Ryan J. Reilly and Melissa Jeltsen‘s piece on legendary former NAACP head Ben Hooks‘ FBI file includes some angry letters and news clippings sent to Hooks before an appearance in West Virginia. One of the articles was about a Charles Town West Virginia Mayor, Donald Master, a trained veterinarian who suggested “spaying welfare mothers” instead of spending taxpayer money on family planning. I started looking around and found this old UPI dispatch:
When Mayor Donald Master recently suggested that welfare mothers be spayed to keep them from having more children, he was reasonably sure it would cause a flap.
Master, 64, a veterinarian who has served as the town’s outspoken mayor for the past 15 years, sees himself as something of a gadfly. And if the suggestion that there is a similarity between a dog in heat and a repeat visitor to a family planning clinic ruffles a few feathers, that’s fine with him.
”Why not?” he asked. ”Somebody’s got to get up on his back legs and holler about these things.”
Master’s suggestion brought loud protest from some quarters, including the local chapter of the NAACP, which demanded his resignation, and the state National Organization for Women.
The mayor said he was not particularly surprised by the outcry.
”I’d be disappointed in both the NAACP, if they think it’s a racist thing, or the NOW organization, if they felt it was an unjust attack on women, if they didn’t complain,” he said.
Nor was he particularly moved by their reaction. He has made no apology for the remark. In fact, he said he has been receiving about 10 letters a day from people who support his position.
Master is a tall, bald, package of contradictions. He characterizes himself as a middle-of-the road Democrat, but admires Ronald Reagan.
Of course he was–it’s difficult to remember how large Reagan’s “welfare queen” image once loomed so large in the American imagination. Master was angry about $2.5 million being directed to family planning clinics, and was just trying to offer a commonsense solution. What could be more “middle-of-the-road” than involuntarily sterilizing black women?
