Green People With Yellow Stripes

Mary W. Matthews

August 1945: Days after bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II, a young Englishman met a middle-aged Australian on a rattling, neglected, war-torn train. This unlikely pair struck up a friendship.

In mid-March 1946, the Englishman, a mature student (because of the war) named Lancelot Lionel Ware, gave 49-year-old Roland Berrill, the second son of a noble English family, the Cattell Intelligence Test, and informed the older man that he had a superior IQ. (Ware, incidentally, went on to become a “biologist-barrister.”)

Around that time, Sir Cyril Burt, a professor of psychology at University College London (who would become honorary president of Mensa in 1960), gave a series of radio broadcasts, during one of which he suggested forming a club or association for people of high intelligence.

Great minds met and thought alike, and on November 1, 1946, Mensa was born with six members. Originally, Berrill wanted to call it Mens, the Latin word for “mind” — but Ware pointed out the potential confusion with a magazine called Men Only. Berrill settled on Mensa, or “table,” the first Latin word students learned in those days. It would denote a “round table” society where all were equal; Berrill also liked the association that would be inevitable in many minds with the Latin tag mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body).

At an organizational meeting some time that summer, one of the five or six individuals present proposed that black people be excluded from Mensa. There was a long, shocked silence. Then Roland Berrill proposed that the motion be amended to replace the term “black people” with “green people with yellow stripes.” The amended motion passed with one vote against. If the minutes of that meeting had not been mislaid, that rule would still be in Mensa’s constitution today.

In January 1950, four months after Mensa's second Annual Gathering (attended by 60 people), a 37-year-old sawmill manager named Victor Sere­bri­akoff [pr. Sarah brie ACHE off] joined Mensa. A few months later, Berrill wanted a discreet way for Mensans to recognize each other in public. VVS suggested that a small, yellow-headed map pin in the area of one's lapel might be just the thing. This idea was so successful that the newsletter of Maryland Mensa was called Map-Pin for more than 25 years.

Roland Berrill had, through hard work and wise investments, made himself independently wealthy. For the first five years of its existence, Mensa was his baby — he did all the work and paid all the bills. And Berrill was an eccentric soul who believed in astrology, bright colors for men's clothing, Dianetics,* palmistry, phrenology, and other oddities.

*Footnote: Despite a thorough debunking by other Ms, Berrill clung to his belief in Scientology. “He shaved off his splendid beard and moustache, complained about his previous ways, and seemed a diminished man,” Serebriakoff wrote. “He used to tell me miserably how much good it was doing him. 'I used,' he dolefully complained, 'to be a Happy Charlie.' Dianetics certainly cured that.”

On the one hand, Roland Berrill invented the Annual Gathering. He also instituted the booklet that evolved into the Mensa Register, and what was popular for decades and may still be going on in some places, the Mensa Monthly Dinner.

But on the other hand, among his more unusual ideas: Berrill decreed that Mensa should have a queen, whose title was Corps d’Esprit, selected solely for her “pulchritude.” At the Mensa Monthly Dinner — black-tie, of course — the queen was to sit on an enormous ormolu throne. Four or five FMs were embarrassed this way before Mercy intervened.

It isn't surprising that the man who did all the work and paid all the bills would become an autocratic ruler. It also isn't surprising that the members of Mensa began to object to Berrill's autocracy, his eccentricity, and his fondness for using his increasingly prominent position as Secretary of Mensa for promoting his wacky ideas. At the 1951 AG, a cadre of leaders attempted to introduce democracy to Mensa.

Their “plot” was foiled, but Berrill became disillusioned. He stopped caring about the organization, stopped virtually all the work he had been doing, and stopped subsidizing Mensa’s expenses.

In January 1952, Berrill resigned as Secretary. There was little further recruitment, and the Mensa Quarterly magazine became an occasional sheet of paper. In less than two years, membership in Mensa went from a then all-time high of about 300 to about 120 — a 60 percent drop.

On October 5, 1953, a Mensa Monthly Dinner was held. Instead of the 16 or more people who might have attended in Berrill's heyday, there were four Ms present: Victor Serebriakoff, his wife, Win Rouse Serebriakoff, and brothers George and Joseph Wilson. Joseph was Mensa’s second Secretary, and he had been begging for months for someone to relieve him of the job. It looked very much to the four as though Mensa were at the brink of extinction.

“'It seems a pity,' I foolishly said,” wrote Serebriakoff. By the end of that fateful dinner, VVS was de facto Secretary, Chief Executive, and Principal Officer of Mensa.

During the next 11 years, VVS — working as a volunteer in his spare time — advertised Mensa, began charging to test applicants, revived the Mensa Quarterly, learned opinion sampling, founded International Mensa, kept up an ongoing publicity campaign, started a lecture series, wrote several books about Mensa, and helped found American Mensa. Membership went from about 120 at the end of 1953 to, in 1964, 1,400 in British Mensa, 4,400 in American Mensa, and more than 4,200 in nations including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and Holland.

“Here was another strength of Mensa,” Serebriakoff wrote: He would ask Ms for help with the work. Virtually all would reply that they were too busy, not suited to the job, and not convinced of the work’s value to Mensa. Then a goodly proportion would do the work (on a strictly temporary and provisional basis, of course) — quickly, efficiently, and without help, instruction, or cheer­leading. They were Mensans.

Sir Cyril Burt's original vision was that Mensa would be a think tank that could be polled by political leaders on questions of public interest. Lancelot Ware envisioned an elite from and of the upper class. Roland Berrill dreamed of an unbiased panel of highly intelligent people, scientifically and therefore objectively selected, that could help any and all authorities improve their decision-making.

It took some years to evolve, but Victor Serebriakoff had a different vision for Mensa. His three fundamental goals were to provide opportunities for intelligent people everywhere to interact; to learn more about intelligence; and to foster intelligence for the benefit of humanity. He emphasized strongly that Mensa must by its nature be impartial, uncommitted, and disinterested. No opinions. No political, religious, or national affiliations. No class or race distinctions. No pressure groups.

One of the best things about Mensa is its large-spirited tolerance. Beyond that magic two-percent pole vault, you'll find little or no racism, sexism, ageism, classism, nationalism, or any other system of exclusion or disenfranchisement (at least, in Mensa quâ Mensa).

However, membership in Mensa is barred to green people with yellow stripes, no matter how good their scores are. You have to draw the line somewhere.

 

Based on Victor Serebriakoff, Mensa: The Society for the Highly Intelligent. New York: Stein & Day, Publishers, 1985.