African-American – Jewish relations
Encyclopedia
African American
s and American Jews
have interacted throughout much of the history of the United States
. This relationship has included widely publicized cooperation and conflict, and—since the 1970s—has been an area of significant academic research. The most significant aspect of the relationship was the cooperation during the civil rights movement
, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964
. But the relationship has also been marred by conflict and controversy involving subjects such as the Black Power
movement, Zionism
, affirmative action
, and the roles of Jews in the slave trade
.
(1887–1940) was an early promoter of pan-Africanism
and African redemption, and led the Universal Negro Improvement Association. His push to celebrate Africa, the original homeland of African-Americans, led many Jews to compare Garvey to leaders of Zionism
. One example of the parallels between pan-Africanism and Zionism was that Garvey wanted WW I peace negotiators to turn over former German colonies in southwest Africa to blacks. But Garvey also regularly wrote columns in his newspaper Negro World
that criticized Jews for trying to destroy the black population of America.
The widely-publicized lynching
of Leo Frank
, a Jew, in Georgia in 1915 by a mob of southerners caused many Jews to "become acutely conscious of the similarities and differences between themselves and blacks" and accelerated the sense of solidarity between Jews and blacks, but the trial also pitted Jews against blacks because Frank's defense attorneys tried to ascribe guilt to a black janitor, Jim Conley, and called Conley "dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying, nigger."
In the early twentieth century, Jewish daily and weekly publications were preoccupied with violence against blacks, and often compared the anti-black violence in the South to pogrom
s - this preoccupation was motivated by principles of justice, and by a desire to change racist policies in United States. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, the leaders of American Jewry expended time, influence and their economic resources for black endeavors - civil rights, philanthropy, social service, organizing - and historian Hasia Diner
notes that "they made sure that their actions were well publicized" as part of an effort to demonstrate increasing Jewish political clout. Julius Rosenwald
was a Jewish philanthropist who donated a large part of his fortune to supporting education of blacks in the south. Jews played a major role in the founding of the NAACP, which was founded in 1909. Jews involved in the NAACP included Joel Spingarn (the first chairman), Arthur Spingarn, Henry Moskowitz
, and—more recently—Jack Greenberg
.
In 1903, black historian W. E. B. Du Bois interpreted the role of Jews in the South as successors to the slave-barons: "The Jew is the heir of the slave-baron in Dougherty [Georgia]; and as we ride westward, by wide stretching cornfields and stubby orchards of peach and pear, we see on all sides within the circle of dark forest a Land of Canaan. Here and there are tales of projects for money getting, born in the swift days of Reconstruction'improvement' companies, wine companies, mills and factories; nearly all failed, and the Jew fell heir."
Black novelist James Baldwin
(1924–1987) grew up in Harlem
, and expressed a view of Jews that was representative of many Harlem blacks of that era: "... in Harlem.... our ... landlords were Jews, and we hated them. We hated them because they were terrible landlords and did not take care of the buildings. The grocery store owner was a Jew... The butcher was a Jew and, yes, we certainly paid more for bad cuts of meat than other New York citizens, and we very often carried insults home along with our meats... and the pawnbroker was a Jew - perhaps we hated him most of all."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
suggested that some black anti-semitism arises from landlord-tenant relations: "When we were working in Chicago, we had numerous rent strikes on the West Side, and it was unfortunately true that, in most instances, the persons we had to conduct these strikes against were Jewish landlords... We were living in a slum apartment owned by a Jew and a number of others, and we had to have a rent strike. We were paying $94 for four run-down, shabby rooms, and .... we discovered that whites ... were paying only $78 a month. We were paying 20 percent tax.
The Negro ends up paying a color tax, and this has happened in instances where Negroes actually confronted Jews as the landlord or the storekeeper. The irrational statements that have been made are the result of these confrontations."
Jewish producers in the United States entertainment industry produced many works on black subjects in the film industry
, Broadway
, and the music industry. Many portrayals of blacks were sympathetic, but historian Michael Rogin discusses how some of the treatments could be considered exploitive.
Rogin also analyzes the instances when Jewish actors, such as Al Jolson
, portrayed blacks in blackface
- Rogin asserts that these portrayals were not overt racism, but simply a reflection of the times, since Blacks could not appear in leading roles at the time:
"Jewish blackface neither signified a distinctive Jewish racism nor produced a distinctive black anti-Semitism".
Jews often interpreted black culture in film, music, and stageplays, and historian Jeffrey Melnick argues that Jewish artists such as Irving Berlin
and George Gershwin
(composer of Porgy and Bess
) created the myth that they were the proper interpreters of Black culture, "elbowing out 'real' Black Americans in the process." Despite evidence from Black musicians and critics that Jews in the music business played an important role in paving the way for mainstream acceptance of Black culture, Melnick concludes that "while both Jews and African-Americans contributed to the rhetoric of musical affinity, the fruits of this labor belonged exclusively to the former".
Black academic Harold Cruse
viewed the arts scene as a white-dominated misrepresentation of black culture
, epitomized by works like George Gershwin
's folk opera Porgy and Bess
.
Some blacks have criticized Jewish movie producers for portraying blacks in a racist manner. In 1990, at a NAACP convention in Los Angeles, Legrand Clegg, founder of the Coalition Against Black Exploitation, a pressure group that lobbied against negative screen images of African-Americans, alleged that "the century-old problem of Jewish racism in Hollywood" denies blacks access to positions of power in the industry and portrays blacks in a derogatory manner: "If Jewish leaders can complain of black anti-Semitism, our leaders should certainly raise the issue of the century-old problem of Jewish racism in Hollywood.... No Jewish people ever attacked or killed black people. But we're concerned with Jewish producers who degrade the black image. It's a genuine concern. And when we bring it up, our statements are distorted and we're dragged through the press as anti-Semites." Professor Leonard Jeffries
echoed those comments in a speech in 1991 at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival, in Albany, New York: Jeffries said that Jews controlled the film industry, using it to paint a negative stereotype of blacks.
