 Welcome viewers to Focus here at Channel 17 here in Burlington, Vermont, the Center for Media and Democracy. I'm your host, Margaret Harrington, and the topic for this program is, The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Name Should Be Removed from the Vermont Book Awards. And on my far right is our guest, Judy Dow, who is an Abenaki educator, an artist, an activist, and a Franco-American. Welcome Judy. Thank you. And viewers, thank you for coming today. And on my second right is Kim Chase, who is a writer and activist and educator here in Vermont. Welcome, Kim. Thank you so much for coming. Franco-American bilingual. Franco-American bilingual. Yes. Thank you so much. And here to my immediate right is Kathy Owell, who is a retired social worker and an activist who has worked extensively right here in the city of Burlington. So to begin with, oh, thank you so much for being here and welcome. And viewers, let's hang onto our hats because we have a lot to learn from these women today. And the issue is the Library Book Awards, which have been called the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Awards for about 60 years. And what we are going to talk about is Dorothy Canfield's Fisher, Fisher's link to the Eugenics Survey here in Vermont, which is going up to its 100th anniversary in 2021. So Judy, could you start us off? We're going to present a PowerPoint, right? Yes. And could you put us right into the action now? What is happening with the award name? Well, on April 7th, 2018, after many years of seeing the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award posted in many libraries and on the media, I decided to educate people on the State Library Board as to the pain, the uncomfortableness that some people with Franco-American and Native American descent experience when they see that book award. So I put together this PowerPoint that we're going to see today and presented it to the Board with Kim and Kathy's help because she has written numerous books. So in order to do that, we had to read most of her books. And so Kathy and Kim helped me to read everything. And so we put together the PowerPoint and we presented and it was received in total shock. People were totally surprised with the information we had presented and I believe they found it overwhelming. So we left and there was a meeting presented on July 11th, 2018 at Library Board meeting once again and they had done some research and several people had to ask to be on the Board to present their research. And their research was solely on Dorothy Canfield Fisher and how she had these amazing and wonderful accomplishments in her life but had never, they had never directly connected her with eugenics and didn't even know about it. This one was in 2017, July 2017. Correct, yeah, correct, thank you. And so we went from that to the January 9th meeting in 2018 and the Library Board recommended to the State Librarian Scott Murphy that he not, that they, that he not continue with the Dorothy Canfield Fisher name, that they choose a different name. So it right now it stands that Scott Murphy, the State Librarian, still has to make a comment as to whether the name will change or not. Does he the sole decider then? He is. Okay. But he asked at the April 7th meeting that he have a recommendation from the Board and from the Dorothy Canfield Fisher committee. During that process of getting recommendation from various people, the Vermont State Library Association wrote a letter of recommendation asking the name also be changed. So it looks like you're going to get what you want, which is the removal of the name. Well, that would be nice. I'm a little hesitant to state that until it actually happens, right? Right. Well, most of us are in the dark about this history in Vermont, the eugenics movement and Dorothy Canfield's Fisher, Fisher's involvement in it. So could you begin your PowerPoint and show that to us, bring us some light on it? Sure. First, I'd like to point out these books. We read many of our books. We have just a few of our books here, the rest we got at libraries throughout the state. So they're still on library shelves. We also used various reference books. And so a lot of the PowerPoint comes from the reference books that we used. So the first one we used was Nancy Gallagher who published, I think in 1999, a book called Breeding Better Vermonters. And she defines eugenics. So we'll start with that on the first slide. Vermont eugenics survey investigations of Vermont families were inspired by the research models of the period. Their publications dramatized their efforts to install a eugenics consciousness among Vermonters. The surveys projects reflect the shifting beliefs of biologists, sociologists, and psychologists about hereditary and social causes of human problems during the interwar years while preserving an underlying commitment to manage Vermont's underclass through a comprehensive program of social planning, education, and reproductive control. And I started with this because my concerns were either people didn't know about the Vermont eugenics survey, they didn't understand it, or they just simply forgot about it. And that became clear to us on our first meeting on April 7th. So in our first meeting, when we started to present this information, they told us that they had gone to the previous board and the mentors that they had, the Dorothy Kempel Fisher Committee had, and they all said, yeah, we knew that, but they made no change. The next slide is just a slide to show you who the players are. So Henry Perkins was the director, Alan Anderson was the assistant field director, Harriet Abbott was a field worker. And there are numerous people that were on that first board that their names pop up all over the state in various places. So Guy Bailey from the Bailey Howell Library, Dr. Stanley, Lena Ross, Charles Wilson, Dr. Allen, Dr. Flint from Norwich, and Dr. Dalton, Professor Gifford and H.G. Ripley. And as I said, you'll find these names popping up throughout the state of Vermont. So in the next slide, I wanted to give you a few facts about the Vermont eugenics survey. So the Vermont eugenics survey was conducted under the auspices of the Department of Zoology at the University of Vermont. Henry Perkins was the director, and Alan Anderson was the assistant director. They planned for