I study historical conceptualizations of “intelligence”--as an allegedly natural human difference--and how such ideas have been adapted for educational policy. My ongoing research explores the implementation of such “intelligence”-policy in the years after Brown v. Board's call to desegregate public schools. I find this nationwide policy effort could readily remake intramural segregation and white educational advantage and yet was all the while mediated through the ostensibly race-neutral language of individual “ability.” At APS, I’m exploring earlier interwar relations between eugenic thought and educational policy that anticipated these mid-century educational reforms.