Albert Einstein decried racism in America, but was guilty of it himself

In 1946, Albert Einstein stood in front of students at one of the oldest historically black colleges in the United States and decried the oppression of African Americans.

“There is separation of colored people from white people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it,” he said during a commencement speech at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

As a Jewish scientist who experienced anti-Semitism in Germany, Einstein showed deep sympathy for black people in America. He wandered around black neighborhoods in segregated Princeton, N.J., his home after leaving Germany amid the rise of the Nazis. He sat on people’s porches, chatted with them and handed out candies to their children and grandchildren. Einstein had become so entrenched in America’s civil rights movement that the FBI placed him under surveillance, collecting nearly 1,500 pages of documents on Einstein by the time he died.

But there’s another side to Einstein that perhaps people did not know then.