North Carolina Dedicates Eugenics Historical Marker

On June 22, 2009, the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program dedicated a new marker in Raleigh to commemorate the victims of the state's Eugenics Sterilization Program, which was authorized by the North Carolina legislature in 1929. The Eugenics Board was created in 1933 to review all sterilization requests, and between 1929 and 1974, over 7,600 individuals were sterilized. In 1972 the Eugenics Board became the Eugenics Commission before being abolished in 1977.

Eugenics was a neologism created by Sir Francis Galton, who elaborated his theory of improving natural selection for humans in his 1883 work, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. Sterilization laws were later adopted by over 30 states in the U.S., but were challenged in 1927 in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200. In upholding such laws, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the opinion of the Court, infamously asserting:

"It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

The General Assembly of North Carolina currently has two bills pending related to eugenics: House Bill 21 (Eugenics Program--Support and Education) and Senate Bill 179 (Sterilization Compensation). For further information on this legislation and the history of eugenics in North Carolina, please see an earlier Carolina Curator post.

In addition, Special Collections at UNC Health Sciences Library has digitized all volumes of the Biennial Report of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina [1934-1966], as well as North Carolina journals and documents in public health and other areas as part of an ongoing digital initiative.

Note: The images below are from the Historical Marker Database; full entries are available online for Indiana, the first state to pass eugenics legislation, and Virginia, the source of the landmark Buck v. Bell sterilization case.

Black Medical History Resources

:: The Old North State Medical Society (Durham, NC)
The nation's oldest association of black physicians, the Society was founded in 1886 and has from that date until the present directed its energies to the objectives of equity in healthcare, equal opportunity for black professionals and equal care for black, other minorities, and very poor patients. Online exhibit at: Virtual Museum of African American Medical History in North Carolina

:: Black History Month: A Medical Perspective (Duke)
An online exhibition featuring sections on People, Medical Education, Hospitals, Folk Medicine, Chronology of Achievements, as well as a Selective Bibliography.

:: Opening Doors: Contemporary African American Academic Surgeons (National Library of Medicine)
African Americans have always practiced medicine, whether as physicians, healers, midwives, or “root doctors.” The journey of the African American physician from pre-Civil War to modern day America has been a challenging one. Early black pioneer physicians not only became skilled practitioners, they became trailblazers and educators paving the way for future physicians, surgeons, and nurses, and opening doors to better health care for the African American community.

:: Journal of the National Medical Association (1909 to present)
In celebration of Black History Month, the National Library of Medicine has announced an important addition to PubMed Central (PMC), its free digital archive of full-text journal articles: the complete archive of the Journal of the National Medical Association (JNMA), which observes its centennial this year.

The National Medical Association (NMA), established in 1895, is the largest and oldest national organization representing African American physicians and allied health professionals in the United States. The JNMA was published quarterly from 1909 to 1938, bimonthly from 1940 to 1977, and monthly since 1978. The archive currently represents over 77,000 digitized pages of issues through 2007. More recent content will be coming at a later date.

Bullitt Lecture on Early Black Physicians

The next joint meeting of UNC’s Bullitt History of Medicine Club and Duke’s Trent History of Medicine Society will be Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Dr. Todd Savitt, Professor of Medical Humanities at East Carolina University, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Entering a 'White' Profession: Black Physicians in 19th- and 20th-Century America."

Dr. Savitt is an historian of medicine. He received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University (1965), attended the University of Rochester School of Medicine (1965-1968), and earned his M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1975) in history from the University of Virginia. After teaching history of medicine and medical humanities at the University of Florida College of Medicine from 1976 to 1982 he joined the faculty of the Department of Medical Humanities at East Carolina University School of Medicine, where he presently teaches history of medicine, literature and medicine, social and cultural issues in medical practice, and medical ethics.

Dr. Savitt's primary research interests are African-American medical history and medical history of the American South and West. He has written or edited six books (Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia; The Dictionary of American Medical Biography; Science and Medicine in the Old South; Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South; Medical Readers’ Theater: A Guide and Scripts; and Race and Medicine in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth Century America) and a number of articles on such topics as the relationship of the AMA towards black physicians, history of sickle-cell anemia, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), use of African Americans for medical experimentation, the entry of black physicians into the American medical profession, and early African-American medical schools and medical journals.

For directions to the UNC Health Sciences Library, visit the HSL website. The Robertson Scholars Express Bus travels non-stop between UNC (Morehead Planetarium) and Duke (Chapel Circle).

For more information on the Bullitt Club and a schedule of meetings for spring 2009, please visit the Bullitt website. Bullitt lectures for 2008-9 are now available as mp3 downloads.

Bullitt Club Lecture on Racial Disparities in Health Care

The next joint meeting of UNC’s Bullitt History of Medicine Club and Duke’s Trent History of Medicine Society will be Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at the UNC Health Sciences Library in the 5th Floor Conference Room (527). Please join us at 5:30pm for light refreshments followed by the lecture at 6pm. Meetings are free and open to the public.

Vanessa Northington Gamble, MD, PhD, will be presenting a lecture entitled, "Without Health and Long Life All Else Fails": A History of African-American Efforts to Eliminate Racial Disparities in Health and Health Care.

Dr. Gamble is University Professor of Medical Humanities at the George Washington University. She is the first woman and African American to hold this prestigious, endowed faculty position and is also member of the University’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences faculty in the Department of History. Prior to her appointment to George Washington, Dr. Gamble was Director of the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care. Throughout her career Dr. Gamble has worked to promote equity and justice in American medicine and public health. A physician, scholar, and activist, she is an internationally recognized expert on the history of American medicine, racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, cultural competence, and bioethics. She is the author of several widely acclaimed publications on the history of race and racism in American medicine, including the award-winning Making a Place for Ourselves: The Black Hospital Movement: 1920-1945. Public service has been a hallmark of Dr. Gamble’s career. She chaired the committee that took the lead role in the successful campaign to obtain an apology in 1997 from President Clinton for the infamous United States Public Health Syphilis Study at Tuskegee.

For directions to the UNC Health Sciences Library, visit the HSL website. The Robertson Scholars Express Bus travels non-stop between UNC (Morehead Planetarium) and Duke (Chapel Circle).

For more information on the Bullitt Club and a schedule of meetings for 2008-2009, please visit the Bullitt website. Bullitt lectures for 2008-9 are now available as mp3 downloads.