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History books often gloss over the darker sides of our heroes... Join us as we examine celebrated figures whose legacies are complicated by their racist views and actions! Our countdown explores how these influential people, despite their accomplishments, held beliefs that would shock many of their admirers today.
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00:00Monticello was a plantation.
00:02Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're exploring the beloved and respected historical figures
00:06who, despite their good deeds for the world, hit a terrible racism that tarnished their reputations.
00:11And he was legitimating anti-Semitism.
00:17Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. As the patriarch of the Kennedy family,
00:20Joseph P. Kennedy greatly influenced his sons John, Robert, and Ted, all of whom went into politics.
00:25The rise of Joseph Kennedy is as remarkable as it is seemingly unstoppable.
00:31Kennedy himself was involved in politics, becoming the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1938.
00:36However, this is where the problems came in.
00:38According to Kennedy's former aide, Harvey Klemmer, he would use anti-Semitic phrases regularly.
00:43He used language-made speeches that were virulently and frighteningly anti-Semitic.
00:51After meeting diplomat Herbert von Dirksen, the German told his bosses that Kennedy
00:56shared their views on Jews but didn't like how they were being so public about it.
00:59He was well-known for being friendly with anti-Semitic figures like Catholic priest
01:03Charles Coughlin and Viscountess Nancy Astor.
01:06This, coupled with forcing his daughter Rosemary to have a lobotomy, tarnished Kennedy's legacy.
01:11By the end of the procedure, she's basically lost the ability to talk.
01:14And it's clear that this has gone terribly wrong.
01:18Napoleon Bonaparte
01:19On the surface, Napoleon appears like a French hero and a war genius.
01:22However, in reality, he tried to set the country back.
01:25As 2021 marks the bicentenary of the emperor's death, his political,
01:29military, and social legacy have sparked quite a heated debate, both domestically and abroad.
01:35In 1794, during the French Revolution, the European nation abolished slavery.
01:40Yet in 1802, with Napoleon in charge, he instigated the law of May 20, 1802,
01:45allowing slavery back in France's colonies.
01:47It was almost certain that upon coming to power, there would be the desire to reestablish the old
01:52colonial system — that is to say, slavery.
01:55This made the country the first to re-allow slavery after voting to abolish it.
01:59To make sure it was followed, Napoleon sent massive fleets to violently put slavery back in place.
02:03This included the Saint-Domingue expedition in modern-day Haiti,
02:07which resulted in more than 20,000 deaths.
02:09Today, we all have the duty to claim reparations, to show respect to our ancestors,
02:14and to make sure that we are respected in our history.
02:16Closer to home, Napoleon also bans non-white people from entering France.
02:20Andrew Jackson
02:21Instead of being remembered for his efforts in aiding working-class Americans, the seventh
02:25president of the U.S. is better known for calling slavery abolitionists monsters and the atrocities
02:30he committed towards indigenous Americans.
02:33He was brave, he was bold, and he was decisive — all the things the ideal American man should be.
02:40In 1830, a little over a year after being elected, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act,
02:45which allowed the government to displace Native American tribes
02:48from the eastern U.S. and take them west of the Mississippi River.
02:51Known as the Trail of Tears lasting from 1830 until 1850,
02:54around 60,000 people from several Native nations were forced to relocate from their homes.
02:59This was not only condoned by the American people at the time,
03:02but celebrated as one of Jackson's landmark achievements.
03:05Seen as ethnic cleansing, around 16,700 people didn't survive the journey.
03:10Many perished from disease, while others were murdered by locals and soldiers.
03:14Ultimate urge is to survive.
03:17Ultimate urge.
03:18Mahatma Gandhi
03:19As a leading anti-colonial activist, Gandhi played a vital role in helping India gain
03:24independence from Great Britain. However, his legacy is far more complicated than you might realize.
03:28Mahatma Gandhi is famous worldwide for his non-violent resistance to British colonial rule.
03:34But last week, University of Ghana officials removed his statue from the campus,
03:39citing complaints from faculty and students that he was racist towards black Africans.
03:44In 1893, Gandhi arrived in South Africa and quickly experienced racism.
03:49While this experience would mold him into an activist, it also revealed a less flattering side.
03:53Following arrests, Gandhi wrote in letters about his outrage of being locked up with black people,
03:57comparing them to animals.
03:59Gandhi's legacy in Africa, as has already been mentioned, is complicated.
04:03When he briefly returned to India, he used derogatory terms about black people,
04:07including the use of slurs. According to Gandhi's biographer, Ramachandra Guha,
04:12he also saw Europeans as civilized, Indians nearly as much, and Africans as uncivilized.
04:17He was very much demonstrably a racist based on his own writings.
04:21Dr. Seuss. As a prolific children's author and illustrator, Theodore Seuss Geisel,
04:26better known as Dr. Seuss, was a pivotal part of many upbringings.
04:29These are the sounds.
04:30Wow.
04:31Yeah.
04:32Of the nostalgia of childhood.
04:34I love his books.
04:35Being tarnished.
04:36Yet behind the whimsical stories and drawings, he wasn't as wholesome. During World War II,
04:41Seuss drew racist, anti-Japanese political newspaper cartoons and supported the internment
04:46of Japanese Americans. These sentiments also bled into his books, with several cartoons being
04:50criticized later as racist, causing them to be withdrawn from sale.
04:53Let's take it out of the kids' books. And that is responsible. And, you know,
04:58let's extend that responsibility to all of our culture.
