You know that old saying about never meeting your heroes because they’ll only let you down?
History is a lot like that, but with way more bronze statues and significantly more baggage. We’re currently seeing a massive trend: 62% of Americans believe that learning the “negative or dark facts” of history is vital to truly understanding our past, according to the Atlantic International University.
It’s not about “canceling” anyone; it’s about getting the whole story. Data from 2024 shows that 55% of us now agree we shouldn’t memorialize historical figures who actively supported racial hierarchy or segregation.
The bottom line is that we can respect the work someone did while still calling out the deep-seated racism they carried with them.
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson is usually praised for leading us through World War I and for trying to build a peaceful world order. He’s the Nobel Peace Prize winner who dreamed up the League of Nations. But when it came to his own country, Wilson was a major architect of racial segregation.
Before he took the keys to the White House, the federal government was actually one of the few places where an integrated workforce could thrive. By 1912, African Americans made up at least 10% of federal employees. Wilson basically put an end to that progress almost as soon as he was inaugurated.
The Miller Center notes that he allowed his cabinet secretaries to introduce segregation into federal agencies like the Post Office and the Treasury Department. He claimed this was a way to “reduce tensions” in the workplace. In reality, it was a devastating blow to the growing Black middle class in Washington, D.C.
The data shows that this wasn’t just a social snub; it was an economic disaster. Segregation effectively created a “glass ceiling” that blocked Black professionals from getting higher-paying jobs. Historians have found that Wilson’s policies led to a relative decline in homeownership rates for Black civil servants for decades.
Then there was the whole movie night at the White House. In 1915, Wilson hosted a screening of The Birth of a Nation, a film that famously glorified the Ku Klux Klan. By giving this film a “presidential endorsement,” many historians argue he helped fuel the KKK’s massive comeback in the 1920s.
When activists like William Monroe Trotter confronted him about these policies, Wilson didn’t back down. He actually told Trotter that segregation was in the “best interest” of Black workers. This kind of dismissal helped bake systemic inequality into the very bones of the federal government.
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill is the ultimate symbol of British grit and the hero who stood up to the Nazis. He’s a global icon of freedom, and rightfully so. But his views on the “native races” of the British Empire were incredibly hierarchical and often flat-out racist.
Churchill believed in a human ladder where white Protestant Christians sat at the very top. He wasn’t shy about saying so, either. He once told his colleagues that he didn’t think any “great wrong” had been done to the Native Americans or the original inhabitants of Australia.
To him, these people had been replaced by a “stronger race” or a “higher-grade race.” This worldview had real, deadly consequences during the 1943 Bengal Famine in India. While millions were starving, Churchill was recorded as saying the famine was their own fault for “breeding like rabbits.“
The debate over his culpability is intense among historians today. Some experts argue he did what he could in the middle of a world war. Others, like Madhusree Mukerjee, point out that he actively refused to divert grain shipments from Australia to save Indian lives.
Churchill’s own Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, was often horrified by the Prime Minister’s language. Amery’s diaries are full of Churchill’s “racist jokes” and “darky” comments. Churchill reportedly called Indians a “beastly people with a beastly religion.”
It’s a brutal legacy to balance. He saved Western democracy from Hitler, but he also presided over the deaths of millions of his own subjects. For many in India and Africa, Churchill isn’t just a hero; he’s a reminder of the brutal side of imperialism.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal.” It’s the sentence that basically started the American project. However, Jefferson’s personal life and his academic writings tell a much more complicated story about his views on race.
Jefferson enslaved more than 600 people over the course of his life. Even while he was calling slavery a “moral depravity,” he was profiting from it every single day. In his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia, he wrote that he suspected Black people were “inferior to white people.”
He didn’t just stop at skin color. He argued that Black people were mentally inferior, saying they lacked the capacity for reason or imagination. He even famously wrote that he didn’t think a Black person could ever be found who could understand Euclid’s complex investigations.
Jefferson couldn’t imagine a world where white and Black people lived together as equals. He believed they were “two separate nations” that would inevitably lead to a race war. His “solution” to slavery was to eventually free everyone and then ship them out of the country.
He once compared holding onto slavery to having “a wolf by the ear.” You can’t safely hold on, but you’re too scared to let go. This fear and his belief in racial hierarchy meant that he never truly fought for immediate abolition, even when he had the power to lead.
Today, the debate over Jefferson’s monuments is still raging. A 2024 PRRI poll found that 55% of Americans agree we shouldn’t memorialize figures who supported segregation or racial hierarchy. Jefferson remains a symbol of America’s most significant promise—and its most painful contradiction.
