RALEIGH, N.C. (MCT) — A North Carolina governor’s task force voted Tuesday to recommend paying $50,000 each to survivors who were sterilized under the state’s eugenics program.
The legislature will have to approve any payments. If that happens, North Carolina will be the first state to compensate victims of programs that sterilized tens of thousands of poor, sick and mentally challenged people across the country.
The North Carolina Eugenics Board approved sterilizing some 7,600 people between 1929 and 1974.
Dr. Laura Gerald, chairperson of the task force, said her group wanted to send a message: “We in North Carolina are people who pay for our mistakes.”
Legislators and advocates have been pushing for compensation for a decade. But the idea got traction last year after Gov. Bev Perdue formed the task force and created a state office to track down victims. The state estimates that 1,500 to 2,000 are still alive.
Gerald said the task force tried to balance what survivors deserve against what the state has the will to pay. If 1,500 people are eventually identified as living victims, paying them $50,000 each would cost the state $75 million.
House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Cornelius, supports some sort of compensation for victims. He has said he’ll put together a legislative committee to craft a bill and that he wants to vote during the legislature’s short session in May.
