Muhammad Ali named the five vile racist stars who pretended to support civil rights. Muhammad Ali was stripped of the heavyweight championship, banned from boxing for 3 years, and faced prison for refusing to fight in a war he believed was racist, sacrificing everything including his title, his prime years, and his freedom because he refused to pretend.
And before he died, he exposed the stars who supported civil rights in public but became the opposite of what they stood for the moment the spotlight could no longer see them. Among the stars Ali encountered were people who publicly marched for civil rights, donated to the cause, and smiled alongside black performers while privately harboring the very attitudes they claimed to oppose.
One was the actor who flew to Washington to defend colleagues from a political witch hunt, and then publicly abandoned every single one of them to save his own career. Another was the woman whose voice defined American patriotism for millions, and who secretly recorded songs mocking black children.
And there was the biggest music star in the world who credited black culture for everything he had while profiting from it in ways the original black artists never could. Ali had a word for these people: hypocrites. And hypocrites in Ali’s view were worse than honest bigots because at least an honest bigot tells you where he stands.
These are the five most vile racist stars who pretended to support civil rights. Number five, Gary Cooper, the hero who turned informant. Gary Cooper ranked as the ultimate American hero on screen through performances in High Noon, Sergeant York, and For Whom the Bell Tolls that established him as the symbol of quiet courage, the man who stood alone against injustice, who did the right thing even when it was dangerous.
And Academy voters agreed by giving him the Oscar twice. What made Cooper’s betrayal so devastating was that people had genuine reason to believe he was principled. Because he was known in Hollywood as a quiet, thoughtful man who avoided controversy and treated colleagues with respect, someone who seemed like the real version of the characters he played on screen.
October 23rd of 1947 shattered that illusion when Cooper voluntarily appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a friendly witness, not subpoenaed, not forced, but choosing to go on his own and testifying that he had turned down certain scripts because he thought they were sympathetic to communist ideology, giving the committee exactly what it wanted.
A major Hollywood star voluntarily legitimizing their hunt. What connected Cooper’s testimony to racism was the reality of what the blacklist actually did. Because the committee used accusations of communism as a weapon against anyone who supported racial equality, and performers who attended civil rights meetings or spoke out against segregation found themselves targeted, which meant Cooper’s willing participation gave credibility to a machine that specifically punished people for supporting racial justice. Cooper maintained his heroic public image for the rest of his career, continuing to play men of courage and conviction on screen while having demonstrated in real life that his courage extended only as far as his career would allow. Because the man who stood alone against an entire town in High Noon could not stand alone against a congressional committee when it actually mattered. Ali, whose own refusal to cooperate with the government cost him three years of his career and nearly sent him to prison, found
Cooper’s willing cooperation to be the ultimate betrayal of the principles Cooper’s characters represented. A close associate recalled Ali saying that the difference between a real hero and a movie hero is that a real hero pays the price, and Cooper proved he was only willing to be brave when someone else wrote the script.
Number four, Al Jolson. Al Jolson was the most famous entertainer in the world when he starred in The Jazz Singer in 1927, the first major talking picture in cinema history. And he was also the most famous practitioner of blackface performance in American entertainment. The man whose image performing in dark makeup became the defining visual of racial mockery in American culture.
What made Jolson’s position on this list so complicated and so infuriating was that he was not a simple villain because behind the scenes Jolson actively helped black performers advance their careers at a time when virtually no white entertainer would personally funding medical treatment for black performers who could not afford it, championing Cab Calloway’s career, and reportedly insisting on integrated audiences at some of his performances decades before the entertainment industry began seriously discussing integration. Jolson genuinely believed he was honoring black culture through his performances, seeing his blackface act not as mockery but as tribute. A white man so in love with black music that he wanted to become black on stage and he told interviewers that black performers were the most talented artists in America and that he wanted to bring their artistry to audiences who would never see them perform in person. The problem was that Jolson’s version of honoring black culture meant putting on dark makeup and performing it himself rather than
stepping aside and letting actual black performers have the stage, making millions performing in a style that black artists created, becoming the biggest star in the world by wearing their identity as a costume, and reinforcing with every performance the idea that black artistry was something white performers could put on and take off at will while the actual black artists who created it were shut out of the very theaters where Jolson performed their traditions.
Ali found the Jolson contradiction to be one of the most revealing examples of how racism operated in American entertainment. And a colleague recalled Ali observing that Jolson said he loved black music so much he had to become black to perform it. And that was like saying you love someone’s house so much you break in and live there while they sleep outside.
And calling it a compliment does not make it any less of a crime. Number three, Humphrey Bogart, the defender who ran when it mattered. October of 1947 brought a moment that should have defined Humphrey Bogart’s legacy, when he led a group of Hollywood’s biggest stars on a flight to Washington to protest the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, calling themselves the Committee for the First Amendment with Bogart as their most visible member.
