A black mark on Vermont: New book looks at state's history of eugenics
Oct. 10, 2023 | By Steven Pappas | Times Argus staff writer Editor’s Note: This feature was first published by the Times Argus on Oct. 7, 2023.
Historian Mercedes de Guardiola at the Vermont History Center library in Barre with her book “Vermont for the Vermonters: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State.” Photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
When interviewing Mercedes de Guardiola about her book “Vermont for the Vermonters: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State,” I thanked her for having ruined my previous weekend. While the subject matter is daunting and compelling at once, what de Guardiola managed to do in 264 pages is upend much of what I thought I knew about Vermont. And I am a native, going back several generations.
Eugenics is the pseudo-scientific field of selective human breeding that rose to prominence at the turn of the 20th century in Great Britain, was enacted in various forms by the majority of American states, and became the foundation of Nazi Germany. Eugenics was meant to improve more “desirable” families and get rid of “undesirable” families, typically based on ability, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.
In practice, it took the form of so-called “positive eugenics” — such as better baby contests or education on best marriage practices and personal health — and “negative eugenics” — such as family separation, eugenical immigration laws, marriage restrictions, sterilization and segregation through institutionalization.
Eugenics is not only a dark piece of our state’s public policy, it recasts our state’s history, dating back to the Allen brothers and that push for industrializing our nation. Eugenics makes one think about the early influences of our state, and what factors motivated the movement. It makes one think about long bloodlines and the labels historically used to describe one another.
De Guardiola’s book, released last week by the Vermont Historical Society, is sobering. Scary, in fact. One comes away realizing that while the eugenics movement was happening globally, its effects were felt profoundly in Vermont, and still are.
With an eye toward accuracy and recognizing the perspectives of the many Vermont victims, de Guardiola explores the reasons behind what led to the eugenics movement here, and the importance of understanding them, rather than jumping to conclusions or assigning blame. Ultimately, she notes, the lessons to be learned from this moment in history is the flawed public policy but, just as importantly, those factors that led to that policy — echoes of which still resonate today.
What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Question: How did this book come about?
Answer: It actually came out of a class as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College; the subject was something that had been suggested by a teacher. We were looking at American history, and at the time I was very interested, as many students are, in Nazi Germany. She suggested that I might look at a field called eugenics. It was a term I’d never heard before. I had heard plenty about genetic engineering. I had heard plenty about the civil rights movement, but eugenics is a term that’s never taught in American high schools. There’s very little awareness.
If you speak to somebody outside of America, there’s a very large portion who will know what you’re talking about. So (the book) emerged out of this paper and my later thesis.
When I was looking at topics, that’s something you always look for: What has not been written about? What more can we say? Obviously, we do have Nancy Gallagher’s book (“Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State”), which is such a great look inside the Eugenics Survey of Vermont, but it did seem that there was more to be said about the larger history, particularly with new records that have emerged since then, and some lingering questions.
Q: There’s a tremendous amount of research here. How did you know where to begin on something like this? And wasn’t it intimidating that you could potentially be wrong?
A: I’ll start with the methodology. This is a subject that needs more research across America. Obviously, the first place to look in Vermont when you’re looking at state eugenics is the Eugenics Survey of Vermont. It’s the only set of records that is actually labeled “eugenics.” We don’t see the term eugenics used that often. Why would you? If you’re writing a paper about biology, you may not refer to the actual field of biology. You might just say it in common terms for the general public.
So I started with the Eugenics Survey, and one thing stood out to me: The public perception that Vermont eugenics was only centered around the Eugenics Survey didn’t make sense. … I looked back at what (the survey) was referring to as its chief motivators, and the organization kept referring to the depopulation crisis in the late 1800s.
So, going back further, I started reading through agricultural reports … I’m looking at what fears are emerging, because you have a very real social crisis. You do have the population crisis (with people leaving the state); you also have a public welfare crisis. But with these crises comes a social panic over whether the Vermonters who remain are as strong as those of previous generations and biases based on ability, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity and race. And from these issues we see the rise of eugenics at the turn of the 20th century.
To get to your second question: Was I afraid of getting anything wrong? Totally. This is a very personal history for a lot of people. It’s still within living memory of many, many families. And when you get something like this wrong in a book, or in any sort of published piece, or even in an interview, you’re doing tremendous harm to those families because you are going on the record and saying that something happened, and that’s the end of the story.
It was very important to me when I was looking through these records to be very upfront about what we did know and what we didn’t know. You look at records and they’re written down and you think, ‘Oh, we have the full picture.’ But why is it that once something is written down it becomes the absolute truth?
When we look through these records, we can see that there are lies, and that we can see that people are making up reasons for why they’re committing certain people to the institution. We see these (eugenicists) in (the survey) and other eugenic propaganda misrepresenting what they’re finding. So you really do have to take that into account, and you have to recognize that we’re also missing private organizations’ records and, most importantly, we’re missing the voice of the victims. That’s about 50% of the narrative. So how do you write a story without having that available?
Q: It does feel very much like a black mark on the state’s history because there were so many people complicit in this.
A: There were, and one of the things that was very important to me was not to single out specific people. We have focused in the past so singularly on individual figures, but this was in fact quite widespread across the state, widespread across America. This wasn’t just something that was unique to Vermont: This is something that really took grip of the majority of American states. You see Nazi Germany looking at the laws and policies passed in America and elsewhere overseas to make their own laws. That’s something they also bring up in their defense after the war.
