Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

LONG-DISTANCE RUNNERS
OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
The Contribution of Jews to the NAACP
and the National Urban League
in the Early Twentieth Century
seve n
NANCY J. WEISS
ooking back in 1973 on a lifetime of close association with Jews in the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Roy Wilkins,
the NAACP's executive secretary, reflected on the role that Jews had played
in the struggle for civil rights. "They are very quick...to aid the downtrodden,"
he said, "they're very keen, intellectually, in seeing their own plight mirrored in
somebody else's treatment, they're very generous in their giving to these causes."
While Wilkins was not arguing that Jews, of all sympathetic whites, had been
uniquely helpful, his appreciation for their contributions was unambiguous: "They
have supplied sympathy, understanding, intellectual achievement and skills, comprehension
over and above the regular comprehension of similar groups., .and,
most of all, they have never forgotten. ..what a hard time they had." 1
In 1994, in the keynote address at the National Urban League's annual convention,
the new president of the organization, Hugh P. Price, sounded a similar
theme. "Many whites of good will have accompanied us on our long journey for
racial, social and economic justice," he declared. "None has matched the Jewish
community as long-distance runners in the civil rights movement." 2
This chapter explores the contribution of Jews to the NAACP and the
National Urban League from their founding in the Progressive Era to the eve of
the Second World War. It tells the story of a small number of individuals who
took up the struggle for racial equality well before it would be joined by the principal
organizations for Jewish advancement. Influenced by religion and social concern,
acting out of a combination of altruism and self-interest, they committed
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