Scientist of white supremacy takes a last shot

On this day in 1962: An “open letter” advertisement in the New York Times urges President John F. Kennedy to delay implementation of recent Supreme Court school desegregation decisions until “Biology of the Race Problem,” a new book by Wesley Critz George, can be introduced as evidence.

Gov. John Patterson of Alabama has commissioned George, retired head of the department of anatomy at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, to write a scientific defense of white supremacy.

George’s book will be remembered by some as “the last stand” of pseudoscientific racism.