Group fights park named for William ShockleyJustin Wiley, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
(07-14) 13:01 PDT AUBURN (PLACER COUNTY) -- -- A group of Sierra foothill residents is urging local parks officials to reject the donation of 28 acres of open space that would be named after a late Stanford University scientist whom critics have labeled a racist.
The forested site north of Auburn was a donation from the widow of William B. Shockley, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who became a believer in eugenics.
Shockley, who died in 1989, helped make the Santa Clara Valley a center of electronics innovation, in part through his co-invention of the transistor. But that work is often overshadowed by his later theories that led him to argue that intelligence is inherited and that blacks are genetically and intellectually inferior to whites.
He also suggested that people with low IQs be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization.
Shockley's wife, Emmy, died in 2007. Her trust willed the open space to the regional park district on the condition it be given the name Nobel Laureate William B. Shockley And His Wife Emmy L. Shockley Memorial Park.
In March, the Auburn Area Recreation and Park District board voted 3-2 to accept the tract, along with $50,000 for park upkeep. A coalition that includes the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union will try today to persuade the board to reverse that decision.
Jim Updegraff, chairman of the Sacramento County chapter of the ACLU, stressed that this is not a question of free speech. "We don't feel that was the proper action for the board to take. It is an insult to people of color and anyone in the Placer area with an IQ under 100," Updegraff said.
Park district board member Jim Ferris was among those who agreed to accept the gift and abide the naming restrictions.
"We are not praising him (Dr. Shockley). We are just accepting (the) gift," said Ferris, who added that the land might be turned into a housing development if it is not made into a park. "We want to preserve land. We don't have enough of that."
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