a good eugenics program, included routine mental and physical exams of school children with a registration of defects, among other things. So I think Kathy will talk about that later. But basically, there were two schools here in Burlington that they did mental exams on. Morrisville was one. Do you remember the third? I don't. I think it was Barnes, wasn't it? Yeah, in Burlington. But I think there was a third community. I don't remember what it was. But anyways, then the creation of a mental hygiene society whose object shall be the education of public opinion so that both public and private funds may be available for good eugenics and mental hygiene program. So the goal was for people to realize that heredity is not the only factor in insanity. Such a society should be in a position to give aid to local communities who wish to inaugurate a eugenics program and providing colonies for the feeble minded and sterilization law. And the reason I put that in there is because I wanted people to see where money was coming from. So money was coming from the private sector and also the public sector. Can I just say one point? So the children would, when they were enrolled in the schools, they would be tested and at that moment, if they were determined to be feeble minded, that would be their classification from then onward. So they were immediately labeled and that would determine whether or not they would take pains to sort of help the communities rid themselves of these so-called feeble minded children. And would one way be to put them in homes? What do you mean put them in homes? Take them away? We moved them from the family and put them in homes. No, actually it was a series, they did a series of testing. There was a doctor of Metcalfe at the university who went around to schools or had the children brought in who they did mental testing. And sometimes the children were taken away from the parents to one of the many institutions throughout the state. There was the Brattleboro, I mean Brandon Institute, the Brattleboro Retreat, the Week School, all these various places where they would send children. There was also the Brandon Waiting List. There was a huge waiting list for schools to get specific kids in. Sometimes they were placed in orphanages, places like St. Joseph's on North Avenue or Kernhattan in Putney. So sometimes they were placed in places like that. In order, they believed that breaking up the family history and continuity would help to create a more viable citizen. And they were approaching this from the scientific point of view. Correct. This was pure science in their eyes. And for the betterment of the society. Human development, right. So in the next slide, I took the eugenics catechism from the National American Eugenics Society in 26. And so basically they believed the most precious thing in the world was human germ plasm. That's what they called the DNA, people's DNA, they called it at that time germ plasm. Oh, okay. And how may one's germ plasm be immortal, only by perpetuation of the children? So they believed that if you're going to save this really good germ plasm, you're going to want your children to be good and possess all the best genes. And then they will have children and it will go through time. So their concern was identifying those as defective, delinquent, and dependent. And if you redeemed one of those 3Ds, defective, dependent, and delinquent, then you did not have good germ plasm, okay. So what is a person's eugenical duty to civilization? And of course that becomes to see that his own good qualities are passed on to the future generations provided they exceed his bad qualities. If he has on the whole an excess of disgenic qualities, they should be eliminated by letting the germ plasm die off with the individual. So then along comes the institutionalizing and the sterilizing to prevent these bad genes from being passed on. It has a great logic, doesn't it? Well, to some people, yeah. But it's not any different today, right? I mean, today we still have Casper9 and gene editing and the creating of lighter skin and lighter eyes. So it's within our view that it could possibly happen again. So when they were doing the sterilization, often without people's knowledge, so somebody could go to the hospital for appendicitis and they would come out sterilized and not even know that. So doctors, I guess, who participated felt they were doing society a favor, but people were really just becoming sterilized without their knowledge. So today we have women in prisons who are strongly encouraged and given incentives to be sterilized. So there's a lot of very broad overlap in those programs. And the other thing I think is, for me, was astounding is that these laws are still on the books today in Vermont. So they haven't taken the eugenics laws off the books. They've changed them. The wording has changed, but they're still on the books. This is astounding. This is what you're describing is like a big brother on steroids back in the beginning of the 20th century and that still is going on today or aspects of this program still going on. Well, these were the progressive people of the time and they believed this was pure science. And so not to say it's the same thinking with progressive people today, but it certainly was back then. Those progressive people believed that this was pure science and science was going to help them save their world. And that it was good, right? The good that old men aim at. Right. Except it was subjective. It was good in the eyes of those that were in the progressive movement to move this type of thinking forward. Right. So the Vermont State in 1918 said that the greatest threat to society is a feeble-minded woman of childbearing age. That's in this book right here. I don't think you can reach that, Judy, but so that's on the books and at the time, I don't know if that's still on the books, but they really haven't changed. I think it's the tan one there. So this is the state of Vermont Board of Control. And so there's a lot of control involved. But really it says, I don't want to look for it, but basically that a feeble-minded woman and feeble-minded is decided by someone as Judy said very subjectively, but it could have been with these tests in school. This also talks about testing children as soon as they enroll in schools. And so yes, a