Mercedes de Guardiola at the Stowe Free Library

Join "Vermont for the Vermonters": The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State author Mercedes de Guardiola at the Stowe Free Library in Stowe on Saturday, December 7th to learn about the history of Vermont's eugenics movement. 

Eugenics is a pseudo- scientific field of selective human breeding that rose to prominence in the early 1900s and was the foundation of Nazi Germany. Vermont was one of many American states to adopt eugenics as the basis for public policies such as family separation, institutionalization, and sterilization that targeted the most vulnerable Vermonters and led to widespread intergenerational damage. In 2021, the state formally apologized for the practice, and the legislature is exploring ongoing responses.

In “Vermont for the Vermonters”: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State, Mercedes de Guardiola examines how the state’s eugenics movement emerged out of the public policies of the nineteenth century and led to state-sanctioned programs of institutionalization, sterilization, family separation, and education aimed at the most vulnerable Vermonters. Exploring the social and political legacy of the movement, de Guardiola brings new scholarship and context to one of Vermont’s darkest chapters.