While the press covered his arrival as a major Hollywood statement against political overreach, the group’s mission was clear. Because they flew to Washington to defend colleagues who were being accused of communist sympathies, many of whom were targeted specifically because of their support for civil rights and racial equality.
And Bogart appeared in photographs looking determined and principled, making statements about defending American freedom, looking exactly like the hero he played in Casablanca, a man who reluctantly but courageously did the right thing when it mattered most. And then the pressure came. Studios threatened consequences for anyone who continued their support.
The press turned hostile. Advertisers pulled back, and Bogart, the man who had flown to Washington to defend his colleagues, published a retraction in the press calling his trip ill-advised and saying he had been duped into supporting communist causes, publicly abandoning every single person he had flown to Washington to defend.
The colleagues Bogart left behind included performers whose careers were destroyed because they had supported civil rights, with writers, actors, and directors who had attended integration rallies or supported racial equality losing everything. Some never worked in Hollywood again. Some left the country entirely.
Some changed their names and wrote under pseudonyms for a fraction of what they had previously earned. And Bogart returned to his mansion in Los Angeles, resumed making films, and continued to be celebrated as one of the greatest actors in American cinema as if nothing had happened. The 10 people who became known as the Hollywood 10, the group that Bogart had flown to Washington to defend, served prison sentences and were blacklisted for years while Bogart’s career continued without interruption. The math was simple. His principles lasted exactly as long as they were free. What made Bogart’s betrayal uniquely devastating was that he had given people hope because when one of the biggest stars in the world flies to Washington to defend you, you believe you might survive. And when that same star publicly abandons you weeks later to protect his own career, the message is clear that your principles are not worth his paycheck. Ali, who refused to recant his beliefs even when it cost him his championship, his livelihood, and nearly his freedom,
found Bogart’s reversal to be the ultimate example of performative courage. And a close associate recalled Ali saying that Bogart flew to Washington like a lion and flew home like a mouse. And that the people he abandoned paid for his cowardice with their careers while he kept making movies like nothing happened.
And that is the difference between pretending to have courage and actually having it. Number two, Kate Smith, the voice of American patriotism who recorded songs mocking black children. Kate Smith’s voice defined American patriotism for an entire generation with her rendition of God Bless America becoming so closely associated with American identity that the New York Yankees played it during the seventh inning stretch.
The Philadelphia Flyers considered it their lucky charm and she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan because for millions of Americans she was the sound of the country itself. What millions of Americans never knew was that the woman whose voice represented the nation’s highest ideals had recorded songs that mocked black people including children in terms so explicit that modern audiences can barely believe they were ever put on a record.
1931 brought the recording that would eventually destroy Smith’s legacy. A song called That’s Why Were Born whose title alone reveals its content. And the recording was widely distributed and commercially successful meaning Smith profited directly from a song built entirely on racial mockery. She also recorded Heaven, a song performed on a segment of a children’s radio show in which Smith sang to orphan black children about a fantasy heaven filled with watermelons, pork chops, and other racial stereotypes. Singing to children, black children in an orphanage, choosing a song built on stereotypes designed to reduce their entire identity to a punchline. When these recordings resurfaced decades later, organizations that had celebrated Smith’s patriotic legacy were forced to confront the contradiction. The New York Yankees removed her recording of God Bless America from their rotation. The Philadelphia Flyers covered and then removed a statue of Smith that
had stood outside their arena. The woman celebrated as the voice of American values turned out to have recorded material that contradicted everything those values were supposed to represent. Smith’s defenders argued that the songs were products of their time and that Smith should not be judged by modern standards.
And they pointed out that other performers of the era recorded similar material, which was true but missed the point entirely because the issue was not that Smith existed in a racist era, but that she was celebrated for decades as the voice of American values while those recordings sat in the archives waiting to be discovered.
The nation built statues of her. The nation played her voice at its most sacred events. And the nation never once asked what else that voice had been used for. Ali, who grew up in Louisville, Kentucky where black children could not try on clothes in downtown department stores, sit near white people in movie theaters, or buy homes in white neighborhoods, found the products of their time defense to be exactly the kind of excuse that allowed racism to persist.
A close associate recalled Ali saying that singing to black orphan children about a heaven made of watermelons was not a product of any time but cruelty. And that the fact that she could sing God Bless America to a stadium and no one asked which Americans she was blessing told you everything about who this country was really built for.
Number one, Elvis Presley, the king who built his kingdom on borrowed land. Elvis Presley sold over 500 million records worldwide, starred in 31 films, performed in front of more people than any solo entertainer who had ever lived, and was crowned the king of rock and roll, a title that for decades nobody questioned whether it belonged to him.
