{"id":205321,"date":"2019-07-02T13:18:40","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T18:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=205321"},"modified":"2020-09-16T22:33:33","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T03:33:33","slug":"eugenicist-coerced-sterilization-north-carolina-planned-parenthood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/eugenicist-coerced-sterilization-north-carolina-planned-parenthood\/","title":{"rendered":"This eugenicist started coerced sterilization in North Carolina… and was awarded by Planned Parenthood"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

As Planned Parenthood celebrates the opening<\/a> of its new facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, a dark history of eugenics in the region is coming to light. In part one<\/a> of this two part series, Live Action News documented how Sarah Bryant, the founder<\/a> of Planned Parenthood’s first Charlotte clinic, admitted that two men, Art Jones and Wallace Kuralt, influenced her to open that first office. Kuralt headed a coercive eugenic sterilization program in the state when he served as Mecklenburg County’s welfare director from 1945 to 1972. Eugenics has been a cornerstone<\/a> of Planned Parenthood’s history, and its ugly roots continue to be revealed.<\/p>\n

\"Image:

Wallace Kuralt<\/p><\/div>\n

The State of North Carolina is one of the few states to focus on their eugenics history, which tragically targeted Blacks. One of the prominent\u00a0supporters<\/a>\u00a0of the NC eugenics program was Clarence Gamble, a\u00a0director<\/a>\u00a0of Margaret Sanger\u2019s<\/a> American Birth Control League, which later changed its name to Planned Parenthood. It was Sanger’s letter to Gamble that revealed Sanger’s infamous “Negro Project.”<\/p>\n

\"\"

Excerpt: Margaret Sanger Letter to Clarence Gamble, Negro Project<\/p><\/div>\n

Ironically, Kuralt’s eugenic sterilization program in Charlotte also targeted Blacks. A 2014 Slate article entitled, “The Most Discriminatory Law in the Land,” expounded<\/a> on this:<\/p>\n

… Kuralt expanded the sterilization program to include the poor and destitute, with a particular focus on black Americans. In 1960, black Americans were 25 percent of the population in Mecklenberg. But between 1955 and 1966, noted the Charlotte Observer in a 2011 piece investigating Kuralt\u2019s work, they made up more than 80 percent of those sterilized<\/strong> at the request of the Welfare Department.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we stop to reflect upon the thousands of physical, mental, and social misfits in our midst,\u201d wrote Kuralt in 1964, \u201cthe thousands of families which are too large for the family to support, the one-tenth of our children born to an unmarried mother, the hoard of children rejected by parents, is there any doubt that health, welfare, and education agencies need to redouble their efforts to prevent these conditions which are so costly to society?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Sterilization, he believed<\/a>, would save tax dollars by reducing poverty among the \u201clow mentality-low income families, which tend to produce the largest number of children.\u201d Or, as he wrote in an unsigned editorial the same year, \u201c[A]t the bottom of many welfare problems is the illegitimate child, the unwanted child in his most extreme form.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Could the funding of abortion by wealthy Americans be rooted in eugenics?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the Charlotte Observer, “In 1957, the peak year for Mecklenburg, the state approved sterilizations of 52 blacks and five whites.” Live Action News previously documented<\/a> the heart wrenching story of another North Carolina sterilization victim, Elaine Riddick. Watch the video below from the documentary film\u00a0Maafa21<\/a>:<\/p>\n