woman of childbearing age who's deemed feeble-minded is the greatest threat to society. It's just, that's the statement, no, no qualifications. And it's astounding what little power the family had over their own children once they would send them to school, right? Nancy Gallagher and I first started researching the stories we had been hearing for years. People would tell us stories like, yeah, well, we went to visit my cousins last weekend and the whole family was gone. And we're like, what? We didn't get it because it didn't match up with the actual documentation the scientists had written. And then what we discovered was there was this social component, well, this particular couple was cohabitating, which was, cohabitation was illegal to live together and not be married, had been determined they were illegally cohabitating. And so they were sent to institutions, consequently their children were sent to institutions. And so then someone going to visit the family would discover the family totally gone and not understand why. So the next slide is Vermont's way of thinking and I put a couple of quotes in here just to show how the leaders, the progressive party was thinking. So Professor Flint who was on the board and a professor at Norwich, I found this statement from him. In other words, sterilization or segregation of the people minded may gradually eliminate their kind. So that was the direction they were going in. And rural Vermont, a program for the future, which later became the Vermont Commission on Country Life, in 31 the Vermont Commission on Country Life presented its initial finding in a book entitled, Rural Vermont, A Program for the Future. Eugenics discourse permeated the report. The committee researching the people advocated that it was the patriotic duty of every normal Vermont couple to have children in sufficient numbers as well as to keep genealogical records that would assist members of their ancestral stock when choosing appropriate mates. Now this committee is all the board of directors that I first mentioned when I had the players. They wrote the chapter on the people in the book Kathy has there, Rural Vermont, which was the plan for moving forward for Vermont. And as you can see, they were concerned in keeping ancestral stock in place for certain, for normal Vermont couples. And who would be a normal Vermont couple? Van Gogh, Saxon Protestant. Yankees, basically, so. They called them old Yankees. And when you read this, it's pretty amazing. It sounds like they're talking about animal stock and breeding. That's essentially what... Yeah, they used that information on humans, basically, too. If we can make a better cow, I can't make a better person. Right. They actually said that. And they created pedigree charts, and they used the terminology that they would use on breeding better horses or cattle or sheep. So what... And what was their legal power then? Were they state employees? No. They were... Well, they were employees from institutions all over the state. But Henry Perkins, the director, was a professor at UVM of zoology. So the state was supporting it as were individual private people. So that's where you're talking about the money, where the money was coming from. Right. Right. What did they say? Follow the money? No. Yeah. So on the next slide, so there was lots of problems with this kind of thinking about the fact that sterilizing or institutionalizing was the end all to be all to have a good gene move forward. So the determination of who was defective, delinquent, and dependent was subjective and most often based on someone's personal opinion. So if you and I were having a disagreement and we were in the same family and Herod Abbott came to visit you today and you were really upset with me, she might say all kinds of things that weren't true. And so that's where the personal opinion and the subjective material comes into play in determining who was defective, delinquent, and dependent. And this Herod Abbott is the social worker, right? Yes. She worked for the Vermont Children's Aid Society and then moved from there to the Vermont Eugenics Survey. But it could also have been something like I have a hearing disability and hearing impairment. So I would automatically be defective. And so I just buy that fact. So things that we now, we have accommodations we can make for children or people. We have medical procedures. We try to make life accessible to those who are blind, who have hearing impairments and so forth, who have another disability. And at that time it was just eliminate them because they could pass this on to the next generation. Right. And what about the test? Was it like an IQ test? And what about the language, right? I mean, because people would be like you are Franco-American and bilingual speakers. And what about the children who would speak only their native language at home and be thrust into the school where they'd have to take this test? French Canadians are categorically, they wanted to eliminate French Indians, French Canadian people, not just because of the language, because of their religion, because they had families in large numbers, which is their own cultural reasons for that. So they were almost by definition targeted. Right. Well, that and French were Catholics. And so the primary group that actively went against this was the Catholic Church. And the supporters of this were the Protestants, Protestants and Protestants. So again, you have religion in there as well as cultural groups, ethnicity. But wasn't it also true that it was voted on at some point by the people of Vermont, I think? The legislation. So in 1925, it did, the sterilization was not passed, but in 31 it was passed. The sterilization law. Right. Which was what? What was the sterilization law? Basically it said that, you know, if two doctors recommend this person is defective, dependent, and delinquent, and it's problematic for this person to reproduce, we can sterilize them. And all power is taken out of the individual's hands and the family's hands. Right. Which today is what happens, right, with people deemed mentally ill, mentally retarded, can't, people, if two people don't want them to reproduce, they can sign and that person's rights can be taken away. And what two people in the laws today, would they have to be family members, or would they be... I