A Brief History
On September 23, 2000, journalist, author, government official, and gun control advocate, Carl Rowan, died at the age of 75. Despite his great accomplishments, Rowan arguably died a hypocrite.
Digging Deeper
Of African American descent, Rowan valued education, was the Valedictorian of his high school class and went to college, graduating from Oberlin College in 1947. He became one of the first African American commissioned officers in the US Navy and went on to a career in journalism and government service, including serving as the first African American to on the National Security Council.
As a prominent advocate for Civil Rights, Rowan was also a proponent of “gun control,” and made the extreme case for “a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail—period.”
In 1988, Rowan used an illegal pistol to shoot a youth that was trespassing in Rowan’s pool at night, perhaps an example of the height of hypocrisy.
Question for students (and subscribers): What other examples of extreme hypocrisy can you think of by politicians and pundits? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Anderson, Carol. The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.
Rowan, Carl. The Coming Race War in America: A Wake Up Call. Little, Brown and Company, 1996.
The featured image in this article, a photograph of Rowan speaking at a National Security meeting on Vietnam in the Cabinet Room of the White House, July 1965, is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.
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