Screenshots from the 1976 issues of Ebony magazine regarding Shirley Temple Black

By Nordette Adams

These screenshots reveal the history behind some African-Americans' belief that Shirley Temple Black, the film star and Ambassador to Ghana, personally indulged racist ideologies. They are not presented to prove anything about the star herself. It must be noted that there is little evidence to support negative beliefs about the star concerning race. The screenshots merely show what black folks were saying about her in 1976. In an interview later in her life, she talked about racism and when she first became aware as a child that some people were treated differently, and she is fondly remembered in Ghana.

So, was she racist? I don't know. Most people, however, especially those raised in her era, have at the very least some thread of racial bias just as some people do today.

The day of her death, Twitter erupted with animosity toward Temple Black with tweets declaring her to be a racist. Some people seemed think so because she starred in movies with negative African-American stereotypes. This does not seem fair, however, since she was a child guided by adults when she was in those movies. But something else is at work as well in these assumptions. I suspect many of the younger people calling her a racist are repeating what they heard their parents and other elders say. They themselves don't know much about Temple other than her movies.

As you will see in the screenshots of letters below, black people in the 1960s and 70s had other concerns. They did not dislike Shirley Temple because of her movies. They distrusted her because of her political affiliations as an adult. However, to broaden perspective, when Shirley Temple came of age in the 1930s and 40s, many African-Americans were also Republicans. Back then the Republican Party was still considered to be "The Party of Lincoln." Consequently, it was associated with "free the slaves" and not the party of anti-Civil-Rights ideologies that arose in it later when it became associated with pacifying segregationists. So, Shirley Temple Black may have simply gone with the party as she recalled it in her youth just as some Civil Rights leaders did up to a point. Perhaps she did not see how much the GOP had changed as its strategies catered increasingly to winning and keeping the South. But then again, maybe she did. She also may have been just one more accomplished woman fulfilling the traditional woman's role by lining up with her husband's politics.

So, did Shirley Temple Black have more than her share of racism, paternal or otherwise? I don't know. Is it important to know whether she did? I'm not sure. Is the topic of racism today and yesterday often complex and troubling? Yes, it is..