As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech today, here is an interesting tidbit about someone you might not think of as a civil rights activist. Ken Gewertz, in a 2007 piece for the Harvard Gazette, shares several anecdotes about Albert Einstein and his push for racial equality:
Here’s something you probably don’t know about Albert Einstein.
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. At Lincoln, Einstein gave a speech in which he called racism “a disease of white people,” and added, “I do not intend to be quiet about it.” He also received an honorary degree and gave a lecture on relativity to Lincoln students.