JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

formal organizations rarely contacted their counterparts in
the other community for cooperative action.
Too poor, too overwhelmed with their own needs, black
and Jewish agencies were small and limited in resources.
Blacks and Jews stayed apart as well because of black antisemitism
and Jewish racism. These attitudes were less potent
there than they were among white Christians but they had
an impact nonetheless. And there was one more concern, at
least from the Jewish side. Jewish organizations struggling for
acceptance recognized that racism was the stronger force and
feared that any association with such a pariah group as blacks
would hurt their own efforts. When Jewish Leo *Frank was
convicted of murder in 1913 on the testimony of a black man
in an antisemitic trial in Atlanta, and lynched two years later,
it prompted the newly formed Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
to proclaim its commitment to defending the rights of all. But
in practice, Frank’s murder convinced many Jews that life in
the United States was dangerous enough without taking on
black people’s problems as well.
While relatively few blacks and Jews interacted politically
(outside of the Left), far more encountered each other
in economic venues. In virtually every case, Jews had the upper
hand. Because Jews were white, they were able to benefit
from the American system that apportioned opportunity
more by race than by ethnicity or religion. Their white skin
and the urban skills they had brought from Europe enabled
Jews to succeed more quickly than African Americans; it was
the exodus of better-off Jews into better neighborhoods that
brought black tenants to Jewish areas in the first place. These
Jews, and those that remained, continued to run their original
businesses; Jews owned up to 90% of the stores in many black
neighborhoods. So the inevitable tensions in poor neighborhoods
between landlords and tenants, shopkeepers and customers,
social workers and clients came to be seen as black-
Jewish conflicts, and they reinforced stereotypes of greedy
and unscrupulous Jews, or lazy or irresponsible blacks.
Another point of contact between the two communities
was the arts, especially music and the new medium of motion
pictures. Meeting first in vaudeville and other performance
areas, Jews also rose to positions of greater power and became
impresarios and agents for black performers. The same was
also true in sports.
Given the limited and hierarchical nature of relations between
African Americans and American Jews, and although
members of each community recognized the plight of the
other, and were sensitive to prejudice, there was little positive
mutual interaction in the first third of the 20th century.
This changed with the rise of Nazism. With Jews threatened
in Europe, and with the rise of fascist and antisemitic groups
in the United States, it became clear to Jewish organizations
that they desperately needed allies. And for black people,
who recognized bigotry when they saw it, anti-Nazi efforts
also offered the strongest challenge to American racism. The
black press and several black groups therefore launched what
Black-Jewish Relations in the united states
they called a Double V campaign: victory against Nazism
abroad and racism at home. Outspoken in their protest of Nazi
atrocities, black groups also lost no opportunity to draw parallels
with lynching and racial bigotry in the United States.
Black-Jewish cooperation in the 1930s was clearly based
on mutual self-interest, but one that recognized the shared
danger inherent in any form of bigotry. These groups had
come to recognize what the Left had been saying all along: that
unity among the oppressed was the most effective weapon to
bring about change. The Ribbentrop-Molotov, German-Soviet
pact, however, discredited the Left in the eyes of many liberals,
and the emerging Cold War made suspect all programs
espoused by Communists. Stalin’s purges alienated still more
Jews, who abandoned the Communist Party for liberal and
progressive Jewish political organizations. Thus, Nazism and
the war brought black and Jewish liberals to a new recognition
of the importance of civil rights and racial tolerance. At
the same time, anti-Communism also led them to limit their
strategies, goals, and coalitions in ways that hobbled the potential
for fundamental social change. The stage was set for
what many consider the “golden age” of black-Jewish relations.
Political relations between black and Jewish political
agencies warmed further as the modern civil rights movement
gained real force. The two communities had gotten to know
one another through common work. Their organizations
had become more desirable allies as their earlier successes
brought increased membership, stronger finances, and greater
political access. And they shared a set of liberal values, including
bringing change within the existing system; employing
moderate, non-confrontational tactics in doing so; a commitment
to the centrality of individual rights rather than privileges
bestowed by membership in a group; and a conviction
that it was the obligation of government to foster equal opportunity.
They advocated litigation, education, and legislation
to bring about equality, evidenced, for example, in the
American Jewish Congress’s new Commission on Law and
Social Action.
By the late 1940s, liberal civil rights organizations rooted
in the two communities slowly began to develop a close partnership,
launching programs separately and jointly to improve
conditions for racial and religious minorities. This can still be
viewed as self-interest, but it was now a broader concept. The
NAACP, with the help of all the main Jewish organizations,
won a Supreme Court case declaring restrictive housing covenants
unenforceable, which benefited both groups but particularly
economically mobile Jews. The NAACP came to the
Brown v. Board of Education case, as well as its predecessors,
armed with amicus briefs from virtually every other black
and Jewish civil rights organization (along with other progressive,
union, religious, and civic groups). The creation of New
York’s state college system was a joint black-Jewish effort to
combat religious and racial discrimination in higher education.
Together they fought to make permanent the war’s Fair
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 735