America’s Eugenics War on Black Women’s Bodies (Early 1900s–1970s)
In the shadow of the American Dream, a nightmare unfolded for thousands of Black women across the United States. From the early 1900s to the 1970s, state-sponsored eugenics programs, bolstered by federal policies, systematically stripped women of color—particularly Black women—of their reproductive autonomy. These coercive sterilizations were not isolated acts of medical overreach but deliberate tools of racial control, often enforced through deception, threats to welfare benefits, and outright violence. In North Carolina alone, by the 1960s, Black women accounted for 64% of the victims, a stark illustration of how these programs weaponized pseudoscience to curb Black population growth and perpetuate white supremacy. This article delves into the historical machinery of these atrocities, their devastating impacts, and the ongoing fight for justice.
The Roots of Eugenics: A Pseudoscientific Crusade
The eugenics movement swept the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, born from a toxic brew of Social Darwinism, racism, and classism. Proponents, including influential figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Margaret Sanger (founder of what became Planned Parenthood), argued that society could “improve” the human gene pool by encouraging reproduction among the “fit”—typically white, wealthy, able-bodied Protestants—while preventing it among the “unfit”: immigrants, the poor, the disabled, and people of color. This ideology, imported from Britain and amplified by American scientists like Charles Davenport, framed Black women as hyper-fertile threats to national purity, echoing centuries of enslavement where their bodies were exploited for labor and breeding.
By 1907, Indiana became the first state to enact a compulsory sterilization law, soon followed by 30 others. The U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell decision sealed the movement’s legal legitimacy, upholding Virginia’s law and declaring, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Over the next five decades, an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 people were forcibly sterilized nationwide, with Black, Indigenous, and Latina women disproportionately targeted. Federal involvement peaked under the New Deal’s welfare expansions, where programs like those funded by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare tied aid to “family planning” that often meant coercion.
State Machines of Control: Coercion and Deception
These programs operated like assembly lines of injustice. State boards, often composed of welfare officials, doctors, and eugenicists, reviewed petitions from social workers who flagged “problem” families—those deemed promiscuous, impoverished, or intellectually “deficient.” Consent was a farce: forms were signed under duress, with threats of losing welfare checks, institutionalization, or even child removal. Many women, especially those with limited literacy, believed they were agreeing to temporary birth control shots or minor procedures.
In the South, where Jim Crow laws already curtailed Black freedoms, sterilizations were intertwined with segregationist goals. Doctors performed procedures without anesthesia, echoing the experimental surgeries on enslaved women by J. Marion Sims in the 1840s. Post-World War II, as global revulsion grew over Nazi eugenics (inspired by U.S. models), most states quietly dismantled their programs. But a stubborn handful, including North Carolina, California, and Georgia, persisted into the 1970s, sterilizing welfare recipients under the guise of cost-saving. Nationally, from the 1960s onward, up to 150,000 poor people—many Black women—were sterilized annually through federally funded clinics, often without informed consent.
| State | Estimated Sterilizations (1900s–1970s) | % Black Victims (Where Known) |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 7,600 | 65% (1960s) |
| California | 20,000 | 20–30% (disproportionate for Latinas/Black women) |
| Virginia | 7,000 | ~30% |
| South Carolina | 2,000 | High among Black women |
| National Total | 60,000–70,000 | Disproportionate for minorities |
The Disproportionate Toll on Black Women
Black women bore the brunt of this reproductive terror, their bodies politicized as symbols of racial “overbreeding” and economic burden. In the 1930s–1940s, only 23% of North Carolina’s victims were Black; by 1958–1960, that figure surged to 59%, and to 64% by 1964–1966, as programs explicitly aimed to “breed out” Black populations in counties with higher minority demographics. Across the South, politicians and physicians viewed sterilization as a bulwark against civil rights gains, fearing that Black families would “overwhelm” white society.
The impacts were profound and intergenerational. Survivors endured chronic pain, infertility, grief, fractured relationships, and stigma. Welfare dependency deepened, as the promise of “stability” through sterilization trapped women in cycles of poverty. Psychologically, many internalized shame, believing they were “defective.” This structural violence compounded historical traumas, from slavery’s forced breeding to medical Tuskegee experiments, eroding trust in healthcare systems that persists today.
North Carolina: A Case Study in State-Sponsored Horror
North Carolina’s Eugenics Board, established in 1933, epitomized the era’s cruelty. Over 44 years, it approved 7,686 sterilizations, with 5,000 targeting Black individuals—mostly women on public assistance. The board, comprising welfare and health officials, petitioned cases from social workers who patrolled Black communities, labeling girls as young as 10 “feeble-minded” for truancy or poverty.
Mecklenburg County led with 485 procedures, driven by welfare director Wallace Kuralt, who saw sterilization as a “humane” alternative to abortion bans. Coercion was routine: One 38-year-old pregnant woman, living in squalor, “requested” it to avoid burdening her family—likely under welfare pressure. The program peaked in the 1950s–1960s, sterilizing over 3,000 in that decade alone.
Voices from the Void: Personal Testimonies
Behind the statistics lie shattered lives. Elaine Riddick, a 14-year-old Black girl raped in 1968, gave birth to her son in a segregated hospital. Days later, doctors sterilized her without consent, claiming she was “feeble-minded” and promiscuous. Her grandmother signed an X on the form under welfare threats. Riddick later sued, but the state prevailed; she received $50,000 in 2013 compensation.
Civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer was sterilized in 1961 during a minor surgery in Mississippi, without her knowledge—a “Mississippi appendectomy” common for Black women. In Alabama, the Relf sisters—Minnie Lee (12) and Mary Alice (14)—were sterilized in 1973 after their illiterate mother signed what she thought was a Depo-Provera consent form. Their case exposed federal complicity, leading to a 1978 HEW regulation banning such abuses.
Former social worker Merlene Wall, now 80, recalled the moral torment: “It was a hard thing to do… What do you do? You do what you can.” These stories humanize the horror, revealing not just loss but resilience.
Legacy and the Road to Reparations
The eugenics era officially waned in the 1970s amid feminist and civil rights activism, but its echoes linger. North Carolina’s 2013 compensation law offered up to $50,000 per verified victim; by 2018, when the program closed, 220 survivors—mostly Black women—received $10 million total. Nationally, states like Virginia (2002) and California (2021) have issued apologies and funds, but thousands of living victims, like the Relf sisters, await justice.
Recent scandals, including forced sterilizations in California prisons as late as 2013, underscore that reproductive coercion persists, often targeting incarcerated women of color. Advocates push for federal reparations, echoing calls in the 2021 Forced Sterilization of Disabled People report.
Toward Reproductive Justice
Compulsory sterilization was not merely history’s footnote but a deliberate assault on Black womanhood, intertwining racism, sexism, and ableism to control futures. As we confront this legacy in 2025—amid debates over abortion rights and healthcare disparities—acknowledging these truths demands action: robust informed consent laws, reparations without expiration dates, and centering survivors’ voices. Only then can we dismantle the structures that once deemed Black lives unworthy of tomorrow.
For further reading: North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation archives and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Relf case files.24 web pages