think, I'm not really sure, I don't recall, but I think it was doctors as well. This is frightening that, as you say, Kathy, it's still on the books. This law is still on the books. There's no push to get rid of it. Because it's not taught, so people don't know about it. Right. And so it was covered up and it's still, you know, if you bring it up to people who do know, they say, okay, well, you know, mistakes were made in the past. Yes, it's a dark, you know, part of our history, but we've moved on now. And so, in fact, we haven't. And some of the effects are as simple as, in my family, so my mother was born from Winooski at home. And among her siblings and her cousins, of which there were many, there was a tremendous fear of doctors among some people. So they just wouldn't get medical help. And so I never understood that until, you know, I really became aware of the eugenics movement and then it kind of made more sense. So they just would avoid going to see doctors. And Kim, your background is from Quebec, right? Well, yeah. And well, third or second generation, depending on what side of my mother's family, Franco-American. So my mother didn't speak English until she was nine, but she went to parochial school. So she, you know, St. Francis School, the convent at the time, school was in French and in English. So they kind of were able to avoid the, you know, public school labeling by going to parochial school, even though they're very poor and had to pay. That's what most French families did. So to continue with the slides, so informants. So not only was the information based on personal opinion, but if informants were selected to give the desired responses. And in many cases, like in the case of my family, no medical exams existed to determine the defect. So in my family, over many, many generations, 623 people were researched. And their supposed defect was Huntington's Korea, which is a disease that is hereditary. And people have problems in their 30s, 40s, 50s. And they're usually deceased by the time they're in their 70s and 80s and 90s. But all of the examples of people they said had it were already in their 70s, 80s and 90s. And there was no medical exams given to prove that they had it. And nobody in the family has it today. And it's a hereditary disease. So it was very subjective. And in your 70s, you have a natural decline of walking gate and memory, perhaps. Which are similar symptoms, which is what the conclusion, because they were saying that he has trouble getting up and down out of his chair, he has trouble with this, so then recalling this and that. So the normal progression was to say, yeah, that's what they had, Huntington's Korea. And what was the consequence? Institutionalization, many times. Yeah. So then the next one is many times that cultural misunderstandings occurred due to language barriers, as Kim talked about. They were expected to make out, do certain IQ test or different kinds of tests and they couldn't because they didn't speak English well. And they didn't have to. There was whole communities of French speaking people in which they had everything they needed from the cobbler to the banker. So there was really no need to speak. I've interviewed people who used to say, they would say things like, I would ask them, did you ever feel intimidated by the old Yankees? And they're like, hell no, there was too damn few of them. But then if you look at Ellen Anderson's book in We Americans, the majority of people were French or French Indian descent in this state. And as my father would say, you used to be able to walk down Church Street and only hear French spoken. And again, Ellen Anderson addresses that in her book about different stores and shops and stuff where people only spoke French. I interviewed people in the 80s and there were many people who didn't have to speak English because they could get all their services, all their needs and goods and services by speaking in French. And so many people were bilingual in terms of French Canadians. But you just didn't really have to speak English because, as Judy said, the communities met all of their own needs. We had our own schools. We had our own hospital, really, Fannie Allen. The nuns spoke French. We had even St. Mike's was really considered the French college of the time. So they were sort of impervious, I would say, to this, which was even more frustrating and I think probably frightening to Yankees. So in my mom's family, there was an expression. If you only had two kids, it was called à la médicaine. So in the in the fashion of Americans, because it was like weird to just have two kids because the French families had so many children. So it was a threat, I think. My husband had patients in the 90s when we moved here that he had to speak French to they spoke no English. So it's, you know, but those were older patients. But it really was people didn't speak English a lot. And in your narrative, you're saying that according to the eugenics people, speaking only French was considered a defect, almost a genetic defect. Yeah, in some cases it was. Yeah. Yeah. Would you talk more about the social worker, Ms. Anderson, who she was on the committee, on the eugenics committee? She was assistant director, yes. And so she was going for a PhD and she wrote. We Americans, the, let's see. We Americans, the study of cleavage in an American city. And basically she's talking about the distinct difference of all these other cultural groups, German and Italian and Lebanese and Jewish and all these different ethnic groups and how quickly they progress and how they get along with society. But the French have a little bit different way of doing that. So the cleavage and the Irish was one of those groups too. And so she basically compares the French with all these other groups and the problems that Burlington experienced. And when you drive down Archibald Street, you can see that in their cemetery. So all of those Irish are on one side and the French are on the other side. And occasionally on the French side you'll see an Irish name or on the Irish name you'll see a French name. And basically it's who lived longer in a mixed marriage to decide which side they were going to be buried on. So there's some really funny situations to track down that story. And it's been recorded in this book in many other places that we've read