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Eugenics Victim, Son Fighting for Justice
Date: Tuesday, August 16, 2011, 6:42 am
By: Allen G. Breed, AP National Writer
WINFALL, N.C. (AP) — Elaine Riddick's small frame heaves, her rapid, shallow breaths whistling in her throat as she forces the words out between her sobs.
<span style="font-weight: bold">"So what am I worth?" she asks the five people seated at the long table before her. "The kids that I did not have, COULD not have. What are THEY worth?"</span>
"Priceless," Tony Riddick whispers as he gently rubs his mother's back.
Elaine Riddick has been asking these same questions, in one forum or another, for the past 40 years. This most recent appearance in late June was before the Governor's Task Force to Determine the Method of Compensation for Victims of North Carolina's Eugenics Board.
As far as Riddick is concerned, <span style="font-style: italic">she tells the panel, she was raped twice. Once by the man who fathered her son, and again by the Eugenics Board of the State of North Carolina, which deemed her, at age 14, unfit to procreate</span>.
<span style="font-weight: bold">"I am NOT feebleminded," she shouts, turning to face the packed hearing room. "I've never BEEN feebleminded."</span>
"No," says her son, standing beside her behind the podium.
<span style="font-style: italic">Tears streaming down her face, she says, "They cut me open like I was a HOG."</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">Between 1929 and 1974, North Carolina sterilized more than 7,600 individuals in the name of "improving" the state's human stock. By the time the program was halted, the majority of those neutered were young, black, poor women — like Riddick.</span>
In many ways, Riddick's has become the face of the movement to compensate victims of what most now acknowledge as a dark, misguided era in the state's — and nation's — past. From her decision to sue the state in federal court nearly four decades ago to this most recent baring of her soul, she has refused to simply fade from view.
Instead, the 57-year-old Riddick has become an inspiration to other survivors of the state's eugenics program.
One of them is Australia Clay, whose mother was sterilized, and who, following Riddick to the podium, tells her how lucky she was to have had Tony — no matter how violently he was conceived.
"You're blessed," Clay says through her own tears. "'Cause he can help fight for you now. I see God's hand in your life."
Riddick says she never felt otherwise.
Date: Tuesday, August 16, 2011, 6:42 am
By: Allen G. Breed, AP National Writer
WINFALL, N.C. (AP) — Elaine Riddick's small frame heaves, her rapid, shallow breaths whistling in her throat as she forces the words out between her sobs.
<span style="font-weight: bold">"So what am I worth?" she asks the five people seated at the long table before her. "The kids that I did not have, COULD not have. What are THEY worth?"</span>
"Priceless," Tony Riddick whispers as he gently rubs his mother's back.
Elaine Riddick has been asking these same questions, in one forum or another, for the past 40 years. This most recent appearance in late June was before the Governor's Task Force to Determine the Method of Compensation for Victims of North Carolina's Eugenics Board.
As far as Riddick is concerned, <span style="font-style: italic">she tells the panel, she was raped twice. Once by the man who fathered her son, and again by the Eugenics Board of the State of North Carolina, which deemed her, at age 14, unfit to procreate</span>.
<span style="font-weight: bold">"I am NOT feebleminded," she shouts, turning to face the packed hearing room. "I've never BEEN feebleminded."</span>
"No," says her son, standing beside her behind the podium.
<span style="font-style: italic">Tears streaming down her face, she says, "They cut me open like I was a HOG."</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">Between 1929 and 1974, North Carolina sterilized more than 7,600 individuals in the name of "improving" the state's human stock. By the time the program was halted, the majority of those neutered were young, black, poor women — like Riddick.</span>
In many ways, Riddick's has become the face of the movement to compensate victims of what most now acknowledge as a dark, misguided era in the state's — and nation's — past. From her decision to sue the state in federal court nearly four decades ago to this most recent baring of her soul, she has refused to simply fade from view.
Instead, the 57-year-old Riddick has become an inspiration to other survivors of the state's eugenics program.
One of them is Australia Clay, whose mother was sterilized, and who, following Riddick to the podium, tells her how lucky she was to have had Tony — no matter how violently he was conceived.
"You're blessed," Clay says through her own tears. "'Cause he can help fight for you now. I see God's hand in your life."
Riddick says she never felt otherwise.
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