Cooperation between Jewish and African-American organizations peaked after World War II
- sometimes called the "golden age" of the relationship - when the leaderships of each group joined in an effective movement for racial equality in the United States, and Jews funded and led many national civil rights organizations. This era of cooperation culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
which outlawed racial or religious discrimination in schools and public facilities, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which outlawed discriminatory voting practices.
The reasons for Jewish support of black causes was rooted both in the Jewish appreciation for slavery, and Jewish self interest - according to historian Greenberg, "It is significant that ... a disproportionate number of white civil rights activists were [Jewish] as well. Jewish agencies engaged with their African American counterparts in a more sustained and fundamental way than did other white groups largely because their constituents and their understanding of Jewish values and Jewish self-interest pushed them in that direction."
Jewish participation in the civil rights movement often correlated with their branch of Judaism: reform Jews
participated more heavily than orthodox Jews
, because many reform Jews were guided by values reflected in the reform branch's Pittsburgh Platform
, which urged Jews to "participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society".
Religious leaders, such as rabbis and Baptist ministers, often played key roles in the civil rights movement, including rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the Selma civil rights march
. Sixteen Jewish leaders were arrested while heeding a call from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida, in June 1964, where the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place at the Monson Motor Lodge.
Northern Jews often supported integration
in their communities and schools, even at the risk of diluting their close-knit Jewish communities, which often were a critical component of Jewish life.
The summer of 1964 was designated the Freedom Summer
, and many northern Jews traveled south to participate in a concentrated voter registration effort. Two Jewish activists, Andrew Goodman
and Michael Schwerner
, and one black activist (James Chaney
), were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan
as a result of their participation. Their deaths were considered martyrdom by some, and helped cement the black-Jewish alliance.
Martin Luther King said in 1965,
Philosopher and activist Cornel West
asserts that there was no golden age in which "blacks and Jews were free of tension and friction". West says that this period of Black-Jewish cooperation is often downplayed by Blacks and romanticized by Jews: "It is downplayed by Blacks because they focus on the astonishingly rapid entry of most Jews into the middle and upper middle classes during this brief period - an entry that has spawned ... resentment from a quickly growing black impoverished class. Jews, on the other hand, tend to romanticize this period because their present status as upper middle dogs and some top dogs in American society unsettles their historic self-image as progressives with a compassion for the underdog."
Historian Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz points out that the number of northern Jews that went to the southern states numbered only a few hundred, and that the "relationship was frequently out of touch, periodically at odds, with both sides failing to understand each other's point of view."
Political scientist Andrew Hacker
wrote: "It is more than a little revealing that whites who travelled south in 1964 referred to their sojourn as their 'Mississippi summer'. It is as if all the efforts of the local blacks for voter registration and the desegregation of public facilities had not even existed until white help arrived... Of course, this was done with benign intentions, as if to say 'we have come in answer to your calls for assistance'. The problem was ... the condescending tone.... For Jewish liberals, the great memory of that summer has been the deaths of Andrew Goodman
and Michael Schwerner
and - almost as an afterthought - James Chaney
. Indeed, Chaney's name tends to be listed last, as if the life he lost was worth only three fifths of the others."
Recent decades have shown a greater trend for southern Jews to speak-out on civil rights issues, as shown by the 1987 marches in Forsyth County, Georgia.
movement, became outspoken in their demands for greater equality, often criticizing Jews along with other white targets.
In 1966, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) voted to exclude whites from its leadership, and that resulted in the expulsion of several Jewish leaders.
In 1967, black academic Harold Cruse
attacked Jewish activism in his 1967 volume 'The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual' in which he argued that Jews had become a problem for blacks precisely because they had so identified with the Black struggle. Cruse insisted that Jewish involvement in interracial politics impeded the emergence of "Afro-American ethnic consciousness". For Cruse, as well as for other black activists, the role of American Jews as political mediator between Blacks and whites was "fraught with serious dangers to all concerned" and must be "terminated by Negroes themselves."
ancestry situated mainly in the Americas
who believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelite
s and hence are God's chosen people
. Black Hebrews adhere in varying degrees to the religious beliefs and practices of mainstream Judaism
. They are generally not accepted as Jews by the greater Jewish community. Many Black Hebrews consider themselves—and not the people called Jews—to be the only authentic descendants of the ancient Israelites. Some groups self-identify Hebrew Israelites, others as Black Hebrews, and others as Jews. Dozens of Black Hebrew groups were founded during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.
Elijah Muhammad
, the founder of the Nation of Islam
, claimed that blacks—not whites or Europeanized Jews—are the chosen people
. The current leader, Louis Farrakhan
, has repudiated the notion that Jews are the chosen people
, instead claiming that blacks are. In a 1985 speech, Farrakhan said "I have a problem with Jews...because...they are not the chosen people...I am declaring to the world that you, the black people...[are the chosen people]."
The labor movement was another area of the relationship that flourished before WW II, but ended in conflict after WW II. In the early twentieth century, one important area of cooperation was attempts to increase minority representation in the leadership of the United Auto Workers
(UAW) union. In 1943, Jews and blacks joined to request the creation of a new department within the UAW dedicated to minorities, but that request was refused by UAW leaders.
The Jewish Labor Committee
(JLC) (affiliated with the AFL-CIO
) is an organization dedicated to promoting labor union interests in Jewish communities. The JLC formed approximately two dozen local committees in the United States to combat racial intolerance. The JLC helped found the United Farm Workers
, campaigned for the passage of the Fair Employment Practices Act in California and provided staffing and support for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
led by Martin Luther King.
However, during the 1940s and through to the 1960s, the JLC also defended anti-black discriminatory practices of unions in the garment industry and building industry. NAACP labor director Herbert Hill
claims that the JLC changed "a black white conflict into a Black-Jewish conflict". The JLC defended Jewish leaders of International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) against charges of anti-black racial discrimination, distored government reports about discrimination, failed to tell union members the truth, and when union members complained, the JLC labeled the members anti-semitic. ILGWU leaders denounced Black members for demanding equal treatment and access to leadership positions.
