Despite his racism, Shockley was a gifted scientist and inventor - one of the most important of the 20th Century! - and should be honored as his estate wishes:
AUBURN – A rare gift of 28 acres of wild forest just north of the city limits has sparked charges of racism and has pitted environmentalists against social activists.
The land known as Shockley Woods was bequeathed to the Auburn Recreation District with $50,000 for upkeep and one condition: It must be named for a man who believed African Americans are inferior and should be paid not to reproduce.
Before most of the district's board realized Shockley – winner of the Nobel Prize in 1956 for co-inventing the transistor – had another, more troubling side, the board voted 3-2 to accept the gift from Shockley's estate. They also agreed to the name: "Nobel Laureate William B. Shockley And His Wife Emmy L. Shockley Memorial Park."
...That was before the Auburn Journal published an article revealing Shockley's views on race.
What makes this conundrum particularly touchy is that the district didn't inherit a park named generations ago after a white supremacist, such as the former Charles M. Goethe Park in Sacramento County.
..."I sure don't like naming a park after a racist; no one does," Holbrook said. "But on the other hand, they (the Shockleys) are dead. … What happens if we ignore the request of the estate and call it whatever we want? I don't know if the estate police come after us."
...There's no record of the Shockleys ever living in Auburn. They resided in Palo Alto, where technology that Shockley developed was instrumental in shaping today's Silicon Valley.
...The gift along Shockley Road is a forest of century-old California oaks, manzanita and native grasses occupied by squirrels, birds, coyotes and rattlesnakes, Muscott said.
"It looks like a Hansel and Gretel forest to me," said Pamela Vann, the district's landscape architect, as she peered into the dense, dark woods. "It's a beautiful property and has a lot of potential for passive uses, such as trails and picnic spots."
...The Auburn land gift has pitted people who are "usually on the same side against each other," Smith said. "I hate seeing a park named after him, but the good outweighs the bad."
Tajbl, chair of the social action committee of the Sierra Foothills Unitarian Universalist Church, doesn't think so. "Do we value parks over the rights of minorities? Do we want to be known as a racist community?"
...She noted that last year the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors renamed Charles M. Goethe Park because Goethe, a philanthropist, also backed the sterilizing of the "socially unfit," which he believed included Jews, Mexicans and Japanese Americans.
The site's new name is River Bend Park.
"Here in Auburn, we're going backward," Tajbl said.
Gordon Ainsleigh, who led the district board's 3-2 vote in favor of accepting the land, sees the name as a teaching opportunity.
"I don't see anything particularly wrong with naming the park after the man who was kind of the father of the electronic age, who Time magazine named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century," Ainsleigh said. "It's a rare person in history that doesn't have a blemish on them."
The district has to name the park after Shockley, Ainsleigh said, but the gift "doesn't say how much we have to publicize it."
One constituent suggested putting the park's name on a rock and then turning the rock face down.
How about making the 13-word name even longer, Ainsleigh suggested, by adding the phrase: "Dedicated in 2009, the year when Barack Obama, a man of black African ancestry, took office as president of the United States."
"I like that a lot," Ainsleigh said. "I can only hope that Shockley is somewhere looking down and squirming."
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