46 6.12.22
Gabor, Muhammad Ali and the Rolling Stones.
In February 1974, Belli’s fi rm fi led a $5 million
damages suit on behalf of the Relfs against the
former White House aides Dean and Ehrlichman
and other federal offi cials for blocking the distri-
bution in 1972 of federal guidelines that would
have prevented the Relf sterilizations. After that
suit was dismissed, Belli followed with another
suit for $15 million that July.
After two and a half more years of motions,
reversals, reconsiderations and transfers, the
Relfs’ last suit was dismissed in September 1977;
Levin says it was because an appropriate defen-
dant could not be identifi ed under the Federal
Tort Claims Act. The family was left still penni-
less. ‘‘I felt sorry for them,’’ Levin says now. ‘‘The
issue was brought to light but had no benefi cial
consequences for the kids and the Relf family. It
felt very bad.’’
In 2013, North Carolina — where Nial Ruth
Cox’s 1973 lawsuit revealed the state’s eugenics
program — agreed to compensate victims of
forced or coerced sterilization. Three years ear-
lier, the North Carolina Justice for Sterilization
Victims Foundation was started to identify sur-
vivors of the state’s program. The organization
estimated that between 1,500 and 2,000 survivors
might be alive and recommended paying $50,000
to each. In 2013, the State Legislature set aside
$10 million. According to Lombardo, the Georgia
State University College of Law professor, nearly
800 North Carolinians fi led claims, with 220 qual-
ifying for fi nancial restitution. (To be eligible, the
operations had to have occurred under the state’s
Eugenics Board, but some of the sterilizations
occurred outside the auspices of the state, for
example at county-run facilities.)
In 2015, the Virginia General Assembly set
aside $400,000 for compensation, later adding
more, and 30 survivors received $25,000 each.
In 2003, California issued a formal apology to
the victims of its eugenics program; last year,
the state budgeted $4.5 million as compensa-
tion for its survivors. From 1909 through 1979,
under state eugenics laws, thousands of peo-
ple who lived in California state-run hospitals,
homes and institutions were sterilized. Even
after those laws were repealed in 1979, forced
or coerced sterilizations continued to be per-
formed on people in custody at state prisons or
other correctional facilities. More than 20,000
people were sterilized in California, more than
in any other state, and about 600 survivors are
still alive today and eligible for compensation.
Each will receive an equal share of the funds in
two installments.
‘‘Even as everyone recognizes that receiving a
check, even for $25,000, is never going to undo
the reproductive violence that was done to these
people, at least it’s something,’’ Stern says. ‘‘The
state is making amends in some way, and it’s an
important material and symbolic gesture. I really
hope that everyone who can receive compensa-
tion is able to fi nd their pathway to the victim’s
compensation board and request it.’’
The concept of reparations has long been
contentious, debated in Congress and else-
where as a question of what is owed to U.S. cit-
izens who are descendants of those who were
enslaved centuries ago. But the steps to com-
pensate the living victims of forced sterilization
can also be understood as reparations, and with
three states having done so, new pressure has
been placed on the remaining 29 states and the
federal government itself.
In North Carolina, the fi rst state to compen-
sate survivors, the process began in late 2002,
when The Winston-Salem Journal ran ‘‘Against
Their Will,’’ a fi ve-part series on North Caroli-
na’s eugenics program. Immediately afterward,
Gov. Mike Easley issued a public apology. In
April 2003, the North Carolina Senate voted to
overturn the sterilization law that had been on
the books since 1919. In 2009, the state placed
a historical marker in Raleigh to commemorate
the 7,600 victims sterilized under the state’s
eugenics laws between 1929 and 1974, and the
media covered survivors’ sharing memories
of the trauma the surgery caused. In 2010, the
North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims
Foundation was started to fi nd survivors; the
following year, Gov. Bev Perdue appointed a task
force to study a potential compensation package
and its cost. Finally, in 2013, North Carolina’s
Republican-controlled Legislature voted to
spend $10 million to compensate the survivors
of the state’s eugenics program.
