Malcolm Donald

Malcolm Donald (1877–1949) was an American lawyer, eugenicist, white nationalist, and a founder of the Pioneer Fund.

Malcolm Donald
Harvard Crimson
PositionTackle
ClassGraduate
Personal information
Born:1877
Died:1949
Career history
College
Career highlights and awards
  • Third-team All-American (1897)
  • First-team All-American (1899)

Life and career

He graduated Harvard College (where he played football[1]) and Harvard Law School. He was an editor of Harvard Law Review. He worked at Boston law firms Gaston Snow and Herrick, Smith, & Donald. He served in the War Department during World War I. Following the war, Donald was named Vice President of the Harvard alumni club.[2] He later became a trustee of the Roxbury Latin School.

Historian William H. Tucker has documented Donald's involvement in the Pioneer Fund.[3]

Pioneer Fund principal benefactor Wickliffe Draper chose Donald as treasurer in 1937. Donald was one of Boston's leading attorneys and a long-time trusted friend of the family. The two men had been named as executors of George Draper's will. Donald was trustee of the Draper family fortune, should neither Draper nor his sister outlive their father. Even before the fund's creation, Donald had managed Draper's finances.[4] Donald got a ruling from the federal Treasury Department that the Pioneer Fund was tax-deductible, so Draper's contributions to the fund would be deductible from his own income tax. [5]

Donald did not play a substantive role in the policies or practices of the Pioneer Fund.[6] Donald explained in a letter to Frederick Osborn that Draper was interested not in science but in policy; he wanted "to do something practical," such as "moving the colored race to Liberia" or "strengthening State laws to prevent the unfit from producing children." He was "not ... concerned with research in human genetics since he felt that enough was known on the subject and that the important thing was to have something done." And in personal discussion with Osborn, Draper's list of priorities included not only "colonization of the colored minorities" but also the "reconstruction of American political parties."[7]

References
  1. Staff report (October 8, 1899). ATHLETICS AT HARVARD.; Malcolm Donald Says He Will Play Football This Year. New York Times
  2. Staff report (October 23, 1925). T.W. LAMONT HEADS HARVARD'S ALUMNI; Banker Succeeds Prof. Grandgent -- C.S. Pierce and Malcolm Donald Chosen Vice Presidents. New York Times
  3. Tucker WH (2002). Somebody Whose Views He Could Not Approve: The Formation and Re-formation of the Pioneer Fund. Archived 2006-05-14 at the Wayback Machine in The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. ISBN 0-252-02762-0
  4. George A. Draper's will is available as part of the file containing Wickliffe Draper's will in Surrogate's Office, New York City; among other duties Donald made out the checks for Draper's contributions to the Eugenics Research Association; see Donald to Davenport, August 24, 1929, enclosing one of Draper's contributions; Davenport papers.
  5. Donald to Collector of Internal Revenue, February 15, 1938; Osborn to Collector of Internal Revenue, February 18, 1938; J. R. Kirk (deputy commissioner, Treasury Department) to Pioneer Fund, c/o Frederick Osborn, March 8, 1938; D. S. Bliss (deputy commissioner, Treasury Department) to Pioneer Fund, c/o Frederick Osborn, April 1, 1938; Osborn papers. Osborn's letter enclosed the request from Malcolm Donald as the responsible financial officer, noting that he was acting as Pioneer's correspondent only because his office was more conveniently located should a personal meeting be necessary.
  6. "The Pioneer Foundation," n.d., Donald to Harry Laughlin, February 19, 1937, Laughlin papers.
  7. Donald to Osborn, July 11, 1947, July 22, 1947, October 21, 1947; Osborn to Donald, October 20, 1947; Osborn papers.
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