Wickliffe Draper

Wickliffe Preston Draper (August 9, 1891 – March

11, 1972) was an American political activist. He was Wickliffe Draper
an ardent eugenicist and lifelong advocate of strict
racial segregation. In 1937, he founded the Pioneer
Fund for eugenics and heredity research; he later
became its principal benefactor.

Early life and education

Draper was born on August 9, 1891, in Hopedale,
Massachusetts.[1] He was the son and heir of Jessie
Fremont Preston Draper, daughter of Confederate
Brigadier General William Preston III, who had served
as the United States Ambassador to Spain, until the
American Civil War[2] and George A. Draper, owner of
Draper Looms textile and textile machinery
manufacturers, who descended from generations of
prominent Americans. He attended St. Mark's School Wickliffe Draper, in United States military
in Southborough, Massachusetts.[3] uniform
Born August 9, 1891
Draper graduated from Harvard University in 1913.
Hopedale, Massachusetts, U.S.
When the United States was slow to enter World War I,
Died March 11, 1972 (aged 80)
he enlisted in the British Army. When the U.S.
United States
eventually declared war, he transferred to the U.S.
Army.[4] Education Harvard University
Occupation Political activist
Known for Advocate for eugenics and racial
Postwar segregation
Founder of Pioneer Fund
In 1924, Draper established the Draper Armor
Parent George A. Draper
Leadership Award, as a means to competitively test the
leadership of small Cavalry units in the US Army. The Relatives Eben Sumner Draper (uncle)
test was oriented to the platoon level of Horse Cavalry. Preston Brown (cousin)
The first Cavalry Leadership Test for small units was
held at Fort Riley, Kansas, then home of the Cavalry School. In 1928, Lieutenant Commander Draper
established a trust fund of $35,000 to perpetuate the award.

In 1927, he participated in the French mission of Captain Marcel Augiéras to the southern Sahara that
discovered the remains of "Asselar man", an extinct human believed to belong to the Holocene, or Recent
Epoch. Some scholars consider it the oldest known skeleton of a black African. The French Société de
Géographie subsequently awarded him its 1932 gold medal, the Grande Médaille d'Or des
Explorations,[5] and in Britain, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. After the war,
he traveled and went on numerous safaris. His large New York City apartment was reportedly filled with
mounted trophies.

Eugenics and Pioneer Fund

During this time, Draper became interested in eugenics, which had been a popular movement in the
United States during the first three decades of the 20th century. However, by the early 1930s, interest had
begun to fade as the underlying science came under question. Groups like the American Eugenics Society
(AES) faced declining membership and dwindling treasuries. Draper had helped ease the funding
shortfall, making a special gift to the AES of several thousand dollars to support the society prior to 1932.

In August 1935, Draper traveled to Berlin to attend the International Congress for the Scientific
Investigation of Population Problems. Presiding over the conference was Wilhelm Frick, the German
Minister of the Interior. At the conference, Draper's travel companion, Dr. Clarence Campbell delivered
an oration that concluded: "The difference between the Jew and the Aryan is as unsurmountable [sic] as
that between black and white.... Germany has set a pattern which other nations must follow.... To that
great leader, Adolf Hitler!"

Three years later, when Draper paid to print and disseminate the book White America by Earnest Sevier
Cox, an advocate of white supremacy and racial segregation, a personal copy was delivered to Frick.

In 1937, Draper established the Pioneer Fund, a foundation intended to give scholarships to descendants
of White American colonial-era families and to support research into "race betterment" through eugenics.
The scholarships were never given, but the first project of the fund was to distribute two documentary
films from Nazi Germany depicting its claimed success with eugenics. The Pioneer Fund was headed by
the sociologist and eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, an advocate for restrictive immigration laws and
national programs of compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and intellectually disabled.

At age 50, Draper again volunteered for military service and was assigned a post with British military
intelligence in India during World War II. After the war, he returned to eugenicist and segregationist
activism, and The Pioneer Fund supported the work of a number of noted and controversial researchers of
race and intelligence, such as the Nobel Laureate William Shockley, the American differential
psychologist Arthur Jensen, the Canadian evolutionary psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, and the British
anthropologist Roger Pearson. Though he never served as the Pioneer Fund's president, Draper remained
on its board until his death and left his estate to the Fund. He also donated considerable funds to right-
wing political organizations and candidates, including the World Anti-Communist League (WACL),
which was later headed by Pearson, who had received extensive funding from The Pioneer Fund and
Draper during his career at University of Southern Mississippi.

In addition to the Pioneer Fund, Draper financed the Back to Africa repatriation movement, particularly
the work of Earnest Sevier Cox, whose book "White America" he also funded. During the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s, he secretly sent $255,000 to the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission in
1963 and 1964 to support racial segregation. He also promoted opposition to the desegregation of public
schools mandated by the Supreme Court's 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education.[6] Those
financial contributions came to light in the 1990s, when the Sovereignty Commission's records were
made public. Doug A. Blackmon of The Wall Street Journal and Prof. William H. Tucker of Rutgers
University discovered the incriminating documents.

Funding of Mississippi Sovereignty Commission

Draper was one of the primary out-of-state benefactors of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission
(MSC), during 1963 and 1964. MSC attorney John Satterfield identified Draper's contributions, totaling
over $250,000 as originating from "The Wall Street Gang" from the North. Doug Blackmon of The Wall
Street Journal uncovered evidence of these contributions via Draper's J. P. Morgan trust account and
published his results on June 11, 1999 in The Wall Street Journal.[7]

The Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith also received $1,000,000 in the Spring of 1964 to build his "Christ of
the Ozarks" shrine and tourist attraction in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.[8] Smith's Cross and the Flag
periodical advanced and promulgated Draper's positions and attitudes for three decades, from 1942 to
1972 when Smith died.

