People Are Sharing Historical Figures Who Are Actually Pretty Problematic, And I Had No Clue About Some Of These
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I recently shared this Reddit thread about beloved historical figures who have done some pretty horrible things.
CBC / Via giphy.com
In the comments on that post, y'all mentioned even more people from history whose behavior was downright shocking.
ABC / Via giphy.com
Here are 11 more typically beloved historical figures who have actually done some pretty controversial things:
1."Gandhi was pretty terrible behind the scenes. He held a lot of racist views early in his life, and more than once, helped the British suppress the rebellion of the Black population of South Africa. He routinely slept naked with teenaged girls, including his underaged relative, to test his commitment to not having sex. He denied his wife western medicine that would have saved her life, but gladly accepted western medicine to save his own life later." —abbyb476905b59
Although Gandhi was an instrumental figure in helping India win freedom from British colonial rule, he also held racist and sexist beliefs. In fact, when British filmmaker Richard Attenborough set out to make a documentary about Gandhi's life, he asked Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru how he should portray the leader. Nehru begged Attenborough to show the real Gandhi, and not depict him as a saint.
While in South Africa in 1903, he wrote that white people should be "the predominating race," and that Black people were "troublesome, very dirty and live like animals." Later in his life, Gandhi changed his tune on these racist beliefs.
Despite the fact that Gandhi believed women should be included in politics, he also maintained some troubling sexist beliefs throughout his life. He maintained a celibate lifestyle, and would frequently test his limits by sleeping naked next to underage girls, including his own grandniece.
When it came to medicine, Gandhi was a firm believer that preventative measures for diseases were far more effective than actually treating the disease. When his wife Kasturba, who had suffered from chronic bronchitis for her entire life, fell ill, he told doctors not to give her the penicillin that would have saved her life. Soon after, Gandhi allowed doctors to give him medication to cure his malaria, and also got an appendectomy, despite his perceived aversion to modern medicine.
2."Thomas Jefferson. He kept slaves and even had an affair with Sally Hemmings, who was underage (she was 15 and he was in his 40s when they met). Jefferson didn't free her, or their children, until he was dying." —xy8lu
Over his lifetime, Thomas Jefferson owned about 600 slaves, the most of any president. Jefferson, who was a prolific writer and record keeper, saved copies of nearly every letter he had even written, which has allowed historians to piece together the lives of many of the people he enslaved.
Soon after the death of his wife Martha, Jefferson served as a diplomat in France. He eventually sent for his youngest daughter, who was accompanied overseas by Sally Hemmings, a teenage slave. It is believed that Jefferson and Hemmings began a relationship at this time, the boundaries of which have been debated by historians for years. By 1789, Jefferson and Hemmings had returned to the United States, where she resumed her work at Jefferson's Monticello plantation. Records show that Hemmings gave birth to six children over the next two decades.
An 1802 newspaper article speculated about their relationship, naming Sally and divulging that she had several children. At least three of Hemmings' children were light-skinned enough that they lived in society as white adults, after they were freed by Jefferson at the time of his death. Sally was unofficially freed by Jefferson's daughter Martha after his death. Jefferson's Monticello estate now acknowledges the link between Jefferson and Hemmings.
3."Helen Keller was an advocate of eugenics when it came to mental disabilities. In a highly publicized case in 1915, a deformed baby was allowed to die after his physician refused to operate on him. In the pages of popular newspapers and magazines, Keller defended the physician's actions against the 'cowardly sentimentalism' of those who condemned the doctor, arguing that the life of the baby was 'not worthwhile,' and that he was 'almost sure to be a potential criminal' when he grew up." —DamianThomas15
During her adulthood, Helen Keller, who became deaf and blind at age 2 after contracting an illness, was very politically active. While she was a suffragist and a firm supporter of unions, the NAACP, the ACLU, and birth control, Keller also believed in eugenics for part of her life.
In 1915, Baby Bollinger was born in Chicago. The baby was born with several physical issues, but it was believed that surgery would have saved his life. However, the child's doctor refused to perform the surgery on the baby, because he believed that even if he survived, he would have a long life full of suffering. The case brought up questions about ethics in medicine. Keller wrote an article in support of the doctor, writing that the child's existence would not have been worthwhile. "It seems to me that the simplest, wisest thing to do would be to submit cases like that of the malformed idiot baby to a jury of expert physicians," she wrote.
Some attribute this line of thinking to the way Keller and her story were portrayed throughout her life, as people would often characterize her life as inspirational because of her disabilities, and ignore her achievements.
