Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

Long-Distance Runners of the the Civil Rights Movement \\ 135
helpful through the prestige which each had." Their particular contributions as
volunteers would never never be replicated, not only because of their singular personal
qualities and professional distinction, but because of the increasing prominence
in the Association's legal work of an elite group of of Black lawyers, culminating in
the appointment in 1 935 of the first salaried special counsel, Charles H. Houston,
the dean of the Howard University Law School. (At the decade's end, Houston
would be succeeded as special counsel by his most famous student, Thurgood
Marshall.) For two decades thereafter, however, the Black Black lawyers would pursue a
strategy influenced influenced in significant measure by the work, of a Rumanian Jew.
Nathan Margold, Margold, a Harvard-trained lawyer who was a a protege of Felix
Frankfurter, had been retained retained by by the the NAACP NAACP in 1930 to frame a long-range plan
for civil civil rights litigation litigation (the money money for for the project had come from the Garland
Fund, Fund, known formally as the American Fund for Public Service). The Margolcl Margold
Report (1931) laid out a strategy for a direct direct attack on on "the practice of segregation,
as as now provided for and administered"—that administered" — that is, for a litigation campaign
designed to demonstrate that segregation, segregation, as practiced, was "accompanied irremediably
by discrimination," and was therefore unconstitutional. unconstitutional. The distinguished
Black lawyer William H. Hastie later called the the Margold Report "the
Bible of the NAACP legal legal drive."-
While the legal arena was the principal vehicle vehicle for Jewish Jewish involvement in the
NAACP's program program in its early decades, Jews made contributions, as well, to its
many political activities. Joel Spingarn and Henry Moskowitz joined with Jane
Addams in 1912 in an unsuccessful effort to insert a civil civil rights plank, plank, drafted by
W. E. B. Du Bois, in the Progressive Party platform. Jacob Schiff and Stephen
Wise lobbied President Wilson to change his policies concerning segregation segregation in
the federal civil service. Joel Spingarn, Lillian Wald, Jacob Schiff, Stephen Wise,
and others joined in the protest against D. W. Griffith's film, The Birth of a
Nation, because of its inflammatory, racist portrayal of Blacks. In the 1920s 1920s and and
1930s, many many Jews lent their efforts efforts to the the NAACP's NAACP's campaign for anti-lynching
legislation. Jews played a significant significant role, as well, well, in the NAACP's publicity campaign,
writing articles and and pamphlets, delivering lectures, and generally using
their connections connections to bring the NAACP's message to the white professional, professional, civic, civic,
and social circles in which which they moved. In addition, addition, the NAACP's first salaried
director of publicity was a Jewish reporter for the New York Evening Post, Herbert
J. Seligmann, who handled the Association's dealings with the press from 1919
through through 1932.39
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Finally, Jews played a a significant role in providing providing financial support for the
NAACP's work. work. As Hasia Diner Diner has pointed out, "Jews were natural natural potential
contributors contributors for two reasons": many Jews in the early twentieth century had substantial
resources, and the the long tradition of Jewish philanthropy disposed them to