that they tried not to encourage these mixed marriages with the French. Because it could be problematic is the way they feel. And it's a power story too, of course. Right. The people on the eugenics survey have the power. Right. And it's an astounding power now that we see your study here. Right. And it's directly connected with what was happening in Quebec. So in Quebec their population was decreasing. And so in 1890 they passed the law of 12 children and encouraged these families to have many children, at least 12. Because 12 would give you the opportunity to have 100 acres of land. It was an old law that was put into place during the time of Louis Catois when the French had come over. Because they were trying to basically populate the province of Quebec and as much of Canada. That was like, I knew that France was new France at the time. So when the law was brought back up again in the 1890s, so many people had left Quebec or I guess French Canada to work in the mills because after the conquest the English got all the good land. So the French were encouraged by the priests and by the elite of Quebec government and society to have as many children as possible on very poor land. So my family, when my great-grandfather would say, when we go back to Canada and my great-grandmother would say, in Canada your children were starving. So working in the mills was better than trying to farm on poor land. So especially when you're being told constantly to have all these children. So after they stopped giving out land, they started giving them money to have 12 living children. They had to be surviving children, so baptized. And so that was directly competing with the eugenics movement. And so they kind of got us coming and going. And so it was a cop between a rock and a hard place. So in 1894 they changed the law. Instead of giving 100 acres, they said, we'll give you $100. And that $100 back then was like equivalent to $10,000. So they had their own little tribe of people. They had 12 people or more. In some cases, we've read about 36 children. And so they moved them here to work in the mills. So in 95, 96, 97, in Berlin, Kywanussky, and Kolchester was an explosion of mills to use these people for cheap labor. And so consequently, these people went off to also have large families, which brings us into that 20s and 30s range, 1920s and 1930s, where they were becoming overwhelmed by the population of Franco's living here. So they thought it was a threat. Yes, definitely. They were very fearful of the numbers. And the propaganda was in asking, remember, save your gene plasm and keep track of your genealogy, have larger families. And it was fear. It was fear that was running everything. So I'd like to move on a little bit here to show you, in the next slide, some of the. So the Vermont Eugenics Survey was just that. It was a survey. And there were many, many surveys. I've listed some of them here, the Migra Study, the Key Family, the Fitter Families, the Ethnic Study, the Mental Survey of School Children, which was done here in Burlington. Maybe we could see that slide. Do you want to have Alex show the slide, just so people can see the list? Yeah, we'll get to it, because I don't want to get off track. The Pedigree Studies, the Brand and Wedding List, the Rutland Reform Study, but also the Rural Survey Study, the Vermont Commission on Country Life. And this one is the important one, because this one had 11 different committees, of which two, Dorothy Kipfield Fisher belonged to. She was on the Education Committee, a subcommittee called Adult Education. And she was on the Vermont Study for Traditions and Ideals. And so one of the things we always hear is there's no direct connection with her and Eugenics. But there really is. Not only in the Speak, the Eugenical Speak in her books, but directly serving on that committee. And in the third annual meeting, the next slide, the third annual meeting of the Advisory Committee of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont in October 18, 1928, that they launched a comprehensive Rural Survey. But they deferred the further study of the better branches in order to take an active part of the comprehensive survey. And the funded was granted, and budgets were created by the Vermont Eugenics Survey to support the Rural Study. So this study, that Dorothy Kipfield Fisher was a part of, the Vermont Eugenics Survey suspended everything out, so the entire staff and all of their money could focus on that study. And so how does she fit into this? So she fit into this because she was a member of the committees, both of them, the education and the Vermont traditions. She was voted to be the chair of the Traditions and Ideals Committee, but she refused because of her health. And she wrote propaganda literature. So as this was started in 1928, the book wasn't published till 31. But as it was started, these different committees were communicating back and forth. And they were starting to request propaganda to promote their work be created. So Dorothy Kipfield Fisher was asked to write a play, which she did called Tourist Accommodated. And she was also asked to write for the Tourist Committee brochures, public brochures, to attract certain types of tourists to the state. She wanted those who were professionally trained to use their brains for a living to apply to purchase a second home. And she asked that manufacturing and people who bargained for a living not buy a second home here because they would not find common ground among the people who lived here. She wanted doctors and lawyers, teachers, professors, and she had a very select group. And she actually refers to them by their professions and actually says, as Judy said, others need not apply. So just stay away, basically. So the others are not spoken. But they could be Jews or any other people. We're not Christian Protestants. Right. But also those in manufacturing, as we just told you, were the French Canadians who were working at the mills, right? Yes, yes. And so anyways, let's get to more of focus on her. So she wrote this propaganda literature, and here's one example. And she assisted in gathering the materials to create the Green Mountains series, which were four books of which I have three I haven't been able to find my copy of the fourth one. But so the tradition and ideal wanted them to collect