Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Statement

Following is a statement issued by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in response to questions from William Schambra about grants that supported institutions that work on eugenics:

In 1941, as the United States struggled with the early days of World War II, Carnegie Corporation of New York made 206 grants to many institutions, including Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia University and the National Academy of Sciences.

Among those grants was one for $15,000 to Wake Forest College, Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the establishment and support of a Department of Medical Genetics. In succeeding years, two other small grants of $12,000 each were made to the Bowman Gray School of Medicine.

Needless to say, these three grants do not reflect Carnegie Corporation’s core value as we know it: the dignity of each individual in a democracy.

At the same time these grants were made, the Corporation was supporting Gunnar Myrdal’s research that led to the widely acclaimed book, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. That study was a critical foundation building block for the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ended segregation in public schools.

Andrew Carnegie himself, when he was president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, made grants to historically black colleges, like Tuskegee Institute. Other presidents after him continued to make investments in historically black colleges as well as in many other initiatives and programs aimed at advancing racial equality and achieving social justice.

On the international front, the corporation supported the Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development in South Africa, a critical research project that had influence in ending apartheid government in South Africa.

We have not been able to find a public statement in the corporation’s public records that outlines a strategy for the small grants to Wake Forest College. Our reading of the grants file and our understanding of the Bowman Gray School’s work, lead us to conclude that the support of the school was an aberration in our history.