The freeing of inmate Gregory Taylor wasn’t North Carolina’s sole step recently toward providing some long-denied justice. Charmaine Fuller Cooper was chosen last week as the first executive director of the N.C. Justice for Victims of Sterilization Foundation.
Her appointment didn’t get nearly the attention of Taylor’s release, but it too was a long time coming. The state’s sterilization of thousands of mental patients, now properly viewed with shame, was carried out between 1933 and 1973. Then-Gov. Mike Easley apologized for the state’s role in 2002. Last summer the legislature appropriated $250,000 to start the foundation.