the written words, the written poetry, the short stories, the ballards, the songs, all of these things that denoted the history of Vermont. And it was important to collect this stuff and save it. But what they collected was everything of British Isles. In all four books, there is nothing of Ennichi and nothing Franco-American. There is a song of the death of the Elnabok, death of the Indian, and that was written for one of the very first plays the state had, this country had, but it was written that they're dead and gone. And there was one of Roland Robinson's stories where he writes about, in broken English, his version of the French and French Indian people in the state through Uncle Elijah's cabin and all that series. And so there were inter- What writer is that, Judy? Roland Robinson. So there's interpretations by other people. So the caricature is basically when he's not part of the culture he's writing one or two stories about French Indians, only one, right? And it's a caricature of them. So he's writing and how he interprets their dialect to sound to him. So the same thing was done with African Americans. There's a lot of literature that Uncle Remus kind of thing, that only for French Indians. So that was the example in these books they gave for our people. But then at the same time, we know there were a lot of Franco's. But Daniel Trombele, for example, had written numerous books of story and poetry between 1915 and 1942. But none of his stuff shows up in this. And of course there were many, many songs and many other things. The poem that we recited earlier was from that body of literature. Work, right. Do you wanna recite a little bit of that? So when she glowed on Luxembourg and by, she glowed some more. You'll never get drowned and make Champlain if you never go off the shore. So anyways, then she wrote introductions and contributions to the WPA Writers Project, which is this one, in which she has a very narrow perspective. It was written to put the people to work, who were writers and poets during the time of the Depression. And it was a guidebook. It was written as a guidebook to travel throughout Vermont and learn about the history of Vermont. But the perspective, again, is from white England. And it's a very narrow process. This is an example of one of them, isn't this? Yeah, so at least a dozen persons have gone over the falls and lived, the first of whom, there was any record, was an Aminiki Squaw, whose adventure was celebrated in print as early as 1781, which I tried to find weeks and weeks of research all in that bellows falls area tried to find the story and was not able to. Carelessly allowing her canoe to be drawn to the point where she could not paddle against the current. The Squaw drank a bottle of rum that she was taking to her grave and laid down in her canoe and weighed her fate. She was fished out below the falls, quite safe and quite drunk. And so that, I mean, those are the kinds of stories she draws people into as they tour Vermont. And then she wrote magazine articles to promote the Vermont Eugenics Survey, including Ross's Girls, a promotional story of the Rutland Reformatory Study, which was one of the studies we showed earlier. And in it, she gives this glowing report about how reforming these French girls, these Franco-Americans and others is such a great thing and look at the accomplishments they can make. But has no clear story of what their lives were before. So she's just making the assumption their lives are better now. She, let's see, and her public writing tells one story and her personal writing tells another story. And I'll show you what I mean on the next slide. So the next couple slides. So in reply to her correspondence observation, the most immigrants were poor and ignorant. Fisher asserted that while it was easier to befriend educational foreigners, white native-born Americans should also make a special effort not to look down on the waps and day goes, day goes, in response to a request from Burgess. Whose language was that? Dorothy Campo-Fisher. That was her language? Yes. Using those derisive terms for us. And the problem is people say those were the words of the time to us, but they weren't the words of the time for everybody. They clearly were the words of the time for that progressive movement, but not for a lot of the people we knew. Do you want to show that slide or not? We'll get, we're gonna, I want to get through this through here. In response to a request from Burgess Johnson about Miss Lucille Miller of Bethel and a vowed communist, Dorothy Campo-Fisher said, not an interesting or agreeable subject to write about, a person crippled in body and apparently also in mind and personality. So her personal letters, the whole point of this is to show you that she's writing one thing personally, but in her books, she's like more sly about how she tells that story. In correspondence with Burgess Johnson concerning the financial situation of Marlboro College, Dorothy Campo-Fisher states, people of considerable means are often so smarting under the idea that they are obliged by law to help support the government. It was formerly not too hard to enlist the sympathy and financial help of liberal-minded rich people. That source of financial support has pretty well dried up. So she, this college was started, was funded by people who were going that were on the GI Bill and she was encouraging people not to donate to help them and consequently fail. And so I want to get to some of the other eugenics type speak that she uses. So in the next slide, only particular people were worthy of purchasing a vacation home in Vermont. Dorothy Campo-Fisher reached out with a special invitation in the Vermont propaganda brochure according to the Vermont tourist brochure in Newcomber needed to establish tap routes in stable communities, but only if they already possessed character cultivation and good breeding. Dorothy Campo-Fisher identified professors, doctors and lawyers and others who earned their living by professionally trained use of their brains. Those excluded from her special invitation were those who dealt with manufacturing, buying, selling material objects or handling money, as well as people accustomed to bargaining. Dorothy Campo-Fisher reiterated these words and urged state officials to develop a traveling exhibit with the right kind