The relationship between Elvis music stands as the most complicated and consequential cultural exchange in American entertainment history because Elvis grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, and later Memphis, Tennessee, attending black churches, absorbing gospel music, learning the blues from black musicians, and developing a style rooted in genuine love for and immersion in black musical traditions.
And nobody who knew Elvis in those early years doubted that his connection to black music was real. The problem was not that Elvis loved black music, but what happened when man performing black music became the biggest star in the world while the black artists who created that music remained shut out of the mainstream success Elvis enjoyed.
Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Big Mama Thornton, and dozens of other black artists had been performing the same music for years before Elvis arrived. And Big Mama Thornton recorded Hound Dog a full 3 years before Elvis made it a number one hit because the difference was not talent, but the fact that America in the 1950s would buy rock and roll from a white face, but not from the black faces that created it.
Elvis knew this and credited black musicians as the originators of the music he performed throughout his career, speaking respectfully about the traditions he grew up in, and appearing on the surface to be a man who acknowledged his debt to black culture. What complicated that image was what Elvis did with his power as it grew because rather than using his platform to elevate the black artists whose traditions made him famous, Elvis allowed a system to operate around him that exploited black music while excluding black artists from the profits and recognition. Colonel Tom Parker built an empire that profited from black musical innovation while doing nothing to address the inequality that made Elvis’s success possible. December 21st of 1970 brought the moment that revealed everything when Elvis visited President Richard Nixon at the White House and told him that the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. And the following year Elvis visited the FBI and told director J. Edgar Hoover that
the Beatles laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their suggestive music and unkempt appearances, which meant the man who built his career on music that mainstream America once considered dangerous was now telling the government that other musicians were the dangerous ones.
Ali and Elvis existed in the same universe of American fame during the 1960s and 1970s, and their approaches to power could not have been more different. Ali used his platform to challenge the system that oppressed black Americans, and it cost him everything because his title was stripped, his passport was taken, he was banned from boxing for 3 years during the prime of his career.
He faced 5 years in prison, and he never backed down. Elvis used his platform to visit the president and offered to help the government monitor the very counterculture movements fighting for the same communities whose music made him rich, losing nothing, risking nothing, sitting in the Oval Office wearing a cape and a belt buckle while Ali sat at home unable to work because he had told the truth about a racist war.
A close associate recalled Ali putting it simply, observing that Elvis got rich singing black music and then went to the White House to shake hands with the man who was trying to silence the black people who created it, and that is not borrowing someone’s culture but stealing it, and then helping the police arrest the person you stole it from.
What Elvis represented on this list was not the obvious racism of a John Wayne or the casual bigotry of a Bing Crosby, but something more subtle and in Ali’s view more damaging. The ability of a white artist to absorb black culture, profit from it enormously, receive credit and adoration for it, and then fail to use any of that power to change the system that kept the original black artists in the shadows.
Elvis was crowned king of a genre that black Americans invented and the coronation happened because America was willing to celebrate the music only when a white face was performing it. Ali, who refused to let anyone else define him or take credit for what he had built, found the Elvis situation to be the clearest example of how racism operated in American entertainment because it was not always about hatred, but sometimes about theft and the most effective thieves were the ones who smiled while they did it. What Muhammad Ali understood about pretenders. Muhammad Ali sacrificed the prime years of his career, his heavyweight championship, and nearly his freedom because he refused to pretend, refusing to fight in a war he believed was racist, refusing to change his name back to Cassius Clay, refusing to smile and go along with a system built on the oppression of his people, and paying for that refusal with everything he had. Gary Cooper played heroes on screen and then cooperated with a committee that destroyed the careers of civil rights
supporters. Al Jolson claimed to honor black culture while wearing it as a costume and keeping the profits for himself. Humphrey Bogart flew to Washington like a lion and flew home like a mouse while the people he abandoned served prison sentences. Kate Smith sang God Bless America while recording songs that mocked black orphan children.
And Elvis Presley built the biggest career in music history on traditions created by black artists and then visited the White House to help the government monitor the people whose culture had made him king. Ali saw through all of them because he understood something most Americans did not want to accept, that the most dangerous racists in America were not the ones who announced their hatred publicly, but the ones who hid it behind a smile, a donation, a march, or a song.
The ones who took from black culture while giving nothing back. The ones who performed allyship when it was convenient and abandoned it when it cost them anything at all. Ali paid the price for his beliefs. The five people on this list never paid for theirs. And that more than anything else is what made them vile.
Which revelation shocked you most? Did you know about these documented contradictions before today? Share your thoughts in the comments below. And if you found this valuable, do not forget to like and subscribe for more untold stories from entertainment’s hidden past. Thanks for watching and we will see you in the next one.