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger is widely respected as the pioneer who brought us modern birth control. She founded what would become Planned Parenthood and fought for women to have control over their own bodies. But Sanger’s legacy is also deeply intertwined with the eugenics movement of the early 20th century.
She believed that “uncontrolled fertility” was the primary driver of poverty and disease. This led her to work closely with eugenicists who wanted to improve the human race by breeding out “unfit” traits. Her “Negro Project,” launched in 1939, remains a significant point of controversy today.
The project was designed to bring contraception to Black communities in the South. In a letter to Clarence Gamble, she wrote, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” While her supporters say she was just trying to avoid misunderstandings, critics see it as evidence of a darker motive.
Sanger often used terms like “human weeds” to describe people she felt shouldn’t be breeding. She also supported the voluntary sterilization of people with hereditary disabilities. Her view was that some people were “least intelligent and fit” to rear children.
However, she also insisted that birth control should be an individual choice, not something forced by the state. She worked with Black leaders, including W.E.B. Du Bois, to secure community support for the project. She saw it as a way to help an “underprivileged” group rise through education.
The tension in her legacy is real. She gave women the tools for liberation, but did so within a framework that categorized some lives as more valuable than others. Today, organizations are still working to separate her medical achievements from her eugenics-tinted worldview.
Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi is the global face of non-violent resistance and the hero of Indian independence. He inspired everyone from MLK to Nelson Mandela. But before he was the “Mahatma,” Gandhi was a young lawyer in South Africa who held deeply prejudiced views against Black Africans.
During his 21 years in South Africa, Gandhi primarily fought for the rights of Indian settlers. He was offended that Indians were often “classed with the natives of South Africa—Kaffir race.” He argued that Indians had an ancient civilization, while he looked down on Africans as “savages.”
He used the word “kaffir” frequently, which at the time was common but is now a hateful slur. Gandhi actually campaigned for racial segregation in South Africa, but only to ensure that Indians were treated better than Black Africans.
Historians note that Gandhi’s views eventually evolved as he matured. By the time he left South Africa in 1914, he had formed alliances with Black leaders like John Dube. Even Nelson Mandela said we should forgive Gandhi’s early prejudices because he was “an immature settler” at the time.
But for many, those early quotes are still a bridge too far. In 2018, students at the University of Ghana successfully petitioned to have a statue of Gandhi removed. They argued that a man who once called Africans “savage” shouldn’t be celebrated on their campus.
It’s a powerful lesson in how people can change. Gandhi went from being a man focused on his own group’s status to a global icon for oppressed people worldwide. But we can’t ignore the fact that his journey toward equality started from a place of deep racial bias.
Theodore Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt is the “Rough Rider” and the man who basically gave us our National Parks. He’s a symbol of American adventure and strength. But Roosevelt’s worldview was heavily influenced by Social Darwinism—the idea that some races were naturally “fitter” than others.
In a 1905 speech, he referred to white people as the “forward race” and Black people as the “backward race.” He believed it was the duty of the “forward” race to train and help the “backward” one. He also held some of the most disturbing views on Native Americans of any U.S. President.
Roosevelt once said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every $10 are.” He viewed Native Americans as an obstacle to progress and believed they had no “real title” to the land.
Roosevelt’s actions often backed up his bigoted rhetoric. In 1906, he dishonorably discharged an entire battalion of Black soldiers in Brownsville, Texas, after a white man was killed. He did this despite a total lack of evidence, and the Army didn’t clear their names until 1972.
He did have a few “progressive” moments, like when he invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House. But after the massive backlash from white Southerners, he never extended such an invitation again. He was willing to be a pioneer once, but he wasn’t willing to “buck the code” for good.
Today, his legacy is being re-evaluated in real time. The American Museum of Natural History removed its famous statue of him in 2022 because of how it depicted the Native and African men beside him. Roosevelt remains a giant of history, but one who carried a heavy burden of prejudice.
John Wayne
John Wayne is the “Duke,” the ultimate symbol of the American Western and a massive box-office star for decades. To many, he is the image of the American hero. But a 1971 interview with Playboy magazine pulled the curtain back on some incredibly bigoted views.
In the interview, Wayne was shockingly direct about his thoughts on racial hierarchy. He stated, “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.” He argued that he didn’t believe in giving leadership roles to “irresponsible people.”
He also dismissed any feeling of guilt over the history of slavery. He famously said he didn’t feel bad about the fact that people were slaves five or ten generations ago. To him, it was just ancient history, with nothing to do with the present.
His comments on Native Americans were just as blunt. He said he didn’t feel we did anything wrong in “stealing” the country from them. He claimed the Indians were “selfishly” trying to keep the land for themselves and that taking it was just a matter of survival.
