The board voted 7-0 Tuesday on the recommendation after board president Bruce Post cited concerns including Fisher’s association with the eugenics movement, which pushed for “better breeding.”
“I felt honor bound to bring up this subject of eugenics,” Post told Seven Days Thursday.
Murphy has not taken action in response to the vote. He did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday.
The board has been discussing the matter since April.
Fisher’s defenders say the famed author, who died in 1958, stood up for prison reform, adult education and war relief. They say she is being judged unfairly over a minor association with the now-vilified eugenics movement.
Meanwhile, critics contend that she stereotyped Native Americans and French Canadians in her work and quietly endorsed the “better breeding” goals of eugenics.
Fisher was a member of the Vermont Commission on Country Life, an outgrowth of the Vermont Eugenics Survey directed by University of Vermont professor Henry Perkins in the 1920s and early 1930s.
The survey championed Vermont’s original Anglo-Protestant “seedbed” and targeted French Canadians, Native Americans and “gypsy” families in pedigree studies that were designed to identify “degenerate” and “feeble-minded” Vermont residents.
The Library Board passed a resolution Tuesday that urged the state librarian to rename the award in a way that recognizes and encourages authors of children’s literature, especially those with a Vermont connection.
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While eugenics played a prominent role in this overall discussion, the Board also received recommendations to rename the award to reflect a more contemporary association and to avoid confusion between Mrs. Fisher’s initials — DCF — with today’s Department of Children and Families, also DCF. Board members also stated their appreciation for Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s contributions over time.
The Board’s primary objective remains to ensure the continued promotion of reading among Vermont school-aged children and children’s literature. While I personally felt duty bound to recommend that the Board call upon the State of Vermont and UVM to investigate their sorry promotion of eugenics and sterilization beginning in the 1920s-1930s, my colleagues raised legitimate points that this was not within our jurisdiction.
Might I suggest that a new name might be the “Katherine Patterson Award for Youth Literature”?
While we are at it, why don’t we just ban her books, some others on that list for incorrect thinking could be Mark Twain, etc.
As someone said long ago and I think it applies to lives also:
A book is a mirror: if a fool looks in, do not expect an apostle to look out. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
My grandparents told me about this eugenics project and how they were pretty scared of it being poorly educated rural French Canadians/possible Abenaki. One of them actually pretended to be Irish back in the day, but that also had something to do with facilitating business connections.
Hold on, I’ll conduct a seance and see how offended I should be about this on their behalf.
Okay, I’m back. They said “Get off that damn computer, it’s turning your brain into mush. Go play outside and stop bothering us”
Huh, wasn’t expecting that. I guess growing up with dirt floors, ice boxes, and out houses puts these things into the proper perspective.
Seriously though, I’m unimpressed by these librarians. You wouldn’t think iconoclasm would be in their wheelhouse. Another interesting link to history down the memory hole.
It would be interesting to know more about what was behind the boards decision. Fisher was a member of the Commission on Country Life, but so were 200 other Vermonters. As Is necessary with a group this big, the Commission was divided into committees. Fisher severed on the Subcommittee on Adult Education of the Committee on Educational Facilities for Rural People and the Committee on Vermont Traditions and Ideals. She was NOT on the Advisory Committee of Eugenics Survey. There were other prominent people who were on this committee, but DCF was not one of them. DCF devoted her career to literature and education, which on the surface would seem appropriate achievements for this award. In order to understand this recommendation it is necessary to know what other evidence the board considered to determine that her name should not be associated with the program.
It seems to me that some people who feel offended (and/or truly have been offended) want to delete the past. To me the present is way more important, you can’t change the past. When you know better, you do better….for the most part. I certainly don’t condone eugenics! It made mention of a Vermont ” eugenics” pedigree program and Huntington’s disease. My family is part of the BRCA Research, for which I am grateful. I don’t believe eugenics was really a cause for DCF, the majority of her work supports otherwise. She certainly seems to have done more good than evil. It seems to me that “good breeding” may in the past have meant “well-mannered” or “educated” . I don’t know that for a fact, only from context of some older fiction. Are authors to be judged on the values and beliefs of their characters? In her novel Bonfire one character described another as “half hound, half hunter, all Injun” a racial slur? Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce all used this word, what does this make them? As a child in school we were told to sit Indian style on the floor for story time, some would see this as derogatory, was our teacher racist? Children are now told to sit cross legged. So what makes a good author? I don’t believe there is evidence enough to support this claim .
I just heard this morning that a school district in Minneapolis, pulled two classic novels off a required reading list, citing racial slurs. “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Huckleberry Finn”. I find this disturbing and sad. Wondering when they will start burning books again? Deb LaCasse