Comrade Val Woodward, a staunch antiracist and champion of the working class, died on June 6 at age 87. Starting in the early 1970s, Val and his wife Clare organized the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR) in Minneapolis-St. Paul. InCAR was founded nationally by the Progressive Labor Party to combat racism on the job, in education and in academic publications.
Val’s antiracist and pro-working-class teaching and actions permeated his life. When serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II, Val ended up in the brig after pummeling a fellow sailor who was spouting racist epithets, stopping him in his tracks.
Val applied his knowledge and education in the field of genetics to serve the cause of fighting racism. He was a professor of genetics at Kansas State, Wichita State, and Rice University. He then taught for 33 years at the University of Minnesota, where his course on Heredity and Human Society became one of the school’s most popular. He won virtually every teaching and human rights award at the school.
But Val’s outstanding contribution was in leading the fight against academic racism wherever it reared its ugly head, under the principle that racism hurts all sections of the working class. This was especially true in his exposure of the academic racists who stoked white supremacy in the 1970s on campuses across the U.S. — the Schockleys, Jensens, and Herrnsteins. The national media disseminated their unfounded claims about unemployment being caused by genes and not by capitalist inequity, and about “inferior” intelligence being inherited by black, Latin and Native American workers.
Val was among the leaders in unmasking flawed data on “IQ genetics” and participating in campus demonstrations against college-sponsored talks that presented racist conclusions as scientific fact. Helped by Val’s leadership, hundreds joined InCAR to demonstrate at the U. of M., exposing academic racism and opposing the sponsorship of neo-Nazis and KKK’ers. Val taught the history of academic racism in the classroom and in churches, training hundreds and leading them in scores of antiracist protests.
During the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s and ’70s, Val was often invited to speak at churches, clubs, sororities, fraternities and commencement ceremonies. He would explain how the atrocities of slavery and racism were based on scientific-sounding claims in deeply flawed publications. The realization of InCAR’s core principle — that racism most hurts black, Latin and Native American workers, but also hurts white workers — led to the growth of PLP during this period.
As a widely respected geneticist, Val was invited to join a delegation to North Vietnam toward the end of the Vietnam War. He participated in an international conference exposing the horrors and genetic damage of Agent Orange, the defoliant produced by Dow Chemical and dropped by U.S. bombers on civilian populations. Val was among those who brought this evidence back to the U.S., leading to scores of demonstrations challenging Dow recruiters on campuses.
Val taught students from around the world, introducing them to the Marxist analysis that racism and racist injustice are deeply embedded in the fundamental economic inequality of capitalist society. He was also an excellent athlete well into his 70s. For decades he effectively infused his antiracist outlook into the playing fields and courts where he and numerous students met to enjoy a game.
A true internationalist, Val maintained relations with many international students throughout his life, as they continued to visit him at the U. of M. and after his retirement in 2000. He authored scientific books and papers explaining the sources of racism, including Human Heredity and Society and Biology As A Social Weapon. Val passed on his antiracism to his three children, eight grandchildren and their offspring.
All who knew Val were impressed by his warmth and humor, which never failed to draw you to him as a friend. He is remembered both as a teacher and an active fighter for a world free of racism, a future that is closer because of Val’s lifetime of struggle.