Actress Jane Fonda Recounts the Moment Her Father’s Slap Taught Her the Impact of Using the N-Word

Jane Fonda learned a hard lesson as a child about racism that likely planted the seed that would lead to her decades of activism.

While she grew in notoriety by following in her late father Henry Fonda’s, acting footsteps, it is her outspoken opposition to things like the Vietnam War, injustices against people of color, and other noteworthy social causes like ending the stigma around HIV/AIDS that has become the cornerstone of her legacy.

Jane Fonda recalls late father taught her a lesson to ‘pay attention’ to racism because she used the N-Word, triggering his memory of seeing a Black man lynched as a child. (Photo: Jane and Kerry via Street You Grew Up On/YouTube)

In a recent appearance on actress Kerry Washington’s “Street You Grew Up On” podcast, the 86-year-old traversed her life’s memory bank, reflecting on pivotal moments in her upbringing.

One of which included the only time her father ever struck her. The “Monster-in-Law” star recalled that when her father married Susan Blanchard, a Jewish socialite and stepdaughter of musical theater director and composer Oscar Hammerstein II, her world became more lively and diverse.

At the time, Henry and his second wife were living in Greenwich Village, New York, a world away from Los Angeles, where Jane and her brother, Peter, had primarily been raised.

“She (Blanchard) had African-American friends, and for the first time I got to know Geoffrey Holder, who I now realize — I always thought of him as a dancer — but someone just gave me a book … of his artwork. He was a great artist,” Fonda said.

When Washington asked if the Hollywood vet did not know of Holder’s array of talents because she had not been immersed around Black people during her adolescent years in LA, Jane responded, “No, not at all. Not exposed to people of color at all.”

She added, “I didn’t know racism until I went to Greenwich. That was the first time I ever heard the N-word, and I repeated the N-word once, and [it was] the only time in his life that my dad whacked me across the face. He said, ‘Don’t you ever, ever say that word again.’”

The 1970’s two-time Oscar winner shared that as a child, her grandfather forced her father to watch a Black man be hanged and his body dragged around the town’s square in Omaha, Nebraska. “That had a huge impact on my father,” inspiring him to make films like “The Ox-Bow Incident” (1943), “The Wrong Man” (1956), and “12 Angry Men” (1957).

“He cared about justice and he hated racism, and, you know, with that slap taught me to pay attention,” noted the celebrated actress. Jane’s history of speaking up about injustice also included being a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement when George Floyd was murdered, a killing some have likened to a modern-day lynching.