05:01He did later demonstrate significant personal growth, however. After visiting Japan and seeing
05:05the devastation from the atomic bombs, Seuss changed his stance. His book Horton Hears a Who,
05:10released in 1954, was dedicated to a Japanese friend, Mitsugi Nakamura,
05:15and the plot was an allegory for the American occupation of Japan.
05:25Walt Disney. With the world famous studio in his name, Disney has played a vital role in the
05:29lives of generations upon generations. Yet there are many blemishes in his legacy.
05:34I'm not Walt Disney. He once told a friend. I do a lot of things Walt Disney wouldn't do.
05:40In 1938, while working on Fantasia, Disney gave Nazi propaganda filmmaker Lenny Riefenstahl a tour
05:46of the studio. There were also claims that Disney attended meetings with the German-American Bund,
05:50which supported Germany's actions during the war. There's also 1946's Song of the South,
05:55which was widely criticized as racist and has never been released on home video or streaming.
05:59After Disney was publicly criticized by Meryl Streep in 2014 for his anti-Semitism,
06:08his grand-niece, Abigail Disney, supported the actor's assessment and later said he bordered on
06:13rabid fascism. Nobody does stuff on the scale that he did. It's a good-natured sweet heart of a guy.
06:19Henry Ford. While he was a pioneer in car manufacturing, Ford also had another job that
06:24was far less celebrated. Being the owner of the anti-Semitic newspaper, the Dearborn Independent,
06:29Never before in America had we seen anti-Semitism at a mass level.
06:36After taking ownership of it in 1919, Ford's horrific work was celebrated by far-right officials
06:41in Germany, including Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, the former of whom even stated Ford was
06:46an inspiration and had a portrait of him near his desk. Thomas Weber, author of Becoming Hitler,
06:50The Making of a Nazi, attributes Hitler's exposure to Ford's writing to his journey further
06:55down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Lawsuits about the problematic
07:00material in the paper led to Ford shuttering it in 1927, after which he apologized. However,
07:05there are allegations that his signature on the statement was forged. In 1938 Ford was awarded
07:10the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the country's highest medal it could give a non-national.
07:14Henry Ford has a complex legacy. He was a bigot, an oppressive employer, and by all accounts a pretty
07:20terrible person. He was also the father of the American automobile, which revolutionized
07:25transportation forever. For better or worse, most of us wouldn't be getting around the way
07:29we do today if it weren't for Henry Ford. Winston Churchill
07:33Winston Churchill is often credited with playing a vital role in defeating the Axis
07:36powers during World War II. But the Prime Minister of Great Britain was a massive racist. With famine
07:56sweeping through Bengal, then a British colony, Churchill made many hateful statements toward
08:00Indians. He also dismissed giving relief, claiming they were breeding like rabbits.
08:04Churchill repeatedly refused to acknowledge the fact that the extent to which India was used could
08:11lead to famine. Instead of helping end the famine, Churchill took what little food was in Bengal and
08:16focused it on the British military. Up to 3.8 million perished in the famine. According to a 2019 study,
08:21while drought kicked off the famine, Churchill's lack of action greatly accelerated the disaster.
08:26Today, a generation of Indians more confident about our place in the world are questioning why there
08:31hasn't been more widespread condemnation of the dark chapters in our colonial history.
08:37Thomas Jefferson. As one of the American founding fathers and the country's third president,
08:41Jefferson has a mythical perception that favors the more heroic aspects of his legacy. However,
08:45it doesn't take into account how much he benefited from slavery.
08:48But at Monticello today, it is the imperfect Jefferson we see.
08:53Jefferson, who lived on the Monticello Plantation in Virginia,
08:57is believed to have had around 600 slaves throughout his life. Only two were released
09:00during his lifetime. Following his wife's death, Jefferson took his teenage slave Sally
09:04Hemings with him to France. During that time and when they returned to the U.S., he fathered
09:09several children with her, which was supported by modern-day DNA testing.
09:12We, as Americans, don't address some of the more complex issues of slavery, of sex, of power, of ownership,
09:19and that is what is really interesting about Sally Hemings and her story.
09:23Even after Jefferson's death, Hemings was never officially freed.
09:26Being where my ancestors had been before me gave me that sense of,
09:31okay, we're part of this country, we're part of this growth, we're part of a bigger picture,
09:37and I can lay hands on things that they did.
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09:57Woodrow Wilson
09:58In addition to leading the U.S. through World War I, President Woodrow Wilson also helped to
10:02create the League of Nations, a precursor to the United Nations. But Wilson wasn't exactly
10:06enlightened when it came to race.
10:07Wilson is so disappointing. Because on the one hand, he's got this abstract vision of a more
10:16just world that has all of this potential and possibility in it. And then on the flip side,
10:21for all of his big ideals, he is such a narrow-hearted little man.
10:26While attending college, he lobbied against admitting black students. Once Wilson got into
10:30the White House, he permitted segregated government offices. This also affected the military as black
10:35officers were banned.
10:37He introduced Jim Crow to Washington, D.C.
10:42At a time when it was just starting to loosen up, he brought it back and it became, for all
10:48intents and purposes, the law of the land.
10:51However, this is also the same president who allowed the first film screening inside the White
10:55House to be D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, a film glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. In fact,
11:00a quote from Wilson advocating for white supremacy was even shown within the movie.
11:04The big story on Action News at 10 is Princeton removing President Wilson's name from its
11:09public affairs college. The Board of Trustees decision came down late yesterday, citing Wilson's
11:15racist views and policies. What other respected figure who is racist did we miss from our list?
11:20Let us know in the comments.
11:32Woo.
11:35So
11:36the
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