These quotes weren’t just a product of an older era. Even in 1971, they were seen as retrograde and extreme. Wayne was reacting to the advances of the Civil Rights Movement with what some historians call “racist rage.“
Because of these comments, there has been a massive push to rename the John Wayne Airport in California. While some fans still defend him as a man of his time, the data shows that 25% of Black Americans support removing such monuments entirely.
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin is the father of modern biology. His theories on evolution changed how we understand life on Earth forever. But Darwin was also a Victorian gentleman who applied his theories of “survival of the fittest” to human races in ways that we find horrifying today.
In his book The Descent of Man, Darwin established a clear racial hierarchy. He was convinced that the white European races were evolutionarily “more advanced” than others. He even argued that the “favoured races” would eventually replace the “savage” ones.
He believed that “scientific” differences between races were fixed in nature. For instance, he claimed that Black people had mental abilities that were “rudimentary” compared to white Europeans. He also held very conventional, sexist views about women being less evolved than men.
While Darwin himself was against slavery, his theories provided the intellectual fuel for “scientific racism.” Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould once noted that biological arguments for racism increased “by orders of magnitude” after Darwin.
Imperialists used Darwin’s work to justify colonizing Africa and Asia. They argued that because Europeans were “fitter,” it was only natural for them to dominate others. This “Social Darwinism” became a global trend that justified everything from segregation to genocide.
It’s a reminder that even the most brilliant scientific minds aren’t immune to their culture’s prejudices. We still use Darwin’s theories to save lives and understand nature, but we’ve had to throw away the parts where he tried to rank human beings.
Henry Ford
Henry Ford is a legend of American industry. He invented the assembly line and made the car affordable for everyone. But Ford was also the most powerful anti-Semite in American history.
He bought a newspaper called The Dearborn Independent and used it to spread hateful lies about Jewish people. His series of articles, “The International Jew,” reached hundreds of thousands of readers in the 1920s. He blamed Jewish people for everything from the world economy to the “downfall of Anglo-Saxon values.”
Ford’s influence was so significant that Adolf Hitler actually praised him. Hitler kept a portrait of Ford in his office and referred to him as an inspiration. There were even documented business connections between Ford Motors and the Nazi regime.
Ford’s propaganda was relentlessly focused on the idea of a “Jewish conspiracy” to control the world. He even forced his car dealerships to distribute the newspaper to every customer who bought a Model T. This helped normalize anti-Semitism in small towns across the country.
The “psychic damage” to the Jewish community in the U.S. was profound. Many began to fear for their safety and questioned if they would ever truly be accepted as “real” Americans. Even though Ford apologized in 1927, his books are still used by extremist groups today.
He was a genius of production, but a man of deep, obsessive hatreds. It’s a dark shadow over the man who helped build the American Dream.
Francis Galton
Francis Galton was a brilliant polymath who basically invented the modern field of statistics. If you’ve ever heard of “correlation” or “fingerprints,” you’re using his work. But Galton’s most famous “invention” was the term and the field of eugenics.
He believed that human traits like intelligence and morality were entirely inherited. Galton wanted to use the power of the state to ensure that only “fit” people were allowed to reproduce. He speculated broadly about the “innate racial differences” in character and ability.
His work wasn’t just a personal opinion; it became the “scientific” foundation for systemic racism. By treating human beings like livestock to be bred, he gave a veneer of objectivity to racial bias.
Many of the fathers of modern statistics, like Karl Pearson and Ronald A. Fisher, were also staunch eugenicists. They used the math we still use today to argue for “cleansing” the human race of “inferior” groups. This “hidden base of the iceberg” is something scientists are still struggling to address today.
Galton’s ideas eventually crossed the ocean and inspired the forced sterilization laws in the U.S. and the Nazi racial laws in Germany. While his math is essential, his worldview was built on the idea that some people were worth less than others.
It’s a chilling reminder that brilliance in one field doesn’t make you a moral authority. We can use the tools Galton gave us without accepting the hateful ideology he tried to build with them.
Key Takeaway
History is complicated and rarely fits into a simple “hero” or “villain” box. Whether it’s the industrial genius of Henry Ford or the peaceful resistance of Mahatma Gandhi, these figures show that outstanding achievements can coexist with deep-seated racism. The 2024 and 2025 data show that Americans are more interested than ever in the “negative or dark facts” of our past because they help us build a more honest future. We can respect what these people built while still calling out the prejudices they held—it’s the only way to truly learn from where we’ve been.
Disclaimer – This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information. It is not intended to be professional advice.
Disclosure: This article was developed with the assistance of AI and was subsequently reviewed, revised, and approved by our editorial team.
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