So when you’re looking at this, it was very important to me that you understand why this happens, and why people came out in such support, as well as understand the enormity of the public welfare crisis that was gripping the state at the time. We can see, step by step, private and public leaders make the wrong decision at each point, and it becomes a cascading storm that all of a sudden just explodes. There were also a lot of people who were desperate for an answer.
Today, look at the mental health crisis, look at the homelessness crisis. We often fail to look at the history and why prior responses to the same issues did not work. Then once we do create solutions, are we looking at: Are these solutions actually humane? Are you actually following up to make sure that people are being treated in a dignified manner that respects their civil rights? When you don’t put in those protections in place, that’s when you’re starting to see abuse, that’s what you’re starting to see caregiver burnout. You’re looking at them, and you’re expecting them to make miracles out of the air, and we’re not actually giving caregivers and institutions the support that they need to put in humane practices.
Q: It feels like something terrible could happen again.
A: That’s why it’s critical to understand how these things come about. It’s not just one person standing up and suddenly saying we need to take this drastic action and get rid of people; it comes on very slowly. It comes on because we didn’t put in the measures to make sure solutions are working, that we are helping people, that we are healing them, that we’re putting in preventative measures.
Right now, we have a failing health care system. We have a lot of people who are struggling. How can we fix this continuing problem for the coming generations?
Q: How did this project change you as a person?
A: Researching the history of eugenics made me a lot more aware of how multidimensional people are. We need to take into account why things happen, why people are making the decisions that they do, and to really take a step back when you rush the judgment of somebody. I’m speaking about the victims here. Eugenicists really did take singular actions and make that a black mark on that person. It’s something that I think of a lot as I look at the crises we face today.
Q: Is there anything left out of this of this work?
A: Unfortunately, as I was doing the research, a lot of the records from private organizations that participated in some form that were not available for various reasons. You’re not going to find a box labeled “eugenics records.”
There were a number of foster care organizations, orphanages, that sort of organization that did participate in eugenics and did support various eugenic campaigns throughout the state. They may have records of participating in segregation — shipping people off to an institution so that they would typically be committed for the majority of their life and unable to procreate — or in sterilization.
I’m not sure we’re ever going to be able to find these records in their entirety. But I know that there are several private organizations that are looking to go through their records and compile them in a way that future researchers might be able to review them with all due respect to individuals’ privacy.
Q: Do you think, in time, there will be an opportunity to tell the family stories, the victims’ stories?
A: Yes, with the greatest dignity. One of the problems you see with this is the extremely derogatory language used and rush to judgment of specific individuals and individuals’ families. You need to be able to present that in a way as a historian fully making the public aware of how derogatory this language is, that this is not a judgment, and that it was an immense violation of privacy.
Q: How did it make you feel when the apology was made?
A: There have been several attempts in the early 2000s that didn’t proceed for various reasons. So when I heard from (Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury) that they had been working on this bill, I was called to testify before the committee as to what has happened (in the eugenics movement in Vermont). It is something we should applaud them for. Many other states have not apologized; Vermont is one of just a handful of states that has really taken measures to address the eugenics movement. That’s not something that’s easy.
People have stood up and said they do want to know what happened, and they do want to learn about this history and understand the impact. I believe Vermont has been quite brave and courageous in looking at this history.
Q: How does this book translate to a bigger audience?
A: Looking at Vermont’s history, it presents itself as a case study as to how eugenics emerged at the state level in America. You actually can see the various forces at play how state leaders were interacting with private citizens and officials at the local level to enact eugenics and to carry it out, as well as why they chose to support it. So, in that sense, I hope it’s a valuable contribution to growing research that’s being done on the history of eugenics in America.
There’s certainly much more to be done both at the state and national level, and it is something that we’re beginning to see of historians coming out and conducting very intensive research on. It’s going to take a lot of time and energy to actually look at over decades of what occurred, because this wasn’t just one moment at a time.
The book is a look at how, when you’re not putting in place measures to help people when they are in distress, all of a sudden these personal issues can have a much larger impact on society. When you’re looking at policy, too often we react at the moment of distress: How can we react and prevent that moment? How can we help that person not get to that moment of distress? And the answer is not to just get rid of them.
Q: What did we not talk about that that you want to talk about?
Cover image of “Vermont for the Vermonters”
A: Eugenic policies, and particularly sterilization. One of the things that a lot of people misunderstand about eugenics is the role that sterilization played. Sterilization is something that’s easy to understand. It’s highly controversial. But we still have a lot of records missing. We don’t actually know for a fact what the total number of sterilizations was.
There is this general misunderstanding that sterilization was the major form of eugenics in Vermont. I would argue that segregation for institutionalization was used more often. What happened in eugenics was that there was this idea that states could segregate portions of the population in mental hospitals and other institutions so certain people could not procreate.
We do see people get shipped from institution to institution so that they cannot go back out into the general population. We also see institutional officials referring to segregation as a major policy; we do know that they thought of it as one of their most important tools. So we know that it was carried out at a large scale. It’s very difficult to determine individual cases, but we do have officials pointing to segregation as a major form of eugenics.
Q: What has been the reaction to (the) book so far?
A: Good. I haven’t gotten much feedback yet. But over the course of my research, I did find that many people wanted to talk about this, that it was something that they felt should be addressed. As I said, the people impacted by this, they’re not random people: It’s people’s families, friends, loved ones going back generations.
“Vermont for the Vermonters” by Mercedes de Guardiola is available at independent bookstores around Vermont, or online at vermont-historical-society-museum.square.site
Steven Pappas is editor of The Times Argus newspaper.