Mensa was founded in England in 1946 as a "brain trust" — an idea that, thankfully, did not last long. What Mensa has become is an organization that provides a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members while doing what it can to foster intelligence and encourage research into its nature, character, and uses. Some Ms try seriously to solve all the problems of the world, and some Ms live as party animals. Our common bond is merely that we are all "top two percent."
An Incredibly Brief History of Mensa
In the late 1950s, John Wilcock wrote an article for The Village Voice about these British oddballs that was adapted for The New York Times. A few Americans wrote to London and became foreign members of the society, and American Mensa Ltd. was founded in September 1960 thanks to the dedicated efforts of Peter Sturgeon, John Codella, and Margot Seitelman under the guidance of the legendary Victor Serebriakoff. In the next five years, American Mensa grew from a few hundred members to more than 10,000 in both the United States and Canada. As of the end of 1995, it has roughly 50,000 members, comprising roughly 90 percent of the membership of International Mensa.
In April 1962, a few months after he joined American Mensa, Dave Humes called Margot Seitleman (then AML's executive director) and asked for a list of members in the Metropolitan Washington area. A half- dozen or so Ms got together at that first "meeting," and MWM was born. MWM now numbers about 2,000 in Washington, D.C. and close-in suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia, which puts us among the six or so most populous of the local groups.
According to a 1971 Mensa Journal article by Sander Rubin ("The Beginnings of American Mensa," URL), the early years of Mensa were marred by infighting between an elitist group that wanted to support research into intelligence and a populist group who saw Mensa more as a round-table society. He wrote, "The situation was epitomized by the fact that meetings of the American Mensa Committee were closed to 'ordinary' members. There was real substance to charges that the 'round table' society was being managed by a remote, elite clique. . . . On both sides, argument on principles was abandoned for incrimination by personal innuendo, speculation, and sheer false accusation and name-calling. For both, the ends justified the means."
Eventually, this document will get fleshed out more. . . .
(One of Mensa's main problems, I think, is that many members kind of like hearing, "Oh, you must be a genius" or "Oh, you belong to that genius organization." With a population of more than 260 million, American Mensa ought to have a membership of five million or so, not a piddling 1.12-or-so percent of five million.)
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Metropolitan Washington Mensa