Sterilization Timeline JUMP TO: START | END
1919

The North Carolina General Assembly passed a weak sterilization law. No known sterilizations were performed under this statute.

 1929

Thirty states passed sterilization laws, including North Carolina, which passed the N.C. Sterilization Act in 1929.

 1933

• As a result of a lawsuit filed by Forsyth County resident Mary Brewer, the N.C. Supreme Court ruled that the Sterilization Act was unconstitutional, citing lack of public hearings or a notification process.

  

• The N.C. General Assembly approved an overhauled sterilization law modeled after a similar law in Virginia that had passed muster by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law set the membership of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina at five. It also authorized sterilizations of the feeble-minded, mentally diseased and epileptics.

 1935

• Wickliffe Draper, an eccentric philanthrophist who bankrolled racial research, attended a conference on eugenics in Nazi Germany.

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The board included the commissioner of public welfare, the secretary of the State Board of Health, the chief medical officer at the State Hospital in Raleigh, the chief medical officer of an institution for the feeble-minded or insane from an institution outside Raleigh and a representative from the N.C. attorney general's office.