In addition to being an amazing physicist, Albert Einstein was also an advocate for peace. He was an outspoken pacifist; he fought hard for peace. He also fought for desegregation and civil rights just as hard as he fought for peace.
In 1946, Einstein spoke at Lincoln University, the first college to grant degrees to African-Americans. He was there to receive an honorary degree. He described racism as “a disease of white people.” It was not a well-known speech of his. The mainstream media ignored it.
Einstein befriended many African-American leaders at the time. He once let singer Marian Anderson stay in his home when she was denied a room at a local hotel. He had a close longtime friendship with local Princeton resident Paul Robeson.
The Harvard Gazette wrote, via Open Culture, that,
“Einstein met Paul Robeson when the famous singer and actor came to perform at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in 1935. The two found they had much in common. Both were concerned about the rise of fascism, and both gave their support to efforts to defend the democratically elected government of Spain against the fascist forces of Francisco Franco. Einstein and Robeson also worked together on the American Crusade to End Lynching, in response to an upsurge in racial murders as black soldiers returned home in the aftermath of World War II.”
Einstein experienced a lot of harassment under the Nazis, but when he got to the United States, he was dismayed to see the segregation rampant in Princeton, New Jersey, according to LiveScience. Just before he moved, he helped on a campaign to defend the Scottsboro Boys. These nine boys in Alabama were falsely accused of rape in 1931.
In 1946, Einstein published an essay called “The Negro Question.” Here is an excerpt from it:
“There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious; but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the “Whites” toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out…”
This just makes me think that much more of Einstein. He was a very smart man; I’m glad to see that he stood up for equality.
Here is a little video talking about Einstein’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement:
Featured image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
