"Those of us who forget the past are condemned to repeat it."
At the time that the events described below [the dedication of the memorial] were transpiring, what was Wickliffe P. Draper, the founder of The Pioneer Fund probably doing and thinking? He was in Army Intelligence during World War II, stationed in India in 1940, observing Indian troops in training.
Wickliffe Draper was quietly celebrating the fruits of his handiwork during World War II. In 1936, his associate Harry H. Laughlin, received an honorary degree from Heidelburg University in Germay for his work in creating, with Draper, The Model Eugenics Laws in America which Hitler used in order to write "The Nuremberg Laws" which led to The Holocaust. These laws were being utilized in the United States at The Lynchburg (Va.) Colony in order to sterilize almost 75,000 humans between 1924 and 1972. By 1944 they were had achieved approximately 50% of their final totals.
There were then alive, in 1944, 37,000 persons who were as yet unsterilized, but destined to become so sometime before the year 1972, the year that Wickliffe P. Draper eventually died and his program of involuntary sterilization in American institutions finally died with him. By some estimates, these 75,000 sterilized persons would have produced almost 200,000 living progeny who would have been alive today. The research behind The Bell Curve and Proposition 187 deserves the same ultimate fate.
Draper was then sowing the seeds for the research behind both The Bell Curve and "Proposition 187" as early as the 1930's when he paid for the earliest research of his "racist eugenics" programs. Laughlin had lobbied to prevent many displaced persons from attaining "safe harbor" in the United States, many of whom ultimately became victims of The Holocaust. How many generations were interrupted by this overt action?
Learn about The Pioneer Fund and their efforts at inhumanity to man. If you believe that their IRS Tax Exemption is an affront to the memory of all who suffered or perished as a result of one of the programs they sponsored, petition the IRS and your Congressperson to remove that safe haven of non-profit tax exemption from them immediately. Using tax exempt dollars and essentially getting us to carry their tax burden in order to carry out racist research, to help sponsor Proposition 187, or to perform other anti-minority campaigns is an affront to all humanity and decency.