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Elaine Riddick was 13 years old when she got pregnant after being raped by a neighbor in Winfall, N.C., in 1967. The state ordered that immediately after giving birth, she should be sterilized. Doctors cut and tied off her fallopian tubes.
“I have to carry these scars with me. I have to live with this for the rest of my life,” she said.
Riddick was never told what was happening. “Got to the hospital and they put me in a room and that’s all I remember, that’s all I remember,” she said. “When I woke up, I woke up with bandages on my stomach.”
Riddick’s records reveal that a five-person state eugenics board in Raleigh had approved a recommendation that she be sterilized. The records label Riddick as “feebleminded” and “promiscuous.” They said her schoolwork was poor and that she “does not get along well with others.”
“I was raped by a perpetrator [who was never charged] and then I was raped by the state of North Carolina. They took something from me both times,” she said. “The state of North Carolina, they took something so dearly from me, something that was God given.”
It wouldn’t be until Riddick was 19, married and wanting more children, that she’d learn she was incapable of having any more babies. A doctor in New York where she was living at the time told her that she’d been sterilized.
“Butchered. The doctor used that word… I didn’t understand what she meant when she said I had been butchered,” Riddick said.
North Carolina was one of 31 states to have a government run eugenics program. By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized as a result of these programs.
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Eugenics was a scientific theory that grew in popularity during the 1920s. Eugenicists believed that poverty, promiscuity and alcoholism were traits that were inherited. To eliminate those society ills and improve society’s gene pool, proponents of the theory argued that those that exhibited the traits should be sterilized. Some of America’s wealthiest citizens of the time were eugenicists including Dr. Clarence Gamble of the Procter and Gamble fortune and James Hanes of the hosiery fortune. Hanes helped found the Human Betterment League which promoted the cause of eugenicists.
It began as a way to control welfare spending on poor white women and men, but over time, North Carolina shifted focus, targeting more women and more blacks than whites. A third of the sterilizations performed in North Carolina were done on girls under the age of 18. Some were as young as nine years old.
For the past eight years, North Carolina lawmakers have been working to find a way to compensate those involuntarily sterilized in the state between 1929 and 1974. During that time period, 7,600 people were sterilized in North Carolina. Of those who were sterilized, 85 percent of the victims were female and 40 percent were non-white.
“You can’t rewind a watch or rewrite history. You just have to go forward and that’s what we’re trying to do in North Carolina,” said Governor Beverly Perdue in an exclusive interview with NBC News.
While North Carolina’s eugenics board was disbanded in 1977, the law allowing involuntary sterilization wasn’t officially repealed until 2003. In 2002, the state issued an apology to those who had been sterilized, but the victims have yet to receive any financial compensation, medical care or counseling from the state. Since 2003, three task forces have been created to determine a way to compensate the victims. Officials estimate that as many as 2,000 victims are still alive.
Riddick was one of several victims to speak at a public hearing this summer. It was the first time that many survivors had told their stories publicly and that others heard of North Carolina’s tarnished past.
“To think about folks who went in…and their doctor told them this was birth control and they were sterilized…the folks who didn’t have the capacity to make the decisions, the uninformed consent,” said Perdue. “Those types of stories aren’t good for America and I can’t allow for this period in history to be forgotten, that’s why this work is important.”
Only 48 victims have been matched with their records, something necessary for them to eventually be compensated. State Representative Larry Womble has been advocating for the survivors of the state’s sterilization program for nearly 10 years. He helped fight for the repeal of the state’s law.
Womble said that if the government is “powerful enough to perpetrate this on this society, they ought to be responsible, step up to the plate and compensate.”
In August, a task force created by Gov. Perdue recommended that the victims be compensated, but they were unsure how much to award the victims. Previous numbers pondered range between $20,000 and $50,000. The task force also recommended mental health services for living victims and a traveling museum exhibit about North Carolina’s eugenics program.
Perdue said it’s a challenge to determine how much money each victim should be given.
“From my perspective, and as a woman, and as the governor of this state, this is not about the money. There isn’t enough money in the world to pay these people for what has been done to them, but money is part of the equation,” she said.
Riddick once sued North Carolina for a million dollars. Her case made it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, but the court declined to hear the case. “I would like for the state of North Carolina to right what they wronged with me,” she said.
Some victims and their advocates have questioned whether North Carolina is procrastinating in compensating them, hoping they’ll die before a solution is reached. “It’s an ugly chapter in North Carolina’s book, we have a wonderful book, but there’s an ugly chapter,” Womble said. “We must step up to the plate and we must realize and take responsibility.”
