Conferences on Objectives. Lincoln University, [Oxford], Pennsylvania, 3 May 1946. SIGNED BY ALBERT EINSTEIN. Tipped into Horace Mann Bond (1904-1972). The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1934. 8vo. Original red cloth.

Provenance: By descent from Horace Mann Bond.

An exceptionally rare article underscoring Albert Einstein's efforts in support of Black equality.

As Einstein embraced his American citizenship (granted in 1940) and identity, he grappled with the racism, segregation, and treatment of African Americans he noticed in his adopted country. In an article published in "Pageant" magazine, Einstein wrote: "There is a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of quality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skin. 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 whites toward their fellow citizens of darker complexion, particularly towards Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out."

By the mid-1940s, Einstein rarely accepted any speaking engagements, due in part to his poor health and in part to the fact that he deemed them "ostentatious." He made a rare exception, however, when in May 1946 he was invited to speak at HBCU Lincoln University by University President Horace Mann Bond. Einstein spoke eloquently in his address, "My trip to this institution was on behalf of a worthwhile cause...there is a separation of colored people from white people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of colored people. It's a disease of white people." A local photographer took images of Einstein during the address and also while he taught a class of all-Black students. The images, appraised on a 29 May 2017 episode of Antiques Roadshow, helped to widely inform the general public of Einstein's purposeful visit. Though his movements were typically covered closely by the white mainstream media, his visit to Lincoln went unnoticed.

The program offered here bears Einstein's bold signature and was kept as a souvenir by Lincoln University's President, Horace Mann Bond, who led the effort to invite Einstein to visit. It is laid in to Mann's first publication on African American education, a perfect encapsulation of Einstein's visit.

[African American History, African Americana, Black History, Manuscripts, Documents, Books, Letters, Ephemera, World War II, Civil Rights, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Albert Einstein, Theory of Relativity]