num_pages: 244
description: They were wives and daughters. Unwed mothers. Children. Even a 10-year-old boy. Some were blind or mentally retarded. Toward the end they were mostly black and poor and it all took place not in the distant past but up until the 1970s. For more than 40 years North Carolina ran one of the nations largest and most aggressive sterilization programs. It expanded after World War II even as most other states pulled back in light of the horrors of Hitlers Germany. This spring North Carolina is poised to become the first state to pay reparations to victims of eugenics or involuntary sterilization. North Carolinas historic debate over its eugenic past was launched by Against Their Will a series in the Winston- Salem Journal. A team of reporters exposed the scientific flaws and racial bais of the eugenics program through interviews with victims the doctors who operated on them the bureaucrats who ran the program and long-hidden documents that historian Johanna Schoen shared with a reporter. The series led directly to an apology from the governor and the first efforts in the nation seeking to compensate victims of eugenics. Against Their Will has drawn praise from civil rights groups historians and the general public.
language: English
title: Against Their Will: North Carolina's Sterilization Program
publisher: Gray Oak Books