“In Vermont????” This is the response I hear when I mention recently reading Yvonne Daley’s Going Up Country (2011 New England University Press). The book details the movement of many fringe groups to Vermont in the 1960s and 70s. She also mentions the state once embraced eugenics.
Vermont had a eugenics program in the mid 20th century. According to the law, to legally sterilize “idiots, imbeciles, feeble‐minded or insane persons likely to procreate.” Yes, I said Vermont!
The Green Mountain State famous for skiing, maple syrup, cheese and some of the most cutting-edge politics in the nation was one of the last of 29 states to initiate its eugenics program in 1931. The movement to produce it, however, extended back over twenty years.
The popular eugenics movement
Eugenics was a powerful and popular movement in the United States and Europe in early part of the twentieth century. Many political and cultural leaders supported the sterilization or even the extermination of those they considered unfit. Their greatest concern was something called dysgenics in which they feared negative biological traits could be passed down through generations and have an overall negative impact on a population.
George Bernard Shaw promoted not only sterilization but also the blatant extermination of those he considered a drain on society. He even believed that all men and women would have to come before a board and justify their existence and if they could not, they would have to be executed.
The Twilight Zone presented a great episode criticizing this idea in The Obsolete Man with Burgess Meredith. A librarian must suffer execution by the state because a committee determined he was no longer a productive citizen. As with all Twilight Zone stories, it comes with a great twist in the climax.
Vermont embraced eugenics as far back as the 1910’s. The legislature passed a bill in 1912 to begin a program of sterilization for those considered unfit. The governor vetoed it believing it would not survive a constitutional challenge.
Vermont Eugenics Survey
In 1925, the state began the Vermont Eugenics Survey to document those less than desirable for the future of the state. Headed…