4."F. Scott Fitzgerald plagiarized his wife’s work and locked his wife in the house when she asked for a divorce." —kristlynn
F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for writing American classics like The Great Gatsby, but many believe he couldn't have done it without his wife, Zelda.
Zelda and Scott wrote each other letters throughout their relationship, in addition to Zelda keeping a diary. She often would find pages of her diary missing, only to later realize that portions of her writing would appear in Scott's work. "In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald — I believe that is how he spells his name — seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home," she wrote in a review of The Beautiful and the Damned. People believed Scott wanted his talents to overshadow his wife's, and the couple often clashed about who could use autobiographical elements of their relationship in their writing. In later years, Zelda wrote a novel of her own in just a few months. When she told Scott about her book, he became furious, as he was struggling with finishing his own novel, Tender Is the Night. After the book was published, Scott pressured the publisher to give the book little attention, causing the book to flop.
As their relationship began to dissolve, Zelda met and fell in love with Edouard Jozan, a French pilot. When she approached Scott for a divorce, he supposedly locked her in their house, refusing to let her out until she dropped the divorce request. Despite their tumultuous relationship, the couple's granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan, wrote that she believed her grandparents were in love with each other until they died.
5."George Washington is always treated as a hero in American history. Pretty much everyone knows the cherry tree story is pure fiction, and Americans just love to pretend or ignore his slaves." —zemt
Upon his father's death, George Washington inherited 10 slaves at age 11. He went on to purchase dozens more, and when he married Martha Washington, she brought more enslaved people to their Mount Vernon plantation. As Washington moved up the ranks in politics, he began to reconsider his beliefs about slavery, yet refused to free his many slaves, even after it became legal to free them in 1782.
In records kept by Washington, it showed that he frequently accused the enslaved people living on his property of theft. He also separated families, forcing them to live miles apart from each other. When Pennsylvania passed the Gradual Abolition Act in 1780, Washington developed a scheme to get around the law, which gradually began freeing slaves. The act said that any enslaved person who entered Pennsylvania who lived in the state for over six months was immediately freed. Washington, who lived in Philadelphia, would take slaves out of the state just before the six-month mark to reset the clock.
Even Washington's will revealed his complicated feelings toward slavery. While he wrote that he wanted all 123 of his slaves to be freed, his will stated that they could only be freed after his wife died. She freed the slaves a year after Washington's death because she was scared that they would try to kill her in order to be freed.
And as for the cherry tree? The story is completely false, and was fabricated by a biographer.
6."Nurse here. We're taught to worship Florence Nightingale in school for being the founder of modern nursing and infection prevention. Truth is she was a raging racist and had some hands in genocide, but she made sure she washed her hands." —szelt
Florence Nightingale, known as "The Lady With the Lamp," is considered the founder of modern nursing. Her work as a nurse during the Crimean War caused her to create sanitation principles that forever changed healthcare, and she even founded St. Thomas’s Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in 1860.
Despite being a revolutionary figure in healthcare, Nightingale supported genocide if it meant that the British Empire could expand their reign. She believed that the lives of Indigenous people were less important than expansion, and wrote that Indigenous people were inferior, and their culture barbaric. She said that imposing British culture and customs on people was the right thing to do, even if it cost them their lives.
Nightingale also believed cleanliness was a sign of superiority, and believed that Indigenous customs went against her ideas of cleanliness. She defended the deaths of Indigenous people at schools and hospitals, saying it was a necessary part of progress. "Every society which has been formed has had to sacrifice large proportions of its earlier generation to the new conditions of life arising out of the mere fact of change," Nightingale wrote.
7."Alexander Graham Bell was very unkind and unaccepting of deaf people and sign language." —bjhagee
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was a controversial figure for his opinions about Deaf people.
Bell's upbringing was closely intertwined with the Deaf community. His mother was deaf, and his father was a teacher for Deaf students. Bell went on to marry Mabel Hubbard, a deaf woman who was one of the first Deaf children to learn how to lip-read and speak.
Despite being so close with several deaf people, Bell believed that deaf people shouldn't be able to marry each other because it would lead to "contamination" of the population. He devoted himself to preventing the creation of a "Deaf race." Part of his plan included eliminating sign language and deaf teachers from classrooms, as well as advocating for oral-only education. He even proposed introducing legislation that prevented marriage between families that had more than one deaf family member.
