Collection of Insane and Fun Facts
The Catholic Church closed a Louisiana parish in 1955 after its members refused to let a black priest be assigned to it.
A few local Catholics sent a petition to Pope Pius XII, requesting a papal decree supporting segregation. The papacy responded by describing racism as a major evil.
After returning from WWII, over 1 million black americans were denied the benefits of the GI bill for free education and low rate home loans.
150k+ First Nation kids were removed from their homes, over a span of 100 years, in order to “get rid of the Indian problem in Canada”.
In 1959 a white man from Texas disguised himself as a black man and traveled for six weeks on greyhound buses. After publishing his experiences with racism he was forced to move to Mexico for several years due to death threats.
Up to 25 percent of cowboys in the West during the later 19th century were black. Former slaves or born into a formerly enslaved family, they worked in an industry that despite facing inevitable racism was a generally less discriminatory than other industries at the time.
Martin Luther King Jr. said he experienced far more hatred in Chicago than he ever did in Alabama or Mississippi. King took part of the Chicago Housing Movement in August 1966 with thousands of local whites jeering, throwing bricks, and displaying Confederate and Nazi signs all over the city.
Black people in ancient Rome were not discriminated against because of their skin color or physical features. They were not excluded from any profession and there was no stigma against mixed race relationships. Classical writers did not attach social status or degree of humanity to skin color.
Korla Pandit, a prolific 1940’s musician from India and one of TV’s first musical stars, was actually an African American man from Missouri. His secret lasted until his death.
When asked for his thoughts on the migration of New Zealanders to Australia, the Prime Minister of New Zealand stated that the “annual exodus of Kiwis to Australia raised the average IQ of both countries”.
In 1925 an all-black baseball team in Wichita, Kansas played an exhibition against a local KKK Klavern, with Irish Catholics serving as umpires. The black team won 10-8.