The New York City teacher's strike of 1968
also signaled the decline of black-Jewish relations: the Jewish president of UFT teachers union provoked black-Jewish conflict by accusing black teachers of anti-semitissm.
occupied Palestinian
territory following the 1967 Six-Day War
, some American blacks supported the Palestinians and criticized Israel's actions, for example by publicly supporting Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Immediately after the war, the editor of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
's (SNCC) newsletter wrote an article criticizing Israel, and asserting that the war was an effort to regain Palestinian land and that during the 1948 war, "Zionists
conquered the Arab homes and land through terror, force, and massacres". This article led to conflict between Jews and the SNCC, but black SNCC leaders treated the war as a "test of their willingness to demonstrate SNCC's break from its civil rights past".
The concerns of blacks continued, and in 1993, black philosopher Cornel West
wrote in Race Matters
: "Jews will not comprehend what the symbolic predicament and literal plight of Palestinans in Israel means to blacks.... Blacks often perceive the Jewish defense of the state of Israel as a second instance of naked group interest, and, again, an abandonment of substantive moral deliberation."
The support of Palestinians is frequently due to the consideration of them as people of color - Andrew Hacker
writes: "The presence of Israel in the Middle East is perceived as thwarting the rightful status of people of color. Some blacks view Israel as essentially a white and European power, supported from the outside, and occupying space that rightfully belongs to the original inhabitants of Palestine."
, while many Jews did not, preferring instead merit-based systems, and that conflict was an important aspect of the decline of the black-Jewish alliance in the 1970s. The conflict is partially explained by the failure of the civil rights movement to fulfill its early promise of equality for blacks, which provoked an increasing militancy within the black community, which - in turn - led to increased resentment and fear among Jews.
A survey of affirmative-action lawsuits shows that Jewish organizations have generally opposed affirmative-action programs. A widely-publicized example of the black-Jewish conflict arose in 1978 affirmative action case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
, when black and Jewish organizations took opposing sides.
An early example of an accusation of black anti-semitism was black activist Sufi Abdul Hamid
, who was accused of anti-semitism for his leadership in 1935 boycots against Harlem
merchants and establishments (often owned by Jewish proprietors) that he claimed discriminated against blacks.
Conclict between Jews and Blacks increased as a result of widely publicized anti-semitic remarks made in 1984 by then-presidential candidate Jesse Jackson
and former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young
, and these remarks extended the era of African-American and Jewish distrust into the 1980s.
In 1991, during the Crown Heights riot
, black antisemitism was evident in the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum, an orthodox Jew who was murdered by a mob of blacks in New York City
.
During the 1990s, much of the antisemitism in the black community originated on college campuses, and centered on alleged Jewish dominance of the slave trade.
Prof. Leonard Jeffries
of the City College of New York
was a proponent of this idea.
The Nation of Islam
, a black organization, has issued several anti-semitic pronouncements. The founder, Elijah Muhammad
, targeted whites in general, and asserted that whites - as well as Jews - are devils, implicated in the history of racism against blacks. But Muhammad did not consider Jews to be any more corrupt or oppressive than other whites.
But other Nation of Islam representatives have made explicitly anti-semitic remarks. In 1993, Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad
called Jews "bloodsuckers" in a public speech, leading to widespread public condemnation. The current leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan
, has made several remarks that the Anti-Defamation League
and others consider anti-semitic, but Farrakhan denies that the remarks are anti-semetic.
in a 1991 speech in which he said that "rich Jews" financed the slave trade, citing the role of Jews in slave-trading centers Rhode Island, Brazil, the Caribbean, Curaçao, and Amsterdam. His comments drew widespread outrage and calls for his dismissal from his position.
One of the sources that Jeffries cited was The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
, a book published in 1991 by the Nation of Islam
. That book alleges that Jews played a major role in the African slave trade, and it became the source of tremendous controversy, and resulted in several scholarly works rebutting its charges. Most mainstream scholars concluded that Jews had little major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery, and possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean, and - except in Brazil, Suriname, and Curaçao
- they did not play leading roles as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades.
Tony Martin
of Wellesley College included The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews in the reading list for his classes, leading to charges of anti-semitism in 1993.
Henry Gates, head of the department of Afro-American studies at Harvard University
, called the book "the bible of new anti-Semitism" and added that "the book massively misinterprets the historical record, largely through a process of cunningly selective quotations of often reputable sources".
Political scientist Andrew Hacker
documented an African-American author who said: "Jews tend to be a little self-righteous about their liberal record, ... we realize that they were pitying us and wanted our gratitude, not the realization of the principles of justice and humanity... Blacks consider [Jews] paternalistic. Black people have destroyed the previous relationship which they had with the Jewish community, in which we were the victims of a kind of paternalism, which is only a benevolent racism."
Historian Taylor Branch
in his 1992 essay "Blacks and Jews: The Uncivil War", asserts the Jews have been "perpetrators of racial hate", citing the example where three thousand members of a sect of Black Jews from Chicago were denied citizenship under the Israeli law of return
because of anti-Black sentiment among Israeli Jews.
Historian Hasia Diner writes: "Never a relationship of equals, [many blacks] assert, Jews sat on the boards of black organizations and held power in black institutions but never allowed for the reverse. [Jews] gave money to civil rights organizations and demanded the right to make decisions by virtue of the power of their purses."
In addition to the obvious motivation of justice and righteousness, one common thread that bound Jews and blacks together in cooperation was slavery: particularly the story of the Jewish enslavement in Egypt, as told in the Biblical story of the Book of Exodus, which many blacks identified with. But Jewish scholar Ralph A. Austen uses the term "benign myth" to describe the notion that Jews have always fought against slavery of oppressed peoples, and suggests that scholars (before 1990) rarely discussed evidence of Jewish support for slavery, in order to avoid damaging the relationship between blacks and Jews.
Historian David Levering Lewis
attributes the cooperation in the early twentieth century to self-interest rather than altruism, claiming that black and Jewish leaders were primarily concerned with maintaining their positions of power, and ensuring that assimilation into the American mainstream was unimpeded by controversy.
Andrew Hacker
acknowledges that Jews were genuinely concerned about the welfare of blacks, but characterizes their participation in the civil rights movement as an "ego trip".
Harold Cruse
said that what really roused his "enmity toward Jews" was hearing people who are Jewish say "I know how you feel because I, too, am discriminated against". According to Andrew Hacker
, this equating of racial and religious discrimination "insults the ordeals black Americans have undergone since they were first loaded on slave ships".
