Ninety years ago on March 31, 1931, Vermont signed into law “An Act for Human Betterment by Voluntary Sterilization” for the purpose of eliminating from the future genetic pool, persons deemed “unfit” to procreate. Vermont joined over 30 other states that enacted Eugenics-inspired legislature targeting people by race, national origin, gender, poverty, and disability.
Here’s the language from the bill: “Henceforth, it shall be the policy of the state to prevent procreation of idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded or insane persons, when the public welfare, and the welfare of the idiots, feeble-minded or insane persons likely to procreate, can be improved by voluntary sterilization as herein provided.”
The bill was the culmination of UVM zoology professor Henry Perkins’ research. In 1925, he established and directed a Eugenics Survey to measure “delinquency, dependency, and mental deficiencies” in order to preserve “old pioneer stock.”
Perkins and his team compiled files on thousands of Vermonters, collaborating with state and municipal officials and the Vermont Department of Welfare, sharing confidential information resulting in children being removed, individuals institutionalized and incarcerated, family connections severed, and hundreds being sterilized.
His surveys targeted Abenaki bands and other indigenous people, Vermonters of mixed race or French-Canadian heritage, the poor, and persons with disabilities, among others. Records are incomplete, but at least 253 people were sterilized as a result of this legislation. This practice shamefully continued until 1957.
In 2019, UVM apologized for its “unethical and regrettable” eugenics role of supporting Henry Perkins’ research and stripped his family’s name from a building on campus. It was a powerful ceremony about truth and reconciliation.
This session, I re-introduced Joint Resolution JRH2 for both the House and Senate. It “apologizes and expresses sorrow and regret to all individual Vermonters and their families and descendants who were harmed as a result of State-sanctioned eugenics policies and practices.” A similar resolution was first introduced ten years ago. The time is long overdue for public acknowledgement of the state’s role in this dark chapter of our history. The resolution is co-sponsored by forty three other House members.
As we worked on the resolution in committee, heart wrenching testimony was received from impacted individuals sharing stories of finding hundreds of pages from the surveys about their families, mothers changing their names and moving continually to avoid being targeted, and relatives desperate to assimilate and giving up all traditional cultural practices and languages.
Nancy Gallagher’s book, “Breeding Better Vermonters” details the history within our state, illustrating the familial carnage. In Pondville, VT, the Doless family’s seven children were taken away from the parents in 1928 and sent to the Vermont Industrial School and the Brandon School for the Feebleminded as it was called then. Three of the four oldest children were subsequently sterilized prior to discharge.
One woman described to our committee what it was like to be isolated and segregated in the Brandon School, and another shared a letter found in her relative’s attic from Brandon’s superintendent in 1932 telling him that due to the “mental retardation” of his two children, it would be inadvisable to return them home.
Merely an apology from the legislature acknowledging the state’s role in this travesty is inadequate. The resolution recognizes that further legislative action should be taken to address the continuing impacts of eugenics policies and the related practices of disenfranchisement, ethnocide, and genocide.
Our next online legislative forum with the South Burlington Public Library is March 22 at 6:30 pm. Visit the library’s event page for a Zoom link. I look forward to these conversations with State Representatives Ann Pugh, Maida Townsend, Martin LaLonde and myself along with Senator Thomas Chittenden. We are already half-way through the session, so we will be able to preview legislation most likely to move forward. Always feel free to contact me directly with any thoughts or concerns @ jkillacky@leg.state.vt.us.