Selling Eugenic Sterilization in North Carolina (2008)

Undergraduates: Nicolette Hylan, none none none

Faculty Advisor: Crystal Feimster
Department: Women's and Gender Studies

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North Carolina’s eugenic sterilization program functioned from 1929 until 1975, long after most other states had ended their eugenics programs in response to reports of the abusive and unpopular Nazi eugenics program that emerged after World War II. Although North Carolina’s program theoretically sought to curtail the reproduction of North Carolinians of low mentality-the “feebleminded”-the majority of sterilization recipients were poor women of normal mentality. This thesis seeks to explain how North Carolina’s program lasted for so long by examining the Human Betterment League of North Carolina (HBL), an organization that promoted North Carolina’s eugenics program between 1947 and the late 1950s by distributing propaganda to its audience of elite white North Carolinians. Through an analysis of the rhetorical strategies the HBL employed in its pro-sterilization literature, I argue that HBL made a compelling case for eugenics by depicting sterilization as a benevolent means by which to help people who allegedly lacked the wherewithal to control their own reproduction. This thesis contends that the HBL’s shrewd propagandistic work enabled North Carolina’s sterilization program to persist long after most other programs had ended.