Honoring Genius, Science, Art, and Truth on Princeton Pi Day
To the Editor:
Each year, Princeton celebrates Pi Day by honoring the infinite wonder of mathematics and the brilliance of Albert Einstein, who was born on March 14. It is also a time to reflect on Einstein’s commitment to racial equality during an era when Princeton still segregated its neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, and other places of business.
While renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to science, Einstein is less known for his fierce advocacy for justice. He spoke out against racism and supported the NAACP. In 1931, he publicly supported the Scottsboro Boys, nine African American teenagers falsely accused of rape in Alabama. In 1946, he joined Paul Robeson, a Princeton native son, in a federal anti-lynching campaign. When W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the NAACP, was indicted by the government as a “foreign agent,” Einstein’s willingness to be a character witness influenced the judge to dismiss the case.
Einstein and residents of the African American community shared strong relationships and he was welcomed in the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood. When Marian Anderson, a world-renowned opera singer, was invited to perform at The McCarter Theatre, she was denied a room at the Nassau Inn due to its whites-only policy. Einstein invited Anderson to stay at his home with his daughter. And, even after Robeson was blacklisted by the U.S. Government, Einstein continued to invite him to Princeton, and publicly supported him.
In 1946, Einstein gave a speech at Lincoln University, where he declared racism a “disease of white people.” In the same year, he published an essay, “The Negro Question,” in Pageant magazine, writing: “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 … I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out… Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man’s quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition.”
You can find more information about Einstein in Einstein on Race and Racism by Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, and Kathryn Watterson’s book based on interviews with Princeton residents, I Hear My People Singing.
As we continue our march towards racial justice and equality in Princeton, we can build upon the legacy of Einstein and the African American community of the mid-20th century.