Read a commentary by H. Lawrence McCrorey, Dean of Allied Health written in 1970 addressing the issue of Kake Walk.

Read about how an ALANA student from 1998 feels about Kake Walk.

1777

Vermont outlaws slavery in its constitution.

During the early 1800´s, Vermont played a vital role in the Underground Railroad by helping escaped slaves make their way to freedom. Escaped slaves traveled through Vermont to Canada via two "trunks" of the Underground Railroad. Montpelier was the most active station on the loosely organized, secret network of people, but Burlington had the largest number of identified conductors on the railroad.

Vermont Governor Stanley Wilson signed into law "An Act for Human Betterment by Voluntary Sterilization" seeking to control the population of the "feeble- minded." "Henceforth it shall be the policy of the state to prevent procreation of idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded or insane persons," the law read, in part.

Passage of the Vermont bill was dependent upon the support of, among others, U.S. District Court Judge Harland B. Howe, and Henry Perkins, a professor of zoology at the University of Vermont. Perkins was the first director of the Fleming Museum (1931-1945), and the founder in 1925 of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont.

The thrust of eugenics, named by Charles Darwin´s cousin Francis Galton, was to "improve" and manipulate the human gene pool by weeding out those deemed undesirable. "Eugenics is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally," Galton wrote.

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