‘‘There’s a huge movement all across the coun-
try to look at historical wrongs, including forced
sterilization, and to consider what needs to be
done now in order to redress them,’’ explains
Margaret Burnham, founder and co-director of
the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at
Northeastern University School of Law. ‘‘I think
this is really the question of the 21st century.’’Minnie Lee Relf never fi nished high school,
dropping out in 11th grade. Keeping up with
classwork was diffi cult for her, given the absence
of formal learning in her early childhood and the
limitations of her parents. ‘‘I was a slow read-
er in school,’’ she says now. ‘‘I can read, but I’m
just slow. I was just slow.’’ She also recalls her
classmates mocking her after learning of the
case through media coverage. ‘‘People was just
picking at me at school, always saying: ‘You can’t
have no children. You can’t do this and you can’t... ,’ ’’ she says, her voice trailing off. ‘‘It hurt me.
I felt so sad.’’
Mary Alice was placed in McInnis, the spe-
cial-needs school that Jessie Bly sought out for
her. But she didn’t graduate, either. Their moth-
er died in 1980, just as they reached adulthood,
and their father in 2009. Katie, their older sis-
ter, lives in an apartment in the same complex.
They are still bound tightly together, walking
to the store for groceries, attending church, sit-
ting side by side watching TV. ‘‘Some days I feel
sad, but other times just tired,’’ says Minnie Lee,
who explains that she and her sister struggle
with hypertension and asthma, and that Mary
Alice also suff ers from seizures. ‘‘Not long ago,
I was crying and felt like doing something to
myself, like I wanted to go with my mom and
dad,’’ Minnie Lee adds, looking over at her sister,
who doesn’t seem to understand.
Minnie Lee says she recalls the lawsuit; Levin,
Dees and of course Miss Jessie Bly; the airplane
trip to Washington and Senator Kennedy. But
when I describe the impact of their case, how
their story stopped the government from harm-
ing more girls and women like them, Minnie Lee
looks confused. It is too much to comprehend.
Mary Alice holds on to my arm and smiles.
I met Katie in April. Now 66, she never fi nished
high school. She and her husband, Michael, had
one child, Jerome, who died shortly after he was
born. Katie says she can barely remember any-
thing about what happened to her and her sisters
50 years ago; she doesn’t understand why her
family didn’t receive any compensation for what
was done to them. ‘‘But I think about it every day,
really,’’ she said.
As I described the way her family’s case
made history, she moved closer to listen. I then
explained that apologies have been made to
survivors in other places. An apology, she said,
‘‘would mean the world to us, and I would forgive
them.’’ She looked away and began to weep.
‘‘Sterilization involves two forms of harm,
the physical harm to one’s reproductive auton-
omy and the moral stigma associated with ster-
ilization, including the suggestion that you are
unworthy to reproduce, in the Relfs’ case because
they are Black women,’’ Burnham says. ‘‘These
women bear a mark of being deemed less than a
full person. That moral harm has to be addressed
by an apology, and it must come from the state.
But they are also owed material redress, some
sort of fi nancial repair. That’s what is clearly
acknowledged in the Virginia, North Carolina
and California initiatives: that practices of truth
telling, repair and reparation must come into play
when formal law fails.’’
Minnie Lee may not understand what the
nation gained because of her case. But it is
hauntingly, painfully clear that she understands
what she and Mary Alice lost. When I visited, I
saw that each woman slept with a brown baby
doll, Mary Alice’s nestled in a tangle of sheets,
Minnie Lee’s laid across her pillow. ‘‘I know I
can’t have kids, and it gets to me sometimes,’’
Minnie Lee says. ‘‘Every time I see somebody
like my cousin or my niece Debbie with their
child, I think about it. Seeing these little pretty
babies, I wish that was me.’’Sterilization
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