By Omar Tyree

The word controversy is defined as a discussion that is marked by the expression of opposing views that can create a public quarrel or strife in a given community or society. And we have had hundreds of major controversies in America where free speech and news reports continue to air any and all dirty laundry that American citizens may get involved in, whether Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Native American or other.

Some of the giant historical American controversies come to mind as I first think back to the American presidents and the rumors about Thomas Jefferson, president number three, who allegedly fathered six children with his slave mistress, Sally Hemings, four of which survived to adulthood. Yet, millions of White American citizens in year 2025 still fail to understand the complications of the Black American race, which is by now 100% mixed blood, even with darker-skinned Blacks who often share Native American ancestry, who had melanin and darker skin of their own.

And how about the controversy of those same Native Americans being given blankets contaminated with smallpox to wipe out their population. Of course, White American historians dispute the claim that Europeans intentionally gave the natives blankets of smallpox, and that there is no solid evidence to support the claim. However, since it is well documented that the Native American population did not suffer from any smallpox outbreaks before the arrival of Europeans, whether White Americans want to admit the intent of the blankets or not, they cannot deny that they brought smallpox to America with them, and that hundreds of thousands of Native Americans died from the disease that they had not previously been exposed to.

But there is no denial about the Tuskegee, Alabama, syphilis experiments that White Americans conducted on Black men from 1932 – 1972. As the story goes, 399 Black men aged 25 and up were involved in the study, where 198 Black men who allegedly already had the disease, combined with another 201 Black men who were intentionally infected as part of a controlled study without their informed consent. And over 40 years—without these Black men being given penicillin that would have treated their illnesses—the disease was allowed to be passed on to their Black wives, women and children as these men went on about their family business. And these syphilis experiments on Black men will never be forgotten as Black America still doesn’t trust the White American medical community, even during the more recent Covid-19 vaccinations.

What about the controversy over the White Witches of Salem who were burned at the stake in the state of Massachusetts? But they weren’t burned at the stake. They were hung instead. Nineteen of them, including fourteen women and five men, with five more people who died in disease-ridden jails. One man who was even stoned to death for refusing to enter a plea. This was during early days of American history before the constitution was even formed back in 1692 and 1693, when more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft, another element of fear, accusation and destruction that White Americans brought over from the culture of Europe. The goal was to have all people conform to the European norms of belief and culture or else.

Then we had the controversy of Harriet Tubman, a courageous Black woman and abolitionist who had escaped slavery to arrive free in progressive city Philadelphia from Maryland in 1849, and utilized an Underground Railroad of safe houses from the 1830s – 1860s in order to help free a few dozen more slaves from the South, while becoming one of the most wanted vigilantes in American history, just because she wanted to help free her people. Black slaves were viewed as valuable property at the time. So, Tubman was called a thief in the night who needed to be dealt with. However, with over 13 dangerous missions to free slaves and deliver them even farther North to Canada, Tubman was never caught and ended up serving in the US Army as a scout during the Civil War.

Nat Turner was caught though. The Black man carpenter and preacher from the state of Virgina, who became so enraged by the ungodliness of slavery that he led a four-day rebellion in Southampton County in August of 1831, resulted in the deaths of 55 White Americans family members before being captured, tried and executed that same year in November. And not only did the incensed White Virginia military men hang Nat Turner. He was then beheaded and allegedly dissected with his tan skin being supplied for souvenirs and purses, while the rest of his flesh was used to make grease.

Rumor has it that Turner’s bones and other body parts were then divided as trophies to be handed down as family heirlooms. Even Nat Turner’s skull is rumored to have been held in a collection of a physician’s office in the city of Norfolk. How about that for a story of controversy?

Then we have Cassius Clay Jr., the celebrated Louisville, Kentucky-born and raised boxer who won an Olympic Gold Medal in 1960 and was later renamed, remembered, and honored as Muhammad Ali. Ali was never hung, chased or dissected like Nat Turner was, but he was surely hated by some of the same White Americans who called him a champion just months before he refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War in 1967. Stripped of his championship titles and not allowed to box again until his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1971, Muhammad Ali would later become an American icon who was well-respected and celebrated around the world as arguably the most popular American athlete of all time. His classic interviews to explain himself and his strong beliefs as an American Black male athlete and a so-called “Black Muslim” continue to stand out in a country where present-day athletes and entertainers are often shunned, ostracized and intimidated from speaking out on anything outside of playing their sports or entertaining people.