Another complaint of blacks was the paternalistic approach of some Jewish leaders and also the resistance of some Jews from northern states to residential and education integration within their own communities.
Some blacks, such as Harold Cruse
, claimed that Jews infiltrated and exploited the civil rights movement in order to improve the status of Jews in the United States, but that the Jews disguised this goal by claiming to be fighting for racial equality.
James Baldwin
suggested that some anti-Jewish backlash was simply a convenient target of frustration and resentment, and that Jews stood in for whites in the black mind: "[J]ust as a society must have a scapegoat, so hatred must have a symbol. Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew".
Another motivation for conflict is the diverging class status of blacks and Jews: throughout the twentieth century, Jews have migrated into the middle-class and upper-class more rapidly than African-Americans, who often remained in blue-collar jobs.
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s and American Jews
American Jews
American Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants...
have interacted throughout much of the history of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. This relationship has included widely publicized cooperation and conflict, and—since the 1970s—has been an area of significant academic research. The most significant aspect of the relationship was the cooperation during the civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
. But the relationship has also been marred by conflict and controversy involving subjects such as the Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
movement, Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
, and the roles of Jews in the slave trade
History of slavery
The history of slavery covers slave systems in historical perspective in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved...
.
Early 20th century
Marcus GarveyMarcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
(1887–1940) was an early promoter of pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is a movement that seeks to unify African people or people living in Africa, into a "one African community". Differing types of Pan-Africanism seek different levels of economic, racial, social, or political unity...
and African redemption, and led the Universal Negro Improvement Association. His push to celebrate Africa, the original homeland of African-Americans, led many Jews to compare Garvey to leaders of Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
. One example of the parallels between pan-Africanism and Zionism was that Garvey wanted WW I peace negotiators to turn over former German colonies in southwest Africa to blacks. But Garvey also regularly wrote columns in his newspaper Negro World
Negro World
Negro World was a weekly newspaper, established in January 1918 in New York City, which served as the voice of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, an organization founded by Marcus Garvey in 1914...
that criticized Jews for trying to destroy the black population of America.
The widely-publicized lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
of Leo Frank
Leo Frank
Leo Max Frank was a Jewish-American factory superintendent whose hanging in 1915 by a lynch mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia drew attention to antisemitism in the United States....
, a Jew, in Georgia in 1915 by a mob of southerners caused many Jews to "become acutely conscious of the similarities and differences between themselves and blacks" and accelerated the sense of solidarity between Jews and blacks, but the trial also pitted Jews against blacks because Frank's defense attorneys tried to ascribe guilt to a black janitor, Jim Conley, and called Conley "dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying, nigger."
In the early twentieth century, Jewish daily and weekly publications were preoccupied with violence against blacks, and often compared the anti-black violence in the South to pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s - this preoccupation was motivated by principles of justice, and by a desire to change racist policies in United States. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, the leaders of American Jewry expended time, influence and their economic resources for black endeavors - civil rights, philanthropy, social service, organizing - and historian Hasia Diner
Hasia Diner
Hasia Diner is an American historian. Diner is the Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History; Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, History; and Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University.Diner received her Ph.D., 1976,...
notes that "they made sure that their actions were well publicized" as part of an effort to demonstrate increasing Jewish political clout. Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African American children in the rural South, as well...
was a Jewish philanthropist who donated a large part of his fortune to supporting education of blacks in the south. Jews played a major role in the founding of the NAACP, which was founded in 1909. Jews involved in the NAACP included Joel Spingarn (the first chairman), Arthur Spingarn, Henry Moskowitz
Henry Moskowitz
Henry Moskowitz was a civil rights activist, and one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.-Biography:He was born in 1879 in Romania....
, and—more recently—Jack Greenberg
Jack Greenberg (lawyer)
Jack Greenberg is an American attorney and legal scholar. He was the Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund from 1961 to 1984, succeeding Thurgood Marshall....
.
Shopkeeper and landlord relationships
Following the Civil War, Jewish shop-owners and landlords engaged in business with black customers and tenants, often filling a need where other white business owners would not venture. This was true both in northern urban cities such as New York, as well as most regions of the South. Jewish shop-owners tended to be more civil to black customers, treating them with more dignity than non-Jewish merchants. Thus, blacks often had more immediate contact with Jews than non-Jewish whites.In 1903, black historian W. E. B. Du Bois interpreted the role of Jews in the South as successors to the slave-barons: "The Jew is the heir of the slave-baron in Dougherty [Georgia]; and as we ride westward, by wide stretching cornfields and stubby orchards of peach and pear, we see on all sides within the circle of dark forest a Land of Canaan. Here and there are tales of projects for money getting, born in the swift days of Reconstruction'improvement' companies, wine companies, mills and factories; nearly all failed, and the Jew fell heir."
Black novelist James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
(1924–1987) grew up in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, and expressed a view of Jews that was representative of many Harlem blacks of that era: "... in Harlem.... our ... landlords were Jews, and we hated them. We hated them because they were terrible landlords and did not take care of the buildings. The grocery store owner was a Jew... The butcher was a Jew and, yes, we certainly paid more for bad cuts of meat than other New York citizens, and we very often carried insults home along with our meats... and the pawnbroker was a Jew - perhaps we hated him most of all."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
suggested that some black anti-semitism arises from landlord-tenant relations: "When we were working in Chicago, we had numerous rent strikes on the West Side, and it was unfortunately true that, in most instances, the persons we had to conduct these strikes against were Jewish landlords... We were living in a slum apartment owned by a Jew and a number of others, and we had to have a rent strike. We were paying $94 for four run-down, shabby rooms, and .... we discovered that whites ... were paying only $78 a month. We were paying 20 percent tax.
The Negro ends up paying a color tax, and this has happened in instances where Negroes actually confronted Jews as the landlord or the storekeeper. The irrational statements that have been made are the result of these confrontations."
Entertainment
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
, Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, and the music industry. Many portrayals of blacks were sympathetic, but historian Michael Rogin discusses how some of the treatments could be considered exploitive.
