The Vermont constitution outlawed adult slavery, ages, for men 21 and up, women 18 and up, but that leaves a gigantic loophole for children that were under that, right? And there were a lot of black children who could be enslaved, who could be sold outside of the state, and of course there were no enforcement mechanisms.

There are a lot of things they could do here in Vermont that they couldn't do in other parts of even New England or the rest,  certainly, the rest of the United States. But, at the same time, slavery persisted.

At the same time a black person could be kidnapped. I have a document of a young boy, his name was Anthony, he was sold out of the state of Vermont, I think in 1790, he was 8 years old. So there is sadness.

Another example is Dinah, a female slave that was owned by Stephen Jacob, one of the most powerful men in Vermont. He was on the Vermont supreme court, our highest court. He owned a slave openly in Windsor, everybody knew it!

What I'm trying to say is that Vermont's anti-slavery reputation is extremely deserved. I think it's accurate, I'm a believer in that. But, I think there's this other side of things that's going on. We do know that there were difficulties that black people faced. I'd still say though, at the end of the day, the documents that I've seen, it's not perfect in Vermont, it's always going to be, it's never going to be perfect in our society today even. But I still think in Vermont there were more opportunities than there were in a lot of other places.