In the decade after the Supreme Court's ruling in the Brown v Board of Education case, segregationists used every tool available to prevent integration. By the early 1960s, a group of Pioneer Fund-backed scientists had teamed up with the lawyer they hoped could get their pseudoscientific argument against Brown in front of a judge.


Sources & Further Reading:

Tucker, William (2002). The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and The Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press.

Jackson, John P. Jr (2005). Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case Against Brown v. Board of Education. New York University Press.

Sussman, Robert Wald (2014). The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea. Harvard University Press.

Gould, Stephen Jay (1996). The Mismeasure of a Man. Penguin Books.

McMillen, Neil (1971). The Citizens’ Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction, 1954-1964. University of Illinois Press

Reardon, Sean & Grewal, Elena & Kalogrides, Demetra & Greenberg, Erica. (2012). Brown Fades: The End of Court-Ordered School Desegregation and the Resegregation of American Public Schools. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 31. 876-904. 10.2307/41653800.
https://selc.wordpress.ncsu.edu/files/2013/03/Brown-Fades.pdf

Albert P . Blaustein & Andrew H. Field, "Overruling" Opinions in the Supreme Court , 57 MICH. L. REV. 151 (1958). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol57/iss2/2

Amy M. Gardner, Comment, "An Attempt to Intervene in the Confusion: Standing Requirements for Rule 24 Intervenors," 69 University of Chicago Law Review 681 (2002).
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5684&context=journal_articles

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/08/how-often-does-the-supreme-court-overturn-its-own-decisions/