Rogin also analyzes the instances when Jewish actors, such as Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
, portrayed blacks in blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...
- Rogin asserts that these portrayals were not overt racism, but simply a reflection of the times, since Blacks could not appear in leading roles at the time:
"Jewish blackface neither signified a distinctive Jewish racism nor produced a distinctive black anti-Semitism".
Jews often interpreted black culture in film, music, and stageplays, and historian Jeffrey Melnick argues that Jewish artists such as Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
and George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
(composer of Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
) created the myth that they were the proper interpreters of Black culture, "elbowing out 'real' Black Americans in the process." Despite evidence from Black musicians and critics that Jews in the music business played an important role in paving the way for mainstream acceptance of Black culture, Melnick concludes that "while both Jews and African-Americans contributed to the rhetoric of musical affinity, the fruits of this labor belonged exclusively to the former".
Black academic Harold Cruse
Harold Cruse
Harold Wright Cruse was an American academic who was an outspoken social critic and teacher of African-American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual is his best-known book....
viewed the arts scene as a white-dominated misrepresentation of black culture
African American culture
African-American culture, also known as black culture, in the United States refers to the cultural contributions of Americans of African descent to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The distinct identity of African-American culture is rooted in...
, epitomized by works like George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
's folk opera Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
.
Some blacks have criticized Jewish movie producers for portraying blacks in a racist manner. In 1990, at a NAACP convention in Los Angeles, Legrand Clegg, founder of the Coalition Against Black Exploitation, a pressure group that lobbied against negative screen images of African-Americans, alleged that "the century-old problem of Jewish racism in Hollywood" denies blacks access to positions of power in the industry and portrays blacks in a derogatory manner: "If Jewish leaders can complain of black anti-Semitism, our leaders should certainly raise the issue of the century-old problem of Jewish racism in Hollywood.... No Jewish people ever attacked or killed black people. But we're concerned with Jewish producers who degrade the black image. It's a genuine concern. And when we bring it up, our statements are distorted and we're dragged through the press as anti-Semites." Professor Leonard Jeffries
Leonard Jeffries
Leonard Jeffries Jr. is an American professor of black studies at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York. He achieved national prominence in the early 1990s for his controversial statements about Jews and other white people...
echoed those comments in a speech in 1991 at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival, in Albany, New York: Jeffries said that Jews controlled the film industry, using it to paint a negative stereotype of blacks.
Civil rights movement
Cooperation between Jewish and African-American organizations peaked after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
- sometimes called the "golden age" of the relationship - when the leaderships of each group joined in an effective movement for racial equality in the United States, and Jews funded and led many national civil rights organizations. This era of cooperation culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
which outlawed racial or religious discrimination in schools and public facilities, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which outlawed discriminatory voting practices.
The reasons for Jewish support of black causes was rooted both in the Jewish appreciation for slavery, and Jewish self interest - according to historian Greenberg, "It is significant that ... a disproportionate number of white civil rights activists were [Jewish] as well. Jewish agencies engaged with their African American counterparts in a more sustained and fundamental way than did other white groups largely because their constituents and their understanding of Jewish values and Jewish self-interest pushed them in that direction."
Jewish participation in the civil rights movement often correlated with their branch of Judaism: reform Jews
Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism refers to various beliefs, practices and organizations associated with the Reform Jewish movement in North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In general, it maintains that Judaism and Jewish traditions should be modernized and should be compatible with participation in the...
participated more heavily than orthodox Jews
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
, because many reform Jews were guided by values reflected in the reform branch's Pittsburgh Platform
Pittsburgh Platform
The Pittsburgh Platform is a pivotal 19th century document in the history of the American Reform Movement in Judaism that called for Jews to adopt a modern approach to the practice of their faith...
, which urged Jews to "participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society".
Religious leaders, such as rabbis and Baptist ministers, often played key roles in the civil rights movement, including rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century.-Biography:...
, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the Selma civil rights march
Selma to Montgomery marches
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They grew out of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African-Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League...
. Sixteen Jewish leaders were arrested while heeding a call from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida, in June 1964, where the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place at the Monson Motor Lodge.
Northern Jews often supported integration
Desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...
in their communities and schools, even at the risk of diluting their close-knit Jewish communities, which often were a critical component of Jewish life.
Murder of Jewish civil rights activists
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi which had historically excluded most blacks from voting...
, and many northern Jews traveled south to participate in a concentrated voter registration effort. Two Jewish activists, Andrew Goodman
Andrew Goodman
Andrew Goodman was one of three American civil rights activists murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer in 1964 by members of the Ku Klux Klan.-Early life and education:...
and Michael Schwerner
Michael Schwerner
Michael Henry Schwerner , was one of three Congress of Racial Equality field workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan in response to their civil rights work, which included promoting voting registration among Mississippi African Americans...
, and one black activist (James Chaney
James Chaney
James Earl "J.E." Chaney , from Meridian, Mississippi, was one of three American civil rights workers who were murdered during Freedom Summer by members of the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia...
), were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
as a result of their participation. Their deaths were considered martyrdom by some, and helped cement the black-Jewish alliance.
Martin Luther King said in 1965,
Questioning the "golden age"
Some recent scholarship suggests that the "golden age" (1955 to 1966) of the black-Jewish relationship was not as ideal as often portrayed.Philosopher and activist Cornel West
Cornel West
Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....
asserts that there was no golden age in which "blacks and Jews were free of tension and friction". West says that this period of Black-Jewish cooperation is often downplayed by Blacks and romanticized by Jews: "It is downplayed by Blacks because they focus on the astonishingly rapid entry of most Jews into the middle and upper middle classes during this brief period - an entry that has spawned ... resentment from a quickly growing black impoverished class. Jews, on the other hand, tend to romanticize this period because their present status as upper middle dogs and some top dogs in American society unsettles their historic self-image as progressives with a compassion for the underdog."
Historian Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz points out that the number of northern Jews that went to the southern states numbered only a few hundred, and that the "relationship was frequently out of touch, periodically at odds, with both sides failing to understand each other's point of view."
