Otto Klineberg; Data Helped Win Landmark Desegregation Case

Otto Klineberg, 92, whose research into the intelligence scores of black students helped win the landmark 1954 school desegregation case. In studies for the Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education, Klineberg found that students in cash-poor Southern black schools averaged lower scores than Southern whites and Northern blacks and whites. When the blacks moved north to schools that were integrated and of better quality, their scores eventually equaled those of Northern-born blacks. The scores nearly equaled those of whites, with the discrepancy attributable to social and economic differences. Klineberg’s views went back long before the Supreme Court decision. As early as 1931, he said there was no scientific basis for racial superiority or bars to interracial marriage. On March 6 in Bethesda, Md.