Stuart W. Cook; Psychologist Helped Shape Segregation Ban

Stuart W. Cook, 79, a social psychologist whose research helped shape the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling banning school segregation. While serving as a captain in the Army Air Force in World War II and after witnessing Nazi atrocities against Jews, Cook decided to dedicate his work to studying prejudice and ways to overcome it. He was studying the effects of legally mandated segregation on black children in the 1950s when he met future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was then head counsel for the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Cook later co-authored a report used by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Brown vs. Board of Education, which barred segregation in public schools. Cook was former chairman of the psychology department at the University of Colorado. In Boulder, Colo., on March 25 of congestive heart failure.