The Nazis became infamous for it, but even before Hitler plotted his master race, America practiced eugenics (a movement to improve the gene pool by removing undesirables) -- a secret that a 60 MINUTES report brings back to center stage in all its ugly shame. Bob Simon's report on a state institution that once kept thousands of children away from the rest of society will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES, Sunday, May 2 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

The Walter E. Fernald School in Waltham, Mass. was once part of nationwide system of state-run institutions that warehoused children deemed "feeble-minded," in some cases right up until the 1970s. Michael D'Antonio writes in his new book, The State Boys Rebellion, that eugenics was an idea that peaked in the 1920s and 1930s. "People were told, 'We can be rid of all disease...lower the crime rate...increase the wealth of our nation, if we only keep certain people from having babies,'" D'Antonio tells Simon. In fact, many of the children were not mentally impaired, but merely wayward or poor and uneducated with no place to go. Such children were often subject to the abuse inherent in large institutions.

Fred Boyce was committed to Fernald at 8-years-old when his foster mother died. "It was the easy way out. They didn't have to look for homes for you so they could dump you off in these human warehouses and just let you rot," he tells Simon. Boyce spent 11 years there and was labeled a "moron" even though his intelligence was within the normal range. There were many others kept at Fernald who were not mentally deficient. "We thought for a long time that we belonged there, that we were not part of the species...[not] supposed to be born," says Boyce, who describes a vicious cycle of abuse and harsh punishments for trying to run away from the abuse at Fernald. Moreover, the normal inmates like Boyce had to work long, hard hours in Fernald's gardens, orchards and other work areas and thus were denied a proper education.

Joe Almeida was at Fernald at the same time Boyce was. He relates a similar experience, but talks about another secret both men share: they were unknowingly subjected to radiation experiments at Fernald. "We were getting special treatment... extra dessert... extra milk," says Almeida of the "science club" they were recruited for. The food was radioactive, part of an experiment conducted by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the government and the Quaker Oats company.

Boyce, Almeida and others in the "science club" filed and won a lawsuit over the experiments. The $60,000 they each received was small, says Almeida, but no amount can replace the precious thing taken from him and thousands of others. "They took the most important thing in my life away...my childhood and my education," Almeida tells Simon. "The two things that you need in life to make it, they took from me."