The North Carolina Eugenics Board operated from 1933 to 1977 to implement eugenics, a type of genetic engineering once considered a legitimate way to keep welfare rolls small, stop poverty and improve the gene pool.[1] The five-member Board was made up of state health, welfare and legal officials and their role was to rule whether sterilization of individual humans was justified.[2]
North Carolina's eugenics program was the most aggressive of the 32 US states that had eugenics programs.[1] An IQ of 70 or lower meant sterilization was appropriate in North Carolina.[2] The board almost always approved proposals brought before them by local welfare boards.[2] Of all states, only North Carolina gave social workers the power to designate people for sterilization.[1]
"Here, at last, was a method of preventing unwanted pregnancies by an acceptable, practical, and inexpensive method," wrote Wallace Kuralt in the March 1967 journal of the N.C. Board of Public Welfare. "The poor readily adopted the new techniques for birth control."[2]
An estimated 7,600 people were sterilized (often characterized as victims) the North Carolina eugenics program.[1] The state officially apologized in 2002 Governor Bev Perdue has appointed a task force to consider restitution to the victims.[1]