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Wickliffe Draper

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The fund's main benefactor, Wickliffe Draper, seen here in military uniform, dedicated his life to intellectual pursuits and philanthropy.

Wickliffe Preston Draper (sometimes spelled "Wycliffe" in publications) (August 9, 1891-1972) American eugenicist and a controversial philanthropist. He was the principal benefactor of the Pioneer Fund, which aims to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences.

Born in Hopedale, Massachusetts, he was the son of a wealthy textile machinery manufacturer (Draper looms) and the descendant of a long line of prominent Americans. Wickliffe Draper graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1913. When the United States was slow to enter World War I, he enlisted in the British Army (when the U.S. eventually declared war, he transferred to the U.S. Army).

In 1927, he joined the French Mission led by Captain Augiéras to the southern Sahara and helped discover the remains of “Asselar Man” some 400 kilometers north of Timbuktu. Asselar Man is an extinct human believed to belong to the Holocene or Recent Epoch. Some scholars consider it the oldest known skeleton of an African black. For this, the French Societé de Geographie awarded him their 1928 Gold Medal, and in Britain he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. After the war, he travelled and went on numerous safaris (his large New York City apartment was reportedly filled with mounted trophies).

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

In 1937 he founded the Pioneer Fund, a foundation intended to give scholarships to descendants of White 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 their claimed success with eugenics (though years before the Holocaust and its eventual public disclosure, Germany's eugenic policies were still very controversial for their far-reaching scope and often coercive public policies). The Pioneer Fund was headed by the controversial eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, known especially for his role in the establishment of restrictive immigration laws and paving the way for national programs of compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and mentally retarded.

Draper volunteered for service again in World War II, and the fifty-year old man was assigned a post with British military intelligence in India. Draper returned to active philanthropy after the war and the Pioneer Fund supported the work of a number of notable (and controversial) researchers of race and intelligence, including William Shockley, Arthur Jensen, J. Philippe Rushton, and Roger Pearson. Though he never served as its president, Draper stayed on its board until his death and left his estate to the Fund, having never married. (Subsequent Fund boards have continued Draper's support for researchers studying race and intelligence). He also donated considerable funds to right-wing political organizations and candidates.

In addition to the Pioneer Fund, Draper also gave money directly to support causes that he favored. During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s Draper secretly sent $215,000 to the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission in 1963 in order to support racial segregation. The gifts came to light in the 1990s, when the commission records were made public.

Throughout his life, Draper maintained a very low profile, as did the Pioneer Fund. When he died in 1972 from prostate cancer, he left $1.4 million to the Pioneer Fund. Since his death Draper and the Fund have been heavily criticized for funding research into what some critics view to be scientific racism. His work has become more controversial since the publication of The Bell Curve, as the Pioneer Fund supported much of the research used in the book.

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