Wednesday, September 02, 2009
William Shockley
Twenty years after his death, Nobel Prize-winning physicist William B. Shockley is still creating controversy because of his support for eugenics, the long discredited belief that intelligence is hereditary and racially based, thus justifying human sterilization. Shockley’s estate donated a 28-acre parcel near the California town of Auburn for the purpose of establishing a park—but with the condition that it be named after the co-inventor of the transistor and his wife. Local officials say they weren’t aware of Shockley’s views on eugenics, and while they don’t support them, they still intend to go ahead with the park. The ACLU has publicly criticized the decision.
Auburn isn’t the only community, in California or the nation, wrestling with the renaming of local landmarks for controversial historical figures. In the college town of Davis, city officials removed John Sutter’s name from a street after concerns were raised about the 19th century explorer’s treatment of Native Americans. And in Sacramento, a park and middle school named after Charles M. Goethe, a prominent local banker in the early 1900s and founder of the Eugenics Society of Northern California, had their names changed as well.
Other renaming efforts haven’t been as successful. African American students at Nathan B. Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Florida, tried to get the name of the Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan grand wizard taken off their school, but failed. So did student protesters at Indiana University in Bloomington who wanted Ora L. Wildermuth’s name taken off the gym once it became known that the prominent Indiana judge was an advocate of segregation.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Donor's Views on Race Spark Outcry Over Parkland (by Bobby White, Wall Street Journal)
ACLU Opposes Shockley Park (by Gus Thomson, Auburn Journal)
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