Speaking of the idea of entertaining the American people, let’s look back at the controversies regarding the American presidents again, and how about the entire Kennedy family, from the father Joseph P. and his alleged bootleg empire with ties to the Italian mafia and foreign smugglers, to his presidential son John F. and his various affairs with exotic American women, including the famous rump with superstar actress, Marilyn Monroe. The Kennedy family seemed to famous for everything, but to this day in 2025, we still don’t know the real details behind President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 or his younger brother Robert’s conspiracy murder in 1968.

Nor do we know the full details of the murders of superstar rappers, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Both murders occurred during a very public East Coast / West Coast rap community beef with a dozen music-industry conspiracy theories and few hard facts to go on. An added controversy here is whether or not the American authorities really wanted to catch anyone involved in these rap murders. But with dozens of unsolved mafia murders in the Italian American community, we could say that American authorities don’t particular care much the Italian American community either, unless they catch someone on a tax evasion charge.

I could go on for a few more pages bringing up the various different controversies that have sparked years of opposing conversations in America, but the all-time biggest controversy for me would be the Bill Cosby case, where dozens of women came forth to accuse the celebrated entertainer and educator of drugging them with exotic drinks before having sex, starting back in the 1960s. Being from the city of Philadelphia myself, and actually graduating from the city’s Central High School, where Cosby once attended—with the many accolades Cosby had attained in his entertainment and academic career—I was particularly stunned and blindsided by the news of his past transgressions with women.

Like Oprah Winfrey and American Black women, Bill Cosby had risen to the highest respected and empowered position as an entertainment mogul for Black men, while producing both The Cosby Show and A Different World in the 1980s and 1990s, which created a blockbuster Thursday night line-up on NBC. Rumors later swirled that Cosby’s downfall was his public ambition in discussing a possible purchase of the whole NBC network with all of the television money that he had amassed.

The Black community’s logic was that “the powers that be” had suddenly allowed these old sexual allegations from more than 40 years ago to flood the public market until the stories could no longer be ignored or denied. Nevertheless, if these sexual allegations were true, or even half of them were true, then the “powers that be” had obviously brushed them under the rug while Cosby was making plenty of television executives good money. But once this overly ambitious Black man started speaking about buying the network, where powerful White men would suddenly work for him instead of the other way around, here comes the horrible stories from Cosby’s 1960s.

The fact that a younger Black male comedian out of the city of Chicago started the horror mill after bringing up several Cosby rumors in his comedy skits—including a fateful show he performed in Philadelphia that went viral—added more fuel to the controversy and conspiracy theories about Cosby and the powers who really run the American entertainment world.

After all that Cosby had done to uplift the imagery, careers and education of Black people in America, his sexual allegation news was incredibly troubling for a lot of us. Had the man been a rich asshole who never did anything for the community at large, it would have been easy to jump on the bandwagon of negativity and drive his career and legacy into the graveyard. But this man had given millions of dollars to Black universities, Black filmmakers, public school educational systems, health and mental disease research, and had opened up dozens of acting, writing, producing and directing opportunities for young Black talent in the entertainment industry, while inspiring all of us to think of Black people as the talented, professional, college-educated and family-oriented people that many of us are.

I even attended the acclaimed “Mecca” of all HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) at Howard University in “Chocolate City” Washington DC in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where we watched The Cosby Show and A Different Word religiously, while validating both shows as Black college students who had been studying and graduating from universities to become not only teachers and social workers, but doctors, lawyers, dentists, business owners and political and community leaders for over a hundred years, while non-educated people continued to debate whether we really existed. Imagine that.

And then the shocking news about Cosby came out and repeated itself again, and again, and again until it became shameful and embarrassing, particularly for Bill Cosby loyalists. But as the saying goes, “This too shall pass.” And with Cosby being in his late 70s and going through health issues, the younger nation of Americans were quick to blow him off and move on to the next big thing, as Americans will often do when your time in the positive spotlight is up. But while you’re in the spotlight, a major controversy can spark everything, whether positive or negative.

Controversy is the American way to becoming popular overnight, with “damage control” media experts who are tasked with figuring out the best ways to suffocate the kind of talk that can kill a person’s career like a frozen tundra, while fanning the kind of controversy that can spark an inferno on new public interest that rises up and makes a person more popular.

Either way, American controversy will ALWAYS spark something extra form the people, just think about Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Britney Spears. What would their careers have been like without controversy…? Well, we will never know, because they always had it and knew how to use it. Prince even named his 1981 album and popular single after the word, because he understood what would help lead him to the top of the charts, and it was not just his music, but a controversial story behind it that would get the people talking who didn’t know or care about his music. That’s what controversy does, it creates urgent opinions and reactions to things that we become emotional about. So, it’s all about knowing which buttons to push… and then your controversy will spark something. 

~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author with an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction, who graduated from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991.

Click Here To Read Other Articles By Omar On His Archives Page