Draper opposed FDR's efforts to implement the Social Security Act, expanded child labor laws, and early
attempts to pass the equivalent of OSHA-styled regulations. He disliked JFK for currying favor with
labor unions, promoting civil rights advances, and failing to pass tariff barriers to prevent the import of
foreign textiles and cotton. Draper blamed the actions of both presidents for the demise of the domestic
textile industry that eventually caused the Draper Company to be dissolved by Rockwell International as
an insolvent entity. Draper converted his equity in The Draper Company into a $100,000,000 windfall
investment in Rockwell International preferred stock, when Rockwell expanded because of the Vietnam
War.[9]

Later life
Considered reclusive,[10] Draper maintained a low profile throughout his life, as did the Pioneer Fund.
When Draper died in 1972 from prostate cancer, he bequeathed $1.4 million to the Pioneer Fund.

Draper's work has become more controversial since the publication of The Bell Curve (1994), because the
Pioneer Fund financially sponsored much of the research reported in the book. The publication of The
Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (1994) by Stefan
Kühl[11] resulted in further publicity for Draper and the Fund.

Notes
1. Draper's first name is sometimes spelled "Wycliffe" in publications.
2. "Jessie Fremont Preston Draper", Bancroft Memorial Library, Digital Commonwealth
Massachusetts. Retrieved October 10, 2020. (https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/
commonwealth:bk128x634)
 3. "Scholarships for 1912-13" (https://web.archive.org/web/20230222133105/https://www.thecri
mson.com/article/1912/12/10/scholarships-for-1912-13-pthe-following-is/). The Harvard
Crimson. Harvard University. Archived from the original (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/
1912/12/10/scholarships-for-1912-13-pthe-following-is/) on 22 February 2023. Retrieved
22 February 2023.
4. Kenny, Michael G. (2002). "Toward a racial abyss: eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the
origins of The Pioneer Fund". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. 38 (3): 263.
doi:10.1002/jhbs.10063 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2Fjhbs.10063). PMID 12115787 (https://pu
bmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12115787).
5. "Les Grands Prix de la Société", Société de Géographie. Retrieved October 10, 2020. (http
s://socgeo.com/les-grands-prix-de-la-societe/)
6. Jackson, John P. (2005). Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown
v. Board of Education. NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-4271-6.
Lay summary in: "Book Review: Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case
Against Brown v. Board of Education" (http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/25.
2/br_19.html). History Cooperative.
7. "ISAR - Silent Partner" (https://web.archive.org/web/20060624051446/http://www.ferris.edu/I
SAR/Institut/pioneer/silent.htm). Archived from the original (http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/Instit
ut/pioneer/silent.htm) on 2006-06-24. Retrieved 2006-07-17.
8. Jeansonne, Glen (1997). Gerald L.K. Smith, Minister of Hate. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press. ISBN 0-8071-2168-1. OCLC 37696447 (https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/37
696447).
9. The New York Times March 22, 1967 p. 61 Column 1. Rockwell acquires North American
Phillips and Draper Company Rockwell International
10. Racial Science and British Society, 1930-62 by G. Schaffer, Springer, 2008, pages 142–3.
Retrieved October 8, 2020. (https://books.google.com/books?id=9SqGDAAAQBAJ)
ISBN 9780230582446
11. Kühl, Stefan (2002). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German
National Socialism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514978-4.
2. ^

References
Tucker, William H. (2002), The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the
Pioneer Fund, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 978-0-252-02762-8
Kenny, Michael G. (2002), "Toward a Racial Abyss: Eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the
Origins of The Pioneer Fund" (http://www.iupui.edu/~histwhs/h699.dir/KennyPioneer.pdf)
(PDF), Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 38 (3): 259–283,
CiteSeerX 10.1.1.626.4377 (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.626.
 4377), doi:10.1002/jhbs.10063 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2Fjhbs.10063), PMID 12115787 (ht
tps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12115787)

Further reading
Spiro, Jonathan P. (2009). Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the
Legacy of Madison Grant. Univ. of Vermont Press. ISBN 978-1-58465-715-6.

External links
Institute for the Study of Academic Racism: Pioneer Fund (http://www.ferris.edu/isar/Institut/
pioneer/homepage.htm) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20050204195109/http://www.
ferris.edu/isar/Institut/pioneer/homepage.htm) 2005-02-04 at the Wayback Machine
"The Tainted Sources of 'The Bell Curve'" (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?
article_id=2056)
Metcalf, Stephen. "Moral Courage: Is defending The Bell Curve an example of intellectual
honesty?" (http://www.slate.com/id/2128199/) Slate, October 17, 2005
Blackmon, Douglas A. "Silent Partner: How the South's Fight To Uphold Segregation Was
Funded Up North," (http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/Institut/pioneer/silent.htm) Archived (https://w
eb.archive.org/web/20060624051446/http://www.ferris.edu/ISAR/Institut/pioneer/silent.htm)
2006-06-24 at the Wayback Machine Institute for the Study of Academic Racism.
Lichtenstein, Grace. 'Fund Backs Controversial Study of "Racial Betterment"' (http://www.har
tford-hwp.com/archives/45/022.html), reprinted from The New York Times, December 11,
1977.
Reckert, Clare M. DRAPER APPROVES BID BY ROCKWELL; In Surprise Move, Board
Backs Improved Offer - Indian Head Talks Off Acquisitions and Combinations Are Planned
by Corporations (https://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&daterange
=period&query=rockwell+standard+draper&srchst=p&hdlquery=&bylquery=&mon1=09&day
1=18&year1=1851&mon2=12&day2=31&year2=1980&submit.x=19&submit.y=9), The New
York Times, March 28, 1967.(subscription required)

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