Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

Long-Distance Runners of the Civil Rights Movement \\ 137
Lehman who offered the challenge grant: he would make a gift of $1,000 a year
for three years, provided that the Association could secure four other gifts of the
same size. ("Among my many interests none has been more compelling than that
of civil rights," he later reflected.) Lehman renewed the offer in 1936. Among
other sources, the NAACP obtained the matching gifts from William Rosenwald,
Samuel Pels, and the New York Foundation, where Lehman was a longtime
trustee. Lehman's generosity made such an important difference to the
Association's financial solvency in the difficult years of the 1930s that Roy
Wilkins was prompted to write, "In a very real sense you were one of the saviours
of this movement." 43
Lehman who offered the challenge grant: he would make a gift of $1,000 a year
for three years, provided that the Association could secure four other gifts of the
same size. ("Among my many interests none has been more compelling than that
of civil rights," he later reflected.) Lehman renewed the offer in 1936. Among
other sources, the NAACP obtained the matching gifts from William Rosenwald,