When Charmaine Fuller Cooper opens the files on her desk, the words she finds inside sear like a slap across the face. Promiscuous. Unattractive. Imbecile. She imagines how the people whose names are printed on these medical records would feel if they read what others thought of them.
For decades, doctors, teachers and social workers in North Carolina used the derogatory descriptors as justifications to strip the victims of their ability to have children, with the ultimate goal of ridding the human race of the undesirable. By the time the state’s eugenics program ended in 1974, an estimated 7,600 women and men had been forcibly sterilized. (More)
Response: I met Charmaine Fuller Cooper via my newsletter years ago. We communicated through emails and then we eventually met. I helped to co-sponsor a meeting here in Edgecombe several years ago when she worked with the Racial Justice Act. She is very professional and I am very proud of her. C. Dancy II – DCN Publisher
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