8."Pablo Picasso beat women frequently. He was a major misogynist and womanizer. He cheated on all his wives. He told one of his mistresses, 'Women are machines for suffering.' He later told her there were only two types of women, 'goddesses and doormats.' He reputedly subjected his lovers to horrible treatment." —boxingcleverlancaster
Throughout the course of his life, Pablo Picasso allegedly had over 100 affairs, with many of them overlapping. As a teen in Malaga, Picasso began going to brothels with his father, an experience that was reflected in his early artwork.
As an adult, Picasso was notorious for his volatile relationships. Françoise Gilot, one of his longtime lovers, said that Picasso told her that women were “machines for suffering,” and that he viewed them as either “goddesses or doormats." She said he only wanted women who would fit neatly into one of his two categories, and mistreated anyone who did not.
Picasso's art often depicted women, and some of his models recalled instances where he became violent. He used an underage girl as a nude model, and took her to a convent after. During his relationship with Fernande Olivier, Picasso became jealous that she continued to model for other artists, and locked her in his apartment so that she could not go anywhere without him. He fell in love with Irene Lagut, who did not reciprocate his feelings. An angered Picasso kidnapped Lagut and took her to the outskirts of Paris, where she was later able to escape.
Several of Picasso's former lovers sought psychiatric treatment for the abuses they suffered during their relationship.
9."Abraham Lincoln signed the largest mass execution in American history." —Tharris296
A seldom-discussed moment of Abraham Lincoln's presidency was the largest mass execution in United States history.
On December 26, 1862, Lincoln ordered the public execution of 38 Dakota Indians as punishment for the Santee Sioux uprising, which took place in August 1862, and saw over 400 white settlers killed. During the execution, the men and boys began screaming their names and pleading, "I'm here, I'm here!" as hundreds of people watched.
The most controversial part of the execution was the fact that Lincoln treated the Native American men much differently than he treated Confederate leaders, who were responsible for the deaths of over 400,000 Union soldiers.
10."Frank Lloyd Wright. Narcissistic, abusive asshole." —moopie
Frank Lloyd Wright's love life was plagued by disaster from the start. He fell in love with Catherine, who he wed two years later. The pair had six children and lived lavishly, filling entire rooms with chandeliers and elaborate murals. Their romance ended when Wright left Catherine after falling for Martha Cheney, who was one of his client's wives. Wright and Martha, who was known as Mamah, fled to Europe, but Catherine refused to divorce him.
After returning to America, Wright and Mamah moved to Wisconsin, where they began to build a house. While Wright was on business in Chicago, one of the workers brutally murdered Mamah and her children. A heartbroken Wright soon fell in love with Miriam Noel, who had been sending Wright explicit messages under the guise of sympathy notes. Noel and Wright married, but soon divorced after Noel tried to get Wright in trouble for violating the Mann Act by transporting her over state lines for "immoral reasons."
Soon after the divorce, Wright married Olga Hinzenberg. The pair developed the Taliesin Fellowship, which was really a way for Wright to solicit aspiring architects to do all of the work on his properties for no payment. In fact, they had to pay tuition in order to participate. Wright forced his students to not only work for him, but to cook, clean, and run his errands. He also dictated his workers' sex lives, and would rotate the few women in the fellowship between the men, and forced them to sleep together.
Wright was also known for being narcissistic, and friends said that he had never met a mirror he didn't like. His behavior was also contradictory: While he built schools for Black children in the South, he also publicly used racist language.
11."James Watson, the guy who discovered DNA structure. Not only did he snub Rosalind Franklin, but he also downplayed her role in his memoir and made some really disparaging remarks about her character. His later career was also littered with racism, sexism, and antisemitism, most notably when he tried to use genetics to back his claims about African Americans being less intelligent than whites." —eklimen
James Watson, one of the four people who discovered DNA, tarnished his legacy with his history of racist and sexist comments, including several that downplayed the role of Rosalind Franklin, the only woman on the team.
In 1968, Watson released his memoir The Double Helix. In the book, he made several sexist comments about Franklin. He criticized her appearance for not being feminine, and downplayed her contributions to their discovery.
Watson has frequently made disparaging comments about Black people, blaming it on their genetics. In a PBS documentary, Watson said, “There’s a difference on the average between Blacks and whites in IQ tests. I would say the difference is genetic.” He also said that he didn't think social policies in Africa should resemble those of the rest of the world, because they didn't have the same levels of intelligence. Comments like these resulted in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where Watson was a director for years, stripping him of his titles.
