On our flight back from Madrid to New York, I finished my North Korean defector book The Girl with Seven Names, and watched two movies: Race the 2016 movie, and The Man Who Knew Infinity. Race is a movie that highlights the racial tensions of the 1930s in the U.S., and how that compared with Nazi Germany during the same time. Segregation was all over the U.S. at that time, where blacks were separated from whites for everything from entrances to bathrooms to businesses. Yet, when Jesse Owens comes to Berlin, he is confused and surprised when he is told that there are no segregated dormitories for blacks and whites. In Nazi Germany, he can actually coexist with whites, and it is fine. So when Hitler gets negative press in American newspapers for not congratulating Owens for winning the first race, Owens comes back to the U.S. and says, “Hitler didn’t snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.” The often elevated and revered FDR didn’t even shake his hand or acknowledge his four-time winnings at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It wasn’t until 40 years later that he would be recognized and given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ford.

FDR isn’t the only president who is forgotten for terrible things he did and failed to do. JFK was similar in that he didn’t really seem to care about civil rights until he was absolutely forced to; this is highlighted very vividly at the National Civil Rights Museum in Tennessee that we visited in October. I mean, FDR and JFK were rich white men in power; why did they truly need to care about people who looked different than them? It’s all about pandering to their parties and making sure they get the vote. It’s frustrating to be reminded of these sobering facts at at time when we’re about to usher in one of the most openly racist and intolerant presidents in history.