of person in charge, designed to convince discriminating people who resemble their best Vermonters. Educational achievements, not financial status, was the distinguishing quality that Dorothy Campo-Fisher wanted to attract to the state. In a speech before the State Chamber of Commerce, Fisher suggested that it use college mailing lists to disseminate literature about Vermont summer homes and that it tour an exhibit to Vermont campuses to track the best prospects for a special invitation, which is what we talked about earlier, sheet in this Vermont publication, which was put out by Vermont Bureau of Publicity, the Office of Secretary of State. Those words all came from here. It was a great cultivation of an elite. Exactly, and which is predominant in most of her books. Elitism and racism, it just permeates her books. And you're not talking about one particular phase, like that is one of the arguments that you all have received that, well, Dorothy Campo-Fisher did, was interested, just interested in the eugenics movement and that was only for a short period of time in her life. Yes, she went right up through. She did, at a certain point, she became aware, I think that she had been, what we would say, as tone deaf and she had, you know, she tried to kind of change her tone when she was, in certain instances, to present to the public, so depending on what her audience was, but in her personal correspondence, she takes off the gloves and she really, you know, gets right down to using the same kind of language she had and that was consistent throughout her life. So she really did not change at all and it's, you know, if you read her work as sort of the butt of the joke, you know, if you were to read and say, oh, I'm the person that she is discouraging from coming to the state or she would have liked to get rid of, then you see a totally different work than if you're just, you know, looking at it superficially. Right, so for example, what Kim's talking about in 1953, she published a book called Vermont Traditions and in there she tries to correct a lot of her wrongs but she still says things like we need to do something about the French Canadians in this town or they're going to vote us out of our town. And so I know we're like running short of time so I just want to tell you too that there's a bunch of historians that have written about her and there's one in particular, so Kevin Dan in Degeneration to Regeneration, he writes about her and Nancy Gallagher writes about her in Breeding Better Vermonters and Writers of Conviction. She also writes about her but then when you get to the book, the books that are being republished, Mark Madigan is editing them, he's putting in timelines and he's putting in editorial comments. He denies that these people who have written about her and makes the connection with eugenics. He says it's not true. Kevin Dan is mistaken when he associates Fisher with a eugenicist through her participation in the Vermont Commission on Country Life. Kevin Dan was not incorrect. As I showed earlier, the Vermont Commission on Country Life was funded and totally supported by the entire staff and the entire board wrote the chapter on the people in that book. There's direct connection and her words come through all the way into her books in the 40s and 50s. She's still using the same words. This is after eugenics has been discredited as a pseudo-science. The rest of the world is catching on and she's still right there. Right. So we have received comments in the form of letters, many letters during this whole process and I'd like to use our last words to talk about these comments and anything else Kathy might wanna add. But so Helene Langt has told us several times she's a Vermonter for the world and the way our way of thinking is we don't want a eugenicist representing Vermont. And Phil Baruth, he's sent several letters as well. I do work with Dorothy Canfield Fisher in my class. I don't think I am the one to help you in this quest. Fisher was prolific and a best-selling woman of the period and she was routinely denigrated by male reviewers who wanted to point out that her work shouldn't sell so many copies and I wouldn't myself want to join the ranks and wipe her out and wipe her work and name out in the historical record. Sorry, I can't be of any help. And basically what he's saying to me when he wrote to me is yeah, I don't wanna be in the same place as her but he's forgetting that those people that were complaining were people who didn't believe in that progressive movement of eugenics. And then again, we were told things like, yeah, Dorothy Canfield didn't know Henry Perkins or she was just naive, she didn't really know what he was doing. And then Dorothy Canfield Fisher was an important historical figure who was ahead of her time. Well, maybe because we're still talking eugenics today. So she could have that. Dorothy Canfield Fisher was, let's see. And so then we start seeing colonial tactics of divide and conquer and personal attacks. And so Judy Dow is not a binicky. Judy Dow is just a basket maker. She doesn't have the skills to do research. She's just a basket maker. She belongs in a category of activists with little to no indigenous heritage. This is an extremely naive way to read fiction at best. At worst, it is dishonest. It's a breach of professional standards. I don't see her work, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, as irreparably tainted by what connects. Connections exist to those other social currents but I've yet to read Bomb Fire which is the main book we've been talking about as having, where she took the characters in that book directly from the Vermont eugenics records and carried them through into several other books as we moved on. That's totally shocking. It is. The way she was living in Arlington, right? Yes. And this was the survey that was conducted right around there. Correct. The town next door is Sandgate. And in the Sandgate report, there are several pages of town rumors then. And even the town, the landscape of the town became identical in the book Bomb Fire. The town rumor stories, the old settler stories all got implemented into Bomb Fire and carried through into Season Timber and Refune. And these are the characters again. So for example, there's one character, Lixley, who's probably a French Indian woman who is