Teaching Professor
UNC Department of Public Policy
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Dr. Anna L. Krome-Lukens earned her B.A. in Anthropology and History from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. in U.S. History from UNC–Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the history of social policy. She has served as Director of Experiential Education in Public Policy, leading the Capstone program in which students collaborate with community partners on policy research. She teaches courses on higher education policy, the relationship between history and policy, and an interdisciplinary course on the Future of Food. Her teaching has been recognized with the Provost’s Engaged Scholarship Award (2021) and the Chapman Family Teaching Award (2024).
Her book, Strong State, Weak Links: Eugenics and the Southern Politics of Welfare, examines North Carolina’s early twentieth-century eugenics programs and their enduring influence on welfare policy and ideas of citizenship.
In the early twentieth century, most US states established eugenics programs to “improve” the human race through selective breeding. North Carolina ran one of the nation’s most aggressive programs; between 1927 and 1977, at least 5,700 people were sterilized and thousands more were committed to institutions. While sterilizations in the 1950s and 1960s disproportionately targeted Black women receiving public assistance, the program’s early focus was on poor white women. These policies were framed as scientific and progressive, yet they were deeply intertwined with racial and class biases, reflecting long-standing social hierarchies in the South.
Anna Krome-Lukens examines those early years and reveals how white reformers such as social workers, politicians, and activists promoted the principles of eugenics while shaping the emerging welfare state before and during the New Deal. By using claims about fitness and mental defects to justify unequal access to public benefits, they defined who was worthy of care. Tracing this history, Strong State, Weak Links illuminates how North Carolina’s eugenics programs influenced the modern welfare state and how their legacy continues to shape debates over social policy today.
Order Strong State, Weak Links: Eugenics and the Southern Politics of Welfare or read the Q&A
Author
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Anna L. Krome-Lukens, PhD Teaching Professor UNC Department of Public Policy |
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Moderator |
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Martha King, PhD Teaching Associate Professor Department of Anthropology |
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Jill Fisher, PhD Professor Department of Social Medicine |
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Doug MacKay, PhD Professor Department of Public Policy |
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Raúl Necochea López, PhD Associate Professor Department of Social Medicine |
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are those of the presenter, they do not necessarily reflect the views of the contracted organization, department, School of Medicine, nor the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.