Albert Einstein’s activ­i­ties as a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for peace were well-doc­u­ment­ed dur­ing his life­time. His celebri­ty as a famous physi­cist and one of the world’s most rec­og­niz­able faces lent a great deal of weight to his paci­fism, a view oth­er­wise not giv­en much con­sid­er­a­tion in the pop­u­lar press at almost any time in his­to­ry. How­ev­er, accord­ing to a 2006 book titled Ein­stein on Race and Racism by Fred Jerome and Roger Tay­lor, the sci­en­tist was also as pas­sion­ate about com­bat­ing racism and seg­re­ga­tion as he was about com­bat­ing war. This facet of Einstein’s life was vir­tu­al­ly ignored by the media, as was a vis­it he made in 1946 to Lin­coln Uni­ver­si­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, the first degree-grant­i­ng col­lege for African-Amer­i­cans and the alma mater of Langston Hugh­es and Thur­good Mar­shall.

Invit­ed to Lin­coln to receive an hon­orary degree, Ein­stein gave a lec­ture on physics but also blunt­ly addressed the racial ani­mus that held the coun­try in its grip, report­ed­ly call­ing racism, “a dis­ease of white peo­ple” and say­ing he “did not intend to be qui­et” about his oppo­si­tion to seg­re­ga­tion and racist pub­lic pol­i­cy. Lest any­one think the Nobel-prize-win­ning physi­cist was pan­der­ing to his audi­ence, the Har­vard Gazette offers a com­pre­hen­sive sum­ma­ry of Einstein’s sup­port of pro­gres­sive anti-racist caus­es, includ­ing his per­son­al sup­port of mem­bers of Princeton’s black com­mu­ni­ty (he paid one man’s col­lege tuition), a town Prince­ton native Paul Robe­son once called “the north­ern­most town in the south.”

Ein­stein formed rela­tion­ships with sev­er­al promi­nent black leaders—inviting opera singer Mar­i­an Ander­son to stay in his home after she was refused a room at the Nas­sau Inn and appear­ing as a char­ac­ter wit­ness for W.E.B. Dubois when the lat­ter stood accused of “fail­ing to reg­is­ter as a for­eign agent.” But it was his 20-year friend­ship with Robe­son that seems cen­tral to his involve­ment in civ­il rights caus­es. The Har­vard Gazette writes:

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.

At the time of the Gazette arti­cle, 2007, a movie about Ein­stein and Robeson’s friend­ship was appar­ent­ly in the works, with Dan­ny Glover as Robe­son and Ben Kings­ley as Ein­stein. The project is appar­ent­ly stalled, but with the upsurge in pop­u­lar inter­est in the his­to­ry of civ­il rights—with the over­turn­ing of the Vot­ing Rights Act and the wide­spread cov­er­age of the 50th anniver­sary of the March on Washington—perhaps the project will see new life soon. I cer­tain­ly hope so.

via PourMe­Cof­fee

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Calls for Peace and Social Jus­tice in 1945

MLK’s Last Days and Final Speech

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness