A Moral question

The story of Madison Grant a naturalist

When examining historical figures, it is natural to categorize them as belonging to either the villainous or heroic camp. This is easy to do with someone like Adolf Hitler, clearly a villain or George Washington who despite shortcomings clearly belongs amongst the heroes. There are many, however, who do not fit neatly into either group.

Such is the case with the American, Madison Grant (1865-1937). Descended from a prestigious family, Grant went to Yale as an undergraduate and got his law degree from Columbia University. In lieu of practicing law, Madison Grant became a naturalist. Never marrying, he pursued a full-time career that brought marked accomplishments. Grant played a leading role in the movement to preserve the California redwood trees; fighting for gun regulation; establishing Glacier and Denali national parks; preserving bald eagles, whales and pronghorn antelopes; and is credited with playing the leading role in saving the American bison from extinction. He was also a co-founder of the iconic Bronx Zoo and served on the board of the American Museum of Natural History. A splendid record of accomplishment.

Madison Grant however, had another, unsavory side. In 1906 Grant arranged to have Ota Benga, a pygmy tribesman kidnapped from Congo Africa, put on display in the Bronx Zoo monkey house. (The hapless African committed suicide in 1916). Madison Grant was a leader in the “scientific” racist movement known as Nordicism, which held that people of Nordic ancestry constituted mankind’s superior race. In his popular pseudo-scientific 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, Grant postulated that immigrants from the racially inferior parts of the world would poison and destroy the superior Nordic race. Adolf Hitler was an admirer of the book having read the 1925 German translation. Hitler wrote to Grant, “Your book is my Bible.” Grant’s ideas played a role in the 1924 enactment of the immigrant quota system that until it’s 1965 repeal, limited most immigration to Nordic Europeans. 

Was Madison Grant a good person who did bad things, or a bad person who did good? I leave that question for you to answer.

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