger, wrote to Dr. Clarence Gamble (who funded the State of North Carolina’s Eugenics Programs) in a letterdated December 19, 1939,
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. The minister’s work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation [of Eugenicists] as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” that plan was called “The NEGRO Project”.
Read all the ways Eugenics Financier Clarence Gamble supporter Planned Parenthood’s founder: Margaret Sanger, on the website of the Pathfinder Website, an organization founded by Clarence Gamble Here
Here is a sample of what the Eugenics Victims have said:
Elaine Riddick: “I have to get out what the state of North Carolina did to me. I am not feeble minded. I’ve never been feeble minded. They slandered me. They ridiculed and harassed me. They cut me open like I was a hog, My body was too young for what they did to me. I had to have a child at the age of 14. When I had my son, at the same time they took my child in cesarean and then did that to me. What do you think I’m worth? … I’ve never had nobody to take care of me. I’ve had to do this all by myself. I never had anyone give me anything. I had to pick my own self up…What am I worth? The kids I didn’t have. Couldn’t have. What are they worth?”
Tony Riddick added, “You harmed my mother and killed her womb . When u look forward – It’s genocide – premeditated murder – you deserve to be punished….This is sinister. I know I don’t have the power to bring justice myself….We say we are a nation that’s concerned and compassionate and these victims have not been compensated yet. For my mother, it’s been 43 years…God will hold you accountable for what you have done to my mom.”
“This right here is a good example of what God is capable of doing.My mother’s life and my life, by ANY measure, would have been, should have been, COULD have been totally written off.”
LeLa Dunston (victim)
“I can’t have no babies…They told me to sign papers. I didn’t sign papers. That was not my signature on these papers…I need a reward or something…some kind of compensation for all they put me through. I wanted more children. I wouldn’t have minded having a daughter. Maybe two, maybe three.”
Australia Clay (victim’s family member)
“Every victim that went through any of this victimization was a guinea pig. A science guinea pig. It was bogus medicine. Bogus science…This is North Carolina’s holocaust. We need a wall. We need a library. My mother needs her name and picture in a library room.”
Melissa Hyatt (victim’s loved one)
“Nobody explained what the surgery was for, at least to him.”
Karen Beck (victim’s family member)
“I’m sure the surgeons that wielded the knives against their small bodies believed they were doing the right thing. Indeed, how could any of them be wrong?”
Deborah Chesson (victim’s family member)
“The eugenics board has deemed my mother nothing. To me, she is everything….You tore families apart. You hurt people. There’s no compensation that can put that back.”
Learn More on eugenics in the film Maafa21 (trailer below)
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