UPDATE: Keep your eye open for the eugenics conference at UVM this spring:
March 28, 2010
Symposium
Breeding Better Germans and Vermonters
Nazi and American Eugenics in History and Memory
It appears that a long-standing injustice done to some of Vermont's most vulnerable populations in the early part of the 20th century is about to be officially acknowledged at last.
The Burlington Free Press reported today that the Legislature took testimony from a few of the descendents of those vicitimized in the Vermont Eugenics Project, pursuant to issuing an apology to the wronged communities. Had the project achieved it's goal of sterilizing all but those who came from "the fine old stock of original settlers," there would be no descendents to offer that testimony today. It is a shame and a cloud of disgrace that hangs over the past of both the state and it's premier university, since it was under the influence of a UVM Dean of Zoology, Henry F. Perkins, that the legislature undertook this ignoble adventure, following the preliminary "studies" in the 1920's.
The UVM website devoted to the topic has an oddly understated tone, considering the volatility of its subject. Nancy L. Gallagher, who is credited on the website, has written a detailed history of the experiment entitled "Breeding Better Vermonters: The Vermont Eugenics Project." A friend loaned me this UVM publication several years ago because I was completely ignorant on the subject. In all the twenty some years I had lived in Vermont, no one had previously mentioned this particular piece of regional history to me. Quite an eye-opener.
Vermont was by no means unique in this perfidious action. When, in 1931, Vermont passed it's own sterilization law, it was the 27th state to do so.
|
250-1
75-1
