news-record.com

RALEIGH (AP) — The state of North Carolina is recalling a regretful side of its history by unveiling a roadside marker remembering the thousands of poor people, mental patients and prisoners who were forcibly sterilized "for the public good."

The cast aluminum sign being dedicated Monday in downtown Raleigh provides a permanent remembrance of the program intended to keep those considered mentally disabled or otherwise genetically inferior from having children.

"It's a chapter in the state's history that's not celebrated certainly," said Michael Hill, a researcher in the state archives office that works with the panel that approved the marker last December. "We forget this at our peril. We should remember all chapters in history, good and bad."

More than 7,600 people were sterilized by "choice or coercion" under the state's so-called eugenics program between 1933 and 1973, according to the marker's text. North Carolina was one of more than two dozen states that ran such programs after social reformers began advocating for the approach a century ago.

Only about a third of the North Carolina victims still are alive, including some invited to attend the late afternoon ceremony about a block from where the state board that reviewed potential patient cases met.

North Carolina's program targeted the poor and people living in prisons and state institutions, among others.

The state Eugenics Commission was abolished in 1977 after the legislature transferred responsibility of the mentally ill to the court system.

After a series of newspaper stories about the program, then-Gov. Mike Easley apologized in late 2002 for the state's role in the sterilizations.

Efforts at giving financial compensation to victims began in 2003. Current Gov. Beverly Perdue and the Senate have set aside $250,000 in seed money in their respective budget plans to identify and develop a compensation plan.

A state House panel has recommended that the state give $20,000 to victims of the eugenics program, but the measure is unlikely to pass this year. The House bill that would begin payments now seeks $18.6 million — a difficult amount to obtain in a year in which lawmakers are facing a $4.6 billion budget gap.

Some lawmakers also want legislation to develop curricula in the public schools about the sterilizations.