Political scientist Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker is an American political scientist and public intellectual.He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Queens Collegein New York. He did his undergraduate work at Amherst College. This was followed...
wrote: "It is more than a little revealing that whites who travelled south in 1964 referred to their sojourn as their 'Mississippi summer'. It is as if all the efforts of the local blacks for voter registration and the desegregation of public facilities had not even existed until white help arrived... Of course, this was done with benign intentions, as if to say 'we have come in answer to your calls for assistance'. The problem was ... the condescending tone.... For Jewish liberals, the great memory of that summer has been the deaths of Andrew Goodman
Andrew Goodman
Andrew Goodman was one of three American civil rights activists murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer in 1964 by members of the Ku Klux Klan.-Early life and education:...
and Michael Schwerner
Michael Schwerner
Michael Henry Schwerner , was one of three Congress of Racial Equality field workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan in response to their civil rights work, which included promoting voting registration among Mississippi African Americans...
and - almost as an afterthought - James Chaney
James Chaney
James Earl "J.E." Chaney , from Meridian, Mississippi, was one of three American civil rights workers who were murdered during Freedom Summer by members of the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia...
. Indeed, Chaney's name tends to be listed last, as if the life he lost was worth only three fifths of the others."
Southern Jews in the civil rights movement
The vast majority of civil rights activism by American Jews was undertaken by Jews from the northern states. Jews from the southern states engaged in virtually no organized activity on behalf of civil rights. This lack of participation was puzzling to some northern Jews, due to the "inability of the northern Jewish leaders to see that Jews ... were not generally victims in the South and that the racial caste system in the south situated Jews favorably in the Southern mind, or 'whitened' them." However, there were some southern Jews that participated in civil rights activity as individuals.Recent decades have shown a greater trend for southern Jews to speak-out on civil rights issues, as shown by the 1987 marches in Forsyth County, Georgia.
Black power movement
Starting in 1966, the collaboration between Jews and blacks started to unravel. Jews were increasingly transitioning to middle-class and upper-class status, distancing themselves from blacks. At the same time, many black leaders, including some from the Black PowerBlack Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
movement, became outspoken in their demands for greater equality, often criticizing Jews along with other white targets.
In 1966, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
(SNCC) voted to exclude whites from its leadership, and that resulted in the expulsion of several Jewish leaders.
In 1967, black academic Harold Cruse
Harold Cruse
Harold Wright Cruse was an American academic who was an outspoken social critic and teacher of African-American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual is his best-known book....
attacked Jewish activism in his 1967 volume 'The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual' in which he argued that Jews had become a problem for blacks precisely because they had so identified with the Black struggle. Cruse insisted that Jewish involvement in interracial politics impeded the emergence of "Afro-American ethnic consciousness". For Cruse, as well as for other black activists, the role of American Jews as political mediator between Blacks and whites was "fraught with serious dangers to all concerned" and must be "terminated by Negroes themselves."
Blacks as the chosen people
Hebrew Israelites are groups of people mostly of Black AmericanBlack people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
ancestry situated mainly in the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
who believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelite
Israelite
According to the Bible the Israelites were a Hebrew-speaking people of the Ancient Near East who inhabited the Land of Canaan during the monarchic period .The word "Israelite" derives from the Biblical Hebrew ישראל...
s and hence are God's chosen people
Chosen people
Throughout history and even today various groups of people have considered themselves as chosen by a deity for some purpose such as to act as the deity's agent on earth. In monotheistic faiths, like Abrahamic religions, references to God are used in constructs such as "God's Chosen People"...
. Black Hebrews adhere in varying degrees to the religious beliefs and practices of mainstream Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
. They are generally not accepted as Jews by the greater Jewish community. Many Black Hebrews consider themselves—and not the people called Jews—to be the only authentic descendants of the ancient Israelites. Some groups self-identify Hebrew Israelites, others as Black Hebrews, and others as Jews. Dozens of Black Hebrew groups were founded during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.
Elijah Muhammad
Elijah Muhammad
Elijah Muhammad was an African American religious leader, and led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975...
, the founder of the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
, claimed that blacks—not whites or Europeanized Jews—are the chosen people
Chosen people
Throughout history and even today various groups of people have considered themselves as chosen by a deity for some purpose such as to act as the deity's agent on earth. In monotheistic faiths, like Abrahamic religions, references to God are used in constructs such as "God's Chosen People"...
. The current leader, Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan Muhammad, Sr. is the leader of the African-American religious movement the Nation of Islam . He served as the minister of major mosques in Boston and Harlem, and was appointed by the longtime NOI leader, Elijah Muhammad, before his death in 1975, as the National Representative of...
, has repudiated the notion that Jews are the chosen people
Jews as a chosen people
In Judaism, "chosenness" is the belief that the Jews are the Chosen People, chosen to be in a covenant with God. This idea is first found in the Torah and is elaborated on in later books of the Hebrew Bible...
, instead claiming that blacks are. In a 1985 speech, Farrakhan said "I have a problem with Jews...because...they are not the chosen people...I am declaring to the world that you, the black people...[are the chosen people]."
Labor movement
United Auto Workers
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...
(UAW) union. In 1943, Jews and blacks joined to request the creation of a new department within the UAW dedicated to minorities, but that request was refused by UAW leaders.
The Jewish Labor Committee
Jewish Labor Committee
The Jewish Labor Committee is an American secular Jewish organization dedicated to promoting labor union interests in Jewish communities, and Jewish interests within unions. The organization is headquartered in New York City, with local/regional offices in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago...
(JLC) (affiliated with the AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
) is an organization dedicated to promoting labor union interests in Jewish communities. The JLC formed approximately two dozen local committees in the United States to combat racial intolerance. The JLC helped found the United Farm Workers
United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association led by César Chávez...
, campaigned for the passage of the Fair Employment Practices Act in California and provided staffing and support for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the largest political rally for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr...
led by Martin Luther King.
However, during the 1940s and through to the 1960s, the JLC also defended anti-black discriminatory practices of unions in the garment industry and building industry. NAACP labor director Herbert Hill
Herbert Hill
Herbert Hill was the labor director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for decades and was a frequent contributor to New Politics as well as the author of several books...
claims that the JLC changed "a black white conflict into a Black-Jewish conflict". The JLC defended Jewish leaders of International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) against charges of anti-black racial discrimination, distored government reports about discrimination, failed to tell union members the truth, and when union members complained, the JLC labeled the members anti-semitic. ILGWU leaders denounced Black members for demanding equal treatment and access to leadership positions.
