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Under Construction May 2024
ERASURE: ONGOING RESEARCH / ARCHIVAL IMAGERY / VISUAL DOCUMENTATION 


Nearly 7,600 people were sterilized by the North Carolina Eugenics Board between 1929 and 1974, Elaine, among the 68 included on state records who was offered compensation. Physical examination of six-year-old Better Babies contestant, 1913. "Shall We Breed or Sterilize Defectives?" Elaine Riddick was sterilized by the state of North Carolina on March 5th, 1968 at the age of 14. Walking home from school, she was raped and became pregnant. Her case was referred to the State Eugenics Board by social workers who deemed her ‘promiscuous’ and a ‘threat to the neighborhood’. At the time she was in the custody of her grandmother, “Miss Peaches”, who, unable to read, was coerced into signing her consent form. Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, Long Island. It was here, in the early 1900s, where the eugenics movement was cultivated. Kansas State Fair, 1920. “Mendel’s Theatre”, the inheritance of hair color, presented by Leon Fradley Whitney, a prominent member of the American Eugenics Society, The Eugenics Research Association, and the American Genetics Association. Elaine and her son Tony Riddick, who she gave birth to just hours before being sterilized. The eugenics movement was preceded by the era of Dr. J. Marion Sims, a revered 19th century physician dubbed ‘the father of gynecology’. He earned his reputation by experimenting on the bodies of slave women, who had no power to consent or refuse. They were subjected to operations without anesthesia, then expected to work and produce more children to work alongside them. Chart aiming to track the inheritance of insanity and feeble-mindedness, December 15th, 1928.