Minutes of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, 1958-1964

This collection contains scans of the redacted, typed minutes of the Eugenics Board meetings between 1958 to 1964, held at the State Archives of North Carolina (SANC). Redactions were carried out by staff of the SANC. These records are publicly available and may be examined in the Reading Room of the SANC. The original order of the data was chronological, by meeting date. The board was established in 1933 and operated until 1977. Its role, documented in the board minutes, was to act on county-level petitions recommending sterilization. More than 90% were approved. Between 1933 and 1974 more than 7,600 persons were sterilized. Most were poor and a majority were African American. The minutes include the name (redacted) and county of residence of the individual under consideration, social and medical history, results of IQ tests, diagnosis, name of doctor performing the procedure (redacted), and where the procedure was to be performed. African Americans are indicated by “(N)”. The data set includes digitized meeting minutes in .pdf format.