The New York City teacher's strike of 1968
New York City teacher's strike of 1968
The New York City teachers' strike of 1968 was a months-long confrontation between the new community-controlled school board in the largely black Ocean-Hill Brownsville section of Brooklyn and New York City’s United Federation of Teachers...
also signaled the decline of black-Jewish relations: the Jewish president of UFT teachers union provoked black-Jewish conflict by accusing black teachers of anti-semitissm.
Criticism of Zionism
After IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
occupied Palestinian
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
territory following the 1967 Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
, some American blacks supported the Palestinians and criticized Israel's actions, for example by publicly supporting Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Immediately after the war, the editor of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
's (SNCC) newsletter wrote an article criticizing Israel, and asserting that the war was an effort to regain Palestinian land and that during the 1948 war, "Zionists
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
conquered the Arab homes and land through terror, force, and massacres". This article led to conflict between Jews and the SNCC, but black SNCC leaders treated the war as a "test of their willingness to demonstrate SNCC's break from its civil rights past".
The concerns of blacks continued, and in 1993, black philosopher Cornel West
Cornel West
Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....
wrote in Race Matters
Race Matters
Race Matters is a 1994 social sciences book, authored by Cornel West. The book was first published on March 29, 1994 in the English language by Vintage Books. The book analyzes moral authority and racial debates concerning skin color in the United States...
: "Jews will not comprehend what the symbolic predicament and literal plight of Palestinans in Israel means to blacks.... Blacks often perceive the Jewish defense of the state of Israel as a second instance of naked group interest, and, again, an abandonment of substantive moral deliberation."
The support of Palestinians is frequently due to the consideration of them as people of color - Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker is an American political scientist and public intellectual.He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Queens Collegein New York. He did his undergraduate work at Amherst College. This was followed...
writes: "The presence of Israel in the Middle East is perceived as thwarting the rightful status of people of color. Some blacks view Israel as essentially a white and European power, supported from the outside, and occupying space that rightfully belongs to the original inhabitants of Palestine."
Affirmative action
Many blacks supported affirmative actionAffirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
, while many Jews did not, preferring instead merit-based systems, and that conflict was an important aspect of the decline of the black-Jewish alliance in the 1970s. The conflict is partially explained by the failure of the civil rights movement to fulfill its early promise of equality for blacks, which provoked an increasing militancy within the black community, which - in turn - led to increased resentment and fear among Jews.
A survey of affirmative-action lawsuits shows that Jewish organizations have generally opposed affirmative-action programs. A widely-publicized example of the black-Jewish conflict arose in 1978 affirmative action case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that ruled unconstitutional the admission process of the Medical School at the University of California at Davis, which set aside 16 of the 100 seats for African American...
, when black and Jewish organizations took opposing sides.
Black anti-semitism
Some leaders of the black community have made anti-semitic public comments, which often reflect wider anti-semitic sentiments held by some blacks, often involving over-aggressiveness, loyalty to Israel (rather than the United States), alleged participation in the slave trade, and economic oppression. Some analysts attribute black anti-semitism to resentment or envy "directed at another underdog who has 'made it' in American society".An early example of an accusation of black anti-semitism was black activist Sufi Abdul Hamid
Sufi Abdul Hamid
Sufi Abdul Hamid was an African-American religious and labor leader, and among the first African converts to Islam, accused of Anti-Semitism...
, who was accused of anti-semitism for his leadership in 1935 boycots against Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
merchants and establishments (often owned by Jewish proprietors) that he claimed discriminated against blacks.
Conclict between Jews and Blacks increased as a result of widely publicized anti-semitic remarks made in 1984 by then-presidential candidate Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
and former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young
Andrew Young
Andrew Jackson Young is an American politician, diplomat, activist and pastor from Georgia. He has served as Mayor of Atlanta, a Congressman from the 5th district, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
, and these remarks extended the era of African-American and Jewish distrust into the 1980s.
In 1991, during the Crown Heights riot
Crown Heights riot
The Crown Heights Riot was a three-day riot in the United States that occurred August 19–21, 1991. It took place in the Crown Heights neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn....
, black antisemitism was evident in the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum, an orthodox Jew who was murdered by a mob of blacks in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
During the 1990s, much of the antisemitism in the black community originated on college campuses, and centered on alleged Jewish dominance of the slave trade.
Prof. Leonard Jeffries
Leonard Jeffries
Leonard Jeffries Jr. is an American professor of black studies at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York. He achieved national prominence in the early 1990s for his controversial statements about Jews and other white people...
of the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
was a proponent of this idea.
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
, a black organization, has issued several anti-semitic pronouncements. The founder, Elijah Muhammad
Elijah Muhammad
Elijah Muhammad was an African American religious leader, and led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975...
, targeted whites in general, and asserted that whites - as well as Jews - are devils, implicated in the history of racism against blacks. But Muhammad did not consider Jews to be any more corrupt or oppressive than other whites.
But other Nation of Islam representatives have made explicitly anti-semitic remarks. In 1993, Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad
Khalid Abdul Muhammad
Khalid Abdul Muhammad was an African American activist who came to prominence as the National Assistant to Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam . After a 1993 speech at Kean College Khalid was condemned and removed from his position in the Nation of Islam by Louis Farrakhan...
called Jews "bloodsuckers" in a public speech, leading to widespread public condemnation. The current leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan Muhammad, Sr. is the leader of the African-American religious movement the Nation of Islam . He served as the minister of major mosques in Boston and Harlem, and was appointed by the longtime NOI leader, Elijah Muhammad, before his death in 1975, as the National Representative of...
, has made several remarks that the Anti-Defamation League
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...
and others consider anti-semitic, but Farrakhan denies that the remarks are anti-semetic.
