# Bullshit history that turned out to be true **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 2, 2021, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541 "2021-07-02T21:30:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 16
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2022, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/310 "2022-08-03T23:56:49Z")
I’m barely old enough to remember when we drove to Florida once, and at a gas station in Alabama the washroom door said “Whites Only”. Being from Canada, which was very white at the time, I had no clue what that meant until my dad explained it. The idea of slavery in ancient times had a certain sense. In the good old days (like Roman times) there was no welfare, there was no social safety net. Slavery for some was the slave-driving work-to-death we imagine, for others it was just a means to ensure that everyone was fed and house by someone, so as to avoid the sort of desperate street-people mob that could be the result. Many laws about slaves were written to prevent that result. The North had slaves - but it was seen as “not good” and even by 1800 was on the way out. Massachusetts for example between 1783 and 1790 effectively eliminated slavery. But it was never a useful arrangement for agriculture or industry, the way it was in the South, so it was not a critical part of the states’ social arrangements, and there was never anywhere near the level of slave population found in the South - although freed and escaped slaves were allowed to live free. (Not to say they were embraced as equals - nobody was free of racism and xenophobia). Jim Crow is another good example - I spend many times in places like New York and never saw “Whites Only” signs. I suspect there were some, and there was social pressure enforced segregation in many cases, but it was not the institution enforced by laws and signage the way it was in the south, AFAIK. (I am open to correction). I assume much of the more egregious exampled arrived with the migration north of freed slaves at the turn of the century. The central question of this discussion, however, is to what extent did anti-black racism direct the social and political activity of the states? My suggestion is that it was not the front-of-mind issue in the North, especially at the time of the Revolution, that the 1619 Project book suggests. That it was the preoccupation of the Southern states, I have no doubts. . ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/311 "2022-08-04T00:14:48Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > : Jim Crow laws. > Everybody–north and south, was okay with it, remember? For a hundred years, nobody cared, nobody protested, I guess Black people are once again included as nobodies. ---
**Author:** ![Frosted\_Glass](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frosted_glass/32/3926_2.png) [@Frosted\_Glass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frosted_Glass)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/312 "2022-08-04T00:42:25Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > more modern, social custom which was once common: Jim Crow laws. > Everybody–north and south, was okay with it, remember? For a hundred years, nobody cared, nobody protested, nobody called for boycotting Southern businesses, nobody insisted that schools emphasize teaching about Jim Crow laws in every subject, from math to history. > Jim Crow was just the way things were . No reason to make > a big issue over it. I’m pretty sure my parents, aunts, uncles who grew up with Jim Crow would vehemently disagree with you. This thread is still in “Factual Questions” so I would love to see some evidence that no one cared about segregation and instead everyone decided all at once to change laws out of the kindness of their hearts. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/313 "2022-08-04T01:35:41Z")
Yes, chappachula’s claim is pretty obviously absurd. For example, [the influential NAACP was founded precisely in order to combat the injustices of the Jim Crow era, including its legal discrimination:](https://naacp.org/about/our-history) > [@](#): > > Echoing the focus of Du Bois’ Niagara Movement for civil rights, which began in 1905, NAACP aimed to secure for all people the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, which promised an end to slavery, provide equal protection of the law, and the right for all men to vote, respectively. […] > > A series of early court battles, including a victory against a discriminatory Oklahoma law that regulated voting by means of a grandfather clause (_Guinn v. States_ , 1910), helped establish the NAACP’s importance as a legal advocate. […] > > In 1930, Walter F. White succeeded Johnson as executive secretary. […] White, a friend and adviser to First Lady – and NAACP national board member – Eleanor Roosevelt, met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to outlaw job discrimination in the armed forces, defense industries, and the agencies created by the New Deal. […] > > Throughout the 1940s, the NAACP saw enormous growth in membership, recording roughly 600,000 members by 1946. It continued to act as a legislative and legal advocate, and for an end to state-mandated segregation. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/314 "2022-08-04T01:45:58Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Your argument that the North didn’t think much about slavery because it was seen as commonplace, proves that slavery was indeed woven into the fabric of American identity in both the North and the South. It also ignores the massively contentious disputes about the legitimacy of slavery that continued to rage in the US from its founding right up through the Civil War, especially in the North. Even after slavery had been outlawed in northern states, there was still profound disagreement about whether southern states should be allowed to continue permitting it. ---
**Author:** ![fedman1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e495f1/32.png) [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/315 "2022-08-04T03:15:56Z")
topologist–historian saying that about 18th century Bill Clinton who was known to sleep with married and single women, Black or White–Really? too “feminine”? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/316 "2022-08-04T03:29:34Z")
? Are you questioning Topologist’s claim that for a long time many historians denied that Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings? Because right there in Topologist’s link it says: > [@](#): > > In the same documentary, though, historian Stephen Mitchell is quoted as believing “anyone who has a sense of integrity will recognize integrity in Jefferson and won’t believe that there was an atom of possibility that the Sally Hemings story happened, since Jefferson was such a deeply compassionate man and felt the way he did about slavery.” However ready you personally might be to believe that Thomas Jefferson was more sexually promiscuous/adulterous than Bill Clinton and Donald Trump combined, the fact remains that a lot of people in the past were very unwilling to consider it credible, due to their belief in Jefferson’s “integrity”. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/317 "2022-08-04T03:32:48Z")
and theres ample documentation of a whole industry in the north that helped logistically support slavery like wholesale clothing ads where you could buy 200 pairs of cheap no quality overalls and dresses and companies that shipped low-quality food items like dried meat and such ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/318 "2022-08-04T03:56:52Z")
In the 20th century AFAICT. In the 19th it seemed to be a well known thing. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/319 "2022-08-04T04:09:14Z")
“Well known” to some, at least in the sense of “strongly and credibly believed although without conclusive documentary evidence”, but nonetheless vehemently denied by others. AFAICT the denial of the Jefferson-Hemings connection goes back as far as the first rumors about the Jefferson-Hemings connection. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/320 "2022-08-04T04:13:48Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > and theres ample documentation of a whole industry in the north that helped logistically support slavery like wholesale clothing ads where you could buy 200 pairs of cheap no quality overalls and dresses and companies that shipped low-quality food items like dried meat and such So many businessmen in the north put profits ahead of principles. Again, I’m sure glad we don’t do that today. Again, someone making a profit off of something reprehensible does not mean they wholeheartedly support its moral basis. I doubt many sex workers think it is a noble profession that should come out of the shadows, for example. Perusing a list of presidential elections - for example, 1808 the controversy was the Embargo Act against the European powers, the impressment of American sailors by Britain - which was significant to the trade in the north. 1812, there was a war and northerners had designs on expansion into Canada. By 1816 there was the national bank, protective tariffs, and the peace treaty finalized in 1815. It was by 1820 that slavery became a major dispute - the status of Missouri became an issue, and the free vs. slave issue became important in American national politics. But that does not mean it mattered inside the northern states which by then had effectively ended slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/321 "2022-08-04T04:23:02Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > Perusing a list of presidential elections - for example, 1808 the controversy was the Embargo Act against the European powers, the impressment of American sailors by Britain - which was significant to the trade in the north. 1812, there was a war and northerners had designs on expansion into Canada. By 1816 there was the national bank, protective tariffs, and the peace treaty finalized in 1815. > > It was by 1820 that slavery became a major dispute […] But that does not mean it mattered inside the northern states which by then had effectively ended slavery. That’s a hell of a jump you’re making there from “slavery was not one of the three or four most important issues in US national elections before 1820” to “slavery didn’t matter inside northern states”. The former does not imply the latter. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/322 "2022-08-04T04:28:13Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > However ready you personally might be to believe that Thomas Jefferson was more sexually promiscuous/adulterous than Bill Clinton and Donald Trump combined, the fact remains that a lot of people in the past were very unwilling to consider it credible, due to their belief in Jefferson’s “integrity”. That DNA test does not mean Thomas Jefferson. > **[Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings -...](https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-a-brief-account/research-report-on-jefferson-and-hemings/ii-assessment-of-dna-study/)** > > Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings _This study by itself does not establish that Hemings’s father was Thomas Jefferson, only that Hemings’s father was a Jefferson._ …_There remained eight out of the twenty-five for whom age and proximity warranted further documentary investigation. These include Randolph Jefferson and his five sons (Isham, Thomas, Jr., Field, Robert, and Lilburne) as well as two grandsons of Field Jefferson (George and John Garland Jefferson). While each of these individuals had some interaction with Thomas Jefferson and some spent time at or in the vicinity of Monticello, most had no documented presence at Monticello during the times when Sally Hemings conceived her childre_n So, other fathers are possible- but comparing diaries and such, Thomas is the most likely. However, there is no certainty. Saying Thomas Jefferson is the most likely Jefferson is correct. But one can argue several other possibilities without being a crank. Thus Kimstu here is correct. > [@Kimstu](#): > > “Well known” to some, at least in the sense of “strongly and credibly believed although without conclusive documentary evidence”, but nonetheless vehemently denied by others. ---
**Author:** ![fedman1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e495f1/32.png) [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/323 "2022-08-04T05:01:48Z")
I have to disagree about the “Revolution” part, or at least post-Revolution. Slavery was very important throughout the Constitution framing (note the 3/5 man designation of Blacks) ---
**Author:** ![fedman1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e495f1/32.png) [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/324 "2022-08-04T05:06:09Z")
while there may not have been “White only” signs, in the 1930-1970s the Midwest and California had restricted covenants that prevented you from selling or renting to Blacks, Jews, etc ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/325 "2022-08-04T05:22:47Z")
And AFAIK in the Northeast too, at least for part of that period. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/326 "2022-08-04T06:56:13Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > In the good old days (like Roman times) there was no welfare, there was no social safety net. What do you think the “bread” part of “bread and circuses” was? ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/327 "2022-08-04T19:31:34Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > That’s a hell of a jump you’re making there from “slavery was not one of the three or four most important issues in US national elections before 1820” to “slavery didn’t matter inside northern states”. The former does not imply the latter. My point was that the 1619 Project purports that slavery was a major and driving issue in the entire USA at the time of the framing of the constitution and for years afterward. I’m suggesting that for the northern states, it was one of many issues and not the foremost one, not “it did not matter”. The elimination of slavery (by steps) does not have appeared to excite a great deal of discussion in the North at that time. > [@fedman1](#): > > I have to disagree about the “Revolution” part, or at least post-Revolution. Slavery was very important throughout the Constitution framing (note the 3/5 man designation of Blacks) Obviously, slavery was a really big deal to the south. Really big deal. So the northern states compromised. The fact that they even settled on a lesser number suggests the north was not willing to accept the same point of view as the south. However, the states needed to stick together or Britain might return to pick them off one by one so a compromise was called for. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/328 "2022-08-04T19:50:50Z")
As for Jefferson, > According to her son Madison’s memoir, Hemings became pregnant by Jefferson in Paris. She was about 16 at the time. > According to Madison Hemings, Sally’s first child died soon after her return from Paris. Sally was Jefferson’s daughter’s maid (or whatever) and accompanied her to Paris for 2 years. She returned to America from Paris (where she was legally free) on condition any of her children all be freed at age 21. That arrangement suggests that (a) Jefferson had a reason to treat her special, and (b) she expected to have more children that Jefferson would also treat special. Plus, (c) it’s unlikely that all the other possible culprits were around when Jefferson was in Paris. We start the story with a 44-year-old widower and a lively 15yo in a foreign country - what do we think happened? Also, in case Jefferson was a lingering racist, Sally was 3/4 white and looked a lot like his late wife, according to reports. Not surprising, considering her father was also Jefferson’s late wife’s father. To quote O Henry - “The race is not always to the swiftest, nor the contest to the strongest… but that’s the way to bet.” Occam would agree. ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2022, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/329 "2022-08-04T20:17:35Z")
Whoah. If I may be so bold as to offer more information on the previous attribution, I just Googled it because I thought it was by Damon Runyon The original non-cynical version is from Ecclesiastes 9:11, but the more current version… [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/04/race-swift/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/04/race-swift/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541.md?page=15) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541.md?page=17)