It's relative
By Melvin J. Howard
This is a new day for America and it’s been a long time coming President elect-Obama will become President Obama. Although America can be proud today of what it accomplished. It came out of an oppression of its people Martin Luther King Jr. whom symbolizes the struggles of African Americans and preached non-violence in getting his point across is somebody we can all be proud of. But the movement had many international friends as well most were not known at the time. But studying Einstein reviled to me something I would have never known otherwise. For instance how many knew Albert Einstein one of the greatest minds of the century was very outspoken against American racism. Yet the story has remained untold – until now – as has Einstein's support for W. E. B. Du Bois, his friendship with Marian Anderson and his many ties with the African American people living in Princeton's own little ghetto, in and around Witherspoon Street. In 1946, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist traveled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to blacks.
The reason Einstein’s visit to Lincoln is not better known is that it was virtually ignored by the mainstream press, which regularly covered Einstein’s speeches and activities. (Only the black press gave extensive coverage to the event.) Nor is there mention of the Lincoln visit in any of the major Einstein biographies or archives.
| Before leaving Germany, Einstein was not only an outspoken critic of the Nazis, but he had begun to speak out against racism in America – the parallel to Nazi anti-Semitism and Aryan-Superman theory was hard to miss. In 1931, W. E. B. Du Bois, a founder of the NAACP and editor of its magazine, The Crisis, wrote to Einstein, still living in Berlin: Sir: I am taking the liberty of sending you herewith some copies of THE CRISIS magazine. THE CRISIS is published by American Negroes and in defense of the citizenship rights of 12 million people descended from the former slaves of this country. We have just reached our 21st birthday. I am writing to ask if in the midst of your busy life you could find time to write us a word about the evil of race prejudice in the world. A short statement from you of 500 to 1,000 words on this subject would help us greatly in our continuing fight for freedom. With regard to myself, you will find something about me in “Who’s Who in America.” I was formerly a student of Wagner and Schmoller in the University of Berlin. I should greatly appreciate word from you. Very sincerely yours, W. E. B. Du Bois Einstein replied on October 29, 1931: My Dear Sir! Please find enclosed a short contribution for your newspaper. Because of my excessive workload I could not send a longer explanation. With Distinguished respect, Albert Einstein To American Negroes A Note from the Editor [Dr. Du Bois]: The author, Albert Einstein, is a Jew of German nationality. He was born in Wurttemburg in 1879 and educated in Switzerland. He has been Professor of Physics at Zurich and Prague and is at present director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Physical Institute at Berlin. He is a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Science and of the British Royal Society. He received the Nobel Prize in 1921 and the Copley Medal in 1925. Einstein is a genius in higher physics and ranks with Copernicus, Newton and Kepler. His famous theory of Relativity, advanced first in 1905, is revolutionizing our explanation of physical phenomenon and our conception of Motion, Time and Space. But Professor Einstein is not a mere mathematical mind. He is a living being, sympathetic with all human advance. He is a brilliant advocate of disarmament and world Peace and he hates race prejudice because as a Jew he knows what it is. At our request, he has sent this word to THE CRISIS with “Ausgezeichneter Hochachtung” (“Distinguished respect”): It seems to be a universal fact that minorities, especially when their Individuals are recognizable because of physical differences, are treated by majorities among whom they live as an inferior class. The tragic part of such a fate, however, lies not only in the automatically realized disadvantage suffered by these minorities in economic and social relations, but also in the fact that those who meet such treatment themselves for the most part acquiesce in the prejudiced estimate because of the suggestive influence of the majority, and come to regard people like themselves as inferior. This second and more important aspect of the evil can be met through closer union and conscious educational enlightenment among the minority, and so emancipation of the soul of the minority can be attained. The determined effort of the American Negroes in this direction deserves every recognition and assistance. Albert Einstein Du Bois’ request for a message from Einstein revealed that the African American scholar had a flare for public relations. Einstein’s article brought The Crisis a rare, if small, headline in the NY Times: EINSTEIN HAILS NEGRO RACE. Nearly twenty years later, another Einstein-Du Bois correspondence would bring even more momentous results, but in the fearful 1950s, there would be no press coverage. On the eve of Einstein’s move to America he joined the international campaign to save “the Scottsboro Boys,” nine African American teen-agers from Alabama, falsely accused of rape – eight of them sentenced to death in 1931. For Einstein, the Scottsboro Defense was the first of several protests against racial injustice in the American legal system. For J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI, it was the first “Communist Front” listed in Einstein’s file. Einstein joined with Paul Robeson, W. E. B. Du Bois and the Civil Rights Congress. Indeed, almost every civil-rights group Einstein endorsed after 1946, including the Council on African Affairs cited earlier, had Robeson in the leadership. Perhaps because Einstein had seen the Nazis use the “Communist” scare tactic, he did not shrink from Robeson’s red glare. Like Robeson, the CRC had close ties to the Communist Party. While defending Rosa Lee Ingram, Willie McGee, the Martinsville Seven and other African Americans they saw as victims of “racist frame-ups,” the CRC also supported the more than one hundred CP officials jailed under the Smith Act during the McCarthy/Hoover period. CRC statements pointed to Hitler’s Germany where the Nazis had first rounded up the Communists while most liberals shrugged from what they thought was a safe distance. It was a historical parallel Einstein agreed with. “The fear of Communism,” he declared at the height of the McCarthy era, “has led to practices which have become incomprehensible to the rest of civilized mankind…” His outspokenness on civil rights included a virtually unknown 1948 interview with the Cheyney Record, student newspaper at a then-small Black college (Cheyney State) in Pennsylvania: “Race prejudice has unfortunately become an American tradition which is uncritically handed down from one generation to the next,” Einstein declared. That he did the interview is hardly surprising, given Einstein’s previous visit to Lincoln University and his openness in talking and writing to young people. More surprising, however, is Einstein’s statement in the same interview, “The only remedies [to racism] are enlightenment and education. This is a slow and painstaking process in which all right-thinking people should take part.” So be proud America of your 44th President be proud of the red white and blue. It is a new day, new hope and oh YES WE CAN!
Some excerpts from a book by the authors, Einstein on Race and Racism, published in July 2005 by Rutgers University Press.
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