Perdue, for her part, said that she is committed to helping the victims.
“I want this solved on my watch. I want there to be completion. I want the whole discussion to end and there be action for these folks. There is nobody in North Carolina who is waiting for anybody to die,” Gov. Perdue said.
Despite the state social workers who declared Riddick was “mentally retarded” and “promiscuous”, she went to college and raised the son born moments before she was sterilized. Her son is devoted to his mother and a successful entrepreneur.
Elaine is proud of her achievements.
“I don’t know where I would be if I listened to the state of North Carolina,” she said.
It was a storybook marriage in 1986 on a spring weekend on Cape Cod that united a princess of an American political dynasty, Maria Shriver, and the gap-toothed muscle-clad movie star famous enough to be known by one name, Arnold.
In many ways, it was a pairing of opposites: Her uncle was a U.S. president; his father was an Austrian policeman. She was the rising star of a network TV news show; he was the pot-puffing star of “Pumping Iron.” He was a Republican with a soft spot for Richard Nixon; her family was a pillar in the nation’s Democratic establishment.
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Shriver announced their separation late Monday, cleaving a sometimes-turbulent 25-year relationship after “a time of great personal and professional transition for each of us,” the couple said in a joint statement.
The breakup comes about four months after Schwarzenegger ended a bumpy, two-term run as California governor, a job his wife never wanted him to pursue. Since then, Schwarzenegger, 63, has been fashioning a role as an international advocate for green energy, giving speeches and lining up work in Hollywood. Shriver, 55, has guested-edited an edition of Oprah Winfrey’s magazine but also talked about the stress of changing roles after serving as California’s first lady.
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is an “interesting” politician. He’s incredibly polished when speaking on script, but if you broadside him with an unexpected question, he fumbles his words like a 16-year old boy seeing a naked woman for the first time. I recall watching Gov. McDonnell on television, explaining in an incredibly eloquent fashion how Barack Obama’s health care reform plan was going to lead our nation to hell in a hand basket. Heck, he almost had me convinced. But then Greta Van Susteren threw a sharp question at McDonnell that he didn’t see coming, and that is when he lost my respect. Upon trying to answer a question about what to do with the uninsured, McDonnell lost his cool faster than a popsicle in a tanning bed. Forrest Gump could have done a better job.
When you are governor of a state like Virginia, you’ve got to be smooth. When you are a governor attempting to explain how our country should commemorate the Confederacy, you’ve got to be Bill Clinton smooth and pretty damn persuasive. McDonnell wasn’t smooth at all recently when a reporter asked him why he forgot to mention the evils of slavery during his announcement that his state will commemorate Confederate History Month. That’s when his critics really got excited.
Going beyond Bob McDonnell’s own inadequacies as governor, let’s think carefully about why a Republican governor in a southern state might want to remember the Confederacy. One can make the logical argument that Confederates, like other radical groups, were an important part of history and deserve to have their memories preserved. I can almost buy that, but not really.
SIDEBAR: Really are you friggin kidding me it’s 2012, and these are your outgoing legacy decisions to the good state of “Mississippi”? Who in the hell psst this man off??? Because he is going out with a kiss-my-azz attitude.
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Updated 8:40 p.m. ET: In response to criticism about the pardons, former Gov. Haley Barbour released a statement from his office Wednesday evening that said 189 of the 215 people pardoned were already out of prison.
“My decision about clemency was based upon the recommendation of the Parole Board in more than 90 percent of the cases,” the statement said.
The statement, reported by WTVA of Tupelo, went on to say 13 of the 26 inmates released from custody cost the state a lot of money due to their medical expenses and can be returned to custody if they commit another crime.
Updated 8 p.m. ET: Mississippi Circuit Judge Tomie Green has temporarily blocked the release of 21 inmates who’d been given pardons or medical release by Republican Haley Barbour in one of his final acts as governor.
Original story
JACKSON, Miss. – The state attorney general on Wednesday moved to block the release of some inmates pardoned by Gov. Haley Barbour in his last days in office, claiming the move may have violated the state Constitution.
Attorney General Jim Hood said the law requires a legal notice of plans to pardon to be published 30 days prior to the action. He said his office couldn’t find such a record.
“Unfortunately our research has revealed that Gov. Barbour violated the Constitution,” Hood told The Clarion-Ledger. “We’re seeking to stop the release of any prisoners.”
Hood told WLBT-TV in Jackson, Miss. that he planned to file an injunction at Hinds County Circuit.