supposed to be, she's kind of slovenly and she is promiscuous and sort of like, just portrayed in such a way that it's a caricature. And those are taken directly, these, I call them caricatures even in Dorothy Canfield Fisher's works because they're not fully developed characters. They're just kind of a representative. But she takes the exact language out of the Sandgate report and doesn't even bother to really to disguise them at all. So it's very transparent. And so the unfortunate thing about that is people can recognize their families in her books from that town and from those reports. And so in, but the problem is a lot of these people who've been critical have been reading for years and years her work, not the eugenics records work. And so they don't recognize in her work the eugenics speak that's there. They don't recognize those connections. And Kathy, you haven't said anything about education. The other committee that she worked on was education, the educational committee. Do you want to say anything about that? I just, I mean, I found that there were direct quotes in here of what they were asking the schools to do. And that I found very disturbing because as you have said before, they were asking them to collect the names of these children that were defected, deficient then, you know. So I just, I mean, the other thing I found interesting in the education part of this is that many of the same problems. So these were people that were very progressive and in their political thought and how eugenics comes in there without them actually criticizing it at all. The other thing that I think that we haven't touched on at all is that at this time was where the fascist movement in Germany was beginning. And there were scientists of Hitler's that were having correspondence with American eugenicists about how they got the population to go along with this. And not that the eugenics movement here was fat, it was, you know, a Nazi movement. I don't want to say that nor vice versa. I just want, I think it's very important that we understand the connection there and that those laws are still on the books and that we as a people of Vermont need to stay alert and very critical of what's going on so that those things never happen. I think that, you know, when you look at, when we're in the Holocaust month where so many people talk about the Holocaust, I think this is our Holocaust and we need, it's not the same thing, but we need to be very vigilant about what's going on. Kathy, have you been in Germany for how many years? For 13 years. She's also been a school board member in Burlington for I forget how many years. Oh, well, I was for four years back in the 90s, but I just, I'm on the board again, so I'm presently. So one of the things we had as in a discussion on the way here today was we're not even sure if Common Core addresses teaching in our schools about eugenics. However, in 1972, when I went to Burlington High School and the required history reading was Alan Anderson's book on We America. And so I had to read this in 1972, but we go to school after school and they don't even know what it is today. So we've all found that very discerning. Even some librarians didn't know about the eugenics movement. They just haven't, they were shocked, you know? Right. And it's just, the question is for, why do Vermonters continue to accept Dorothy Canfield-Fisher as a role model for children despite her history of belief in eugenics? Now that's, you've been answering that question throughout this because you bring up the comments from renowned professors and elite, sorry, this elite privilege world that is speaking against you. Right. And you're reaching today, I believe, also the ordinary viewer like myself and the person who wants to learn about this and doesn't know about it at all. And all of this is so shocking. And the question, I still have that question, to the elite, to the privileged people today, even to the school board who's, not the school board, but the Vermont Board of Libraries who discuss this, why are you sweeping this under the rug? This is hidden history. And you women have come forth with this today. And I'm very grateful. And it's not wrong to tell, you know, people say it's revisionist, but it's not. Just because it took a hundred years for Finco's or French Indian people to tell this cited story doesn't mean it's not true. You know, you have your opinion, I have my opinion. And it's what we don't own is the facts. And if I present the facts, then that should not be deemed as not being history. Facts are facts. And so basically on this slide, one of my final slides is the essence of racism is denial and inaction. And so it's all these comments like I don't see color, I don't see, you know, I'm not racist. It's that denial of not even acknowledging it that, and then that means you can't do anything. You can't, there's no action done because people are still denying it. And then if you go back to the previous slide I had, to quiet the voices of those that are oppressed results in historical trauma. This trauma is passed on from generation to generation with no chance of healing for the children and grandchildren of the future. So if we don't acknowledge it, if we continue to deny there is no healing and people are still in this box of pain. And so it's time for discussion, it's time for truth telling. And so we have, like you said, been strong enough to stand up and tell the truth and present the facts. And because of that, we get the colonial tactics of divide and conquer. And personal attacks. But here you are, you're speaking today, all of you. And this is the beginning for Channel 17 too. And we invite you back to continue this discussion, this important discussion, and our search for the enlightenment that will lift us to another level, where we're down to a low level now. Well, I think education is critical and we're all educators. So we've got to do our best to keep educating. And I'm not gonna say it's going to repeat itself if we don't, because it's already repeating itself. And so people have just got to see it. They've got to educate themselves enough to see it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Kathy, Kim, and Judy. Thank you. And viewers, we've learned a lot, and we can go forward with this enlightenment. Thank you for watching. Goodbye for now.