Jews and the slave trade
During the 1990s, much of the Jewish-black conflict centered on Jewish involvement with the slave trade. An early controversial comment on that topic was made by professor Leonard JeffriesLeonard Jeffries
Leonard Jeffries Jr. is an American professor of black studies at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York. He achieved national prominence in the early 1990s for his controversial statements about Jews and other white people...
in a 1991 speech in which he said that "rich Jews" financed the slave trade, citing the role of Jews in slave-trading centers Rhode Island, Brazil, the Caribbean, Curaçao, and Amsterdam. His comments drew widespread outrage and calls for his dismissal from his position.
One of the sources that Jeffries cited was The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is a book published in 1991 by the Nation of Islam. The book alleges that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade....
, a book published in 1991 by the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
. That book alleges that Jews played a major role in the African slave trade, and it became the source of tremendous controversy, and resulted in several scholarly works rebutting its charges. Most mainstream scholars concluded that Jews had little major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery, and possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean, and - except in Brazil, Suriname, and Curaçao
- they did not play leading roles as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades.
Tony Martin
Tony Martin (professor)
Tony Martin was an American professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College who retired in June 2007 as professor emeritus after 34 years teaching at the Africana Studies Department where he was a founding member...
of Wellesley College included The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews in the reading list for his classes, leading to charges of anti-semitism in 1993.
Henry Gates, head of the department of Afro-American studies at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, called the book "the bible of new anti-Semitism" and added that "the book massively misinterprets the historical record, largely through a process of cunningly selective quotations of often reputable sources".
Jewish racism
The counterpoint to black antisemitism is Jewish anti-black racism. Some black customers and tenants felt that the Jewish shopkeepers and landlords treated them unfairly or were racist.Political scientist Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker is an American political scientist and public intellectual.He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Queens Collegein New York. He did his undergraduate work at Amherst College. This was followed...
documented an African-American author who said: "Jews tend to be a little self-righteous about their liberal record, ... we realize that they were pitying us and wanted our gratitude, not the realization of the principles of justice and humanity... Blacks consider [Jews] paternalistic. Black people have destroyed the previous relationship which they had with the Jewish community, in which we were the victims of a kind of paternalism, which is only a benevolent racism."
Historian Taylor Branch
Taylor Branch
Taylor Branch is an American author and historian best known for his award-winning trilogy of books chronicling the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and some of the history of the American civil rights movement...
in his 1992 essay "Blacks and Jews: The Uncivil War", asserts the Jews have been "perpetrators of racial hate", citing the example where three thousand members of a sect of Black Jews from Chicago were denied citizenship under the Israeli law of return
Law of Return
The Law of Return is Israeli legislation, passed on 5 July 1950, that gives Jews the right of return and settlement in Israel and gain citizenship...
because of anti-Black sentiment among Israeli Jews.
Historian Hasia Diner writes: "Never a relationship of equals, [many blacks] assert, Jews sat on the boards of black organizations and held power in black institutions but never allowed for the reverse. [Jews] gave money to civil rights organizations and demanded the right to make decisions by virtue of the power of their purses."
Motivations and causes
The motivations underlying the blacks and Jews in their relationship were complex, ranging from altruism to self-interest.Cooperation
The primary motivation for cooperation - for both blacks and Jews - was justice, equality, and righteousness. But the cooperation was very pragmatic, and the relationship was seen by both blacks and Jews as a means to an end, not an end in itself.In addition to the obvious motivation of justice and righteousness, one common thread that bound Jews and blacks together in cooperation was slavery: particularly the story of the Jewish enslavement in Egypt, as told in the Biblical story of the Book of Exodus, which many blacks identified with. But Jewish scholar Ralph A. Austen uses the term "benign myth" to describe the notion that Jews have always fought against slavery of oppressed peoples, and suggests that scholars (before 1990) rarely discussed evidence of Jewish support for slavery, in order to avoid damaging the relationship between blacks and Jews.
Historian David Levering Lewis
David Levering Lewis
David Levering Lewis is the Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History at New York University. He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, for part one and part two of his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois...
attributes the cooperation in the early twentieth century to self-interest rather than altruism, claiming that black and Jewish leaders were primarily concerned with maintaining their positions of power, and ensuring that assimilation into the American mainstream was unimpeded by controversy.
Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker is an American political scientist and public intellectual.He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Queens Collegein New York. He did his undergraduate work at Amherst College. This was followed...
acknowledges that Jews were genuinely concerned about the welfare of blacks, but characterizes their participation in the civil rights movement as an "ego trip".
Conflict
The relationship was never entirely without conflict, but after 1965, the conflict became so pronounced that it became the subject of a 1969 Time magazine cover story and eventually the conflict itself became the subject of academic study.Harold Cruse
Harold Cruse
Harold Wright Cruse was an American academic who was an outspoken social critic and teacher of African-American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual is his best-known book....
said that what really roused his "enmity toward Jews" was hearing people who are Jewish say "I know how you feel because I, too, am discriminated against". According to Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker is an American political scientist and public intellectual.He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Queens Collegein New York. He did his undergraduate work at Amherst College. This was followed...
, this equating of racial and religious discrimination "insults the ordeals black Americans have undergone since they were first loaded on slave ships".
Another complaint of blacks was the paternalistic approach of some Jewish leaders and also the resistance of some Jews from northern states to residential and education integration within their own communities.
Some blacks, such as Harold Cruse
Harold Cruse
Harold Wright Cruse was an American academic who was an outspoken social critic and teacher of African-American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual is his best-known book....
, claimed that Jews infiltrated and exploited the civil rights movement in order to improve the status of Jews in the United States, but that the Jews disguised this goal by claiming to be fighting for racial equality.
James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
suggested that some anti-Jewish backlash was simply a convenient target of frustration and resentment, and that Jews stood in for whites in the black mind: "[J]ust as a society must have a scapegoat, so hatred must have a symbol. Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew".
Another motivation for conflict is the diverging class status of blacks and Jews: throughout the twentieth century, Jews have migrated into the middle-class and upper-class more rapidly than African-Americans, who often remained in blue-collar jobs.
See also
- African-American history
- African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968)
- African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)
External links
- Webb, Clive. "Counterblast: How the Atlanta Temple Bombing Strengthened the Civil Rights Cause." Southern Spaces 22 June 2009.
- Publications on Black-Jewish Relations at the Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagner