Against Their Will: North Carolina’s Sterilization Program and the Campaign for Reparations

This landmark series led to the first legislation in the nation seeking to compensate victims of eugenics, or involuntary sterilization. For more than 40 years North Carolina ran one of the nation’s largest and most aggressive sterilization programs. It expanded after World War II, even as most other states pulled back in light of the horrors of Hitler’s Germany. The victims were wives and daughters. Sisters. Unwed mothers. Children. Even a 10-year-old boy. Some were blind or mentally retarded. Toward the end they were mostly black and poor. A team of reporters exposed the scientific flaws and racial bais of the eugenics program through interviews with victims, the doctors who operated on them, the bureaucrats who ran the program, and long-hidden documents that historian Johanna Schoen shared with a reporter. Against Their Will has drawn praise from civil rights groups, historians, and the general public.