NRA Leader (Sandy Froman) Once Worked for Professor Who Claimed Blacks Were Genetically Inferior

[Demovictory9]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/05/nra-leader-once-worked-for-professor-who-claimed-blacks-were-genetically-inferior/

NRA Leader Once Worked for Professor Who Claimed Blacks Were Genetically Inferior
In the 1970s, Sandra Froman, now a board member of the gun group, helped William Shockley promote his racist theories.

In a hagiographic video series titled “Armed and Fabulous” on the National Rifle Association website, the gun group touts Sandy Froman, a current board member and past president, noting that “her illustrious career has established her as not just part of the American gun culture but as an integral thread in the fabric of firearms history.” The video, one of several sponsored by Smith & Wesson highlighting “NRA Women,” celebrates Froman’s career as a lawyer, her hobby of making chainmaille jewelry, and her years of advocating gun ownership for women. She once declared, “I love guns—never met one I didn’t like.” The video plays up what seems to be an anomaly, quoting Froman saying, “I am often asked how a Jewish woman, a native of San Francisco, and a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law became president of the NRA.” But the video leaves out an intriguing piece of her past: When she was at those prestigious schools, she helped controversial Stanford University professor William Shockley, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, as he promoted his theory that blacks were genetically inferior to whites.

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n an interview on Tuesday with Mother Jones, Froman said that while she was an undergraduate student at Stanford she worked as a part-time secretary for Shockley’s wife, who was his office manager, and that her duties included typing Shockley’s papers. “I didn’t really know anything about his theories,” she said. “I was just his secretary…and they gave me stuff to type. I typed it… Mostly, I typed what I was told to type.” When a Mother Jones reporter informed her of the tape recordings of her talks with Shockley and read her quotes from these conversations indicating she had done more than merely type his papers, she remarked, “I have no recollection of any of this. It’s just too long ago.” She then ended the interview, saying she had to board an airplane.

The NRA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In its promotional material hailing Froman as a gun rights champion, the NRA focuses on a piece of her history, citing the time she was nearly burglarized at home when she was a young woman decades earlier—an event that led her to become a fan of guns. Her long-ago connection to Shockley, though, has been left out of her story.

[MichMan]

1. Not sure people should be defined by who they worked with in college over 40 yrs ago

Just because you might hate the NRA, doesn't mean someone should be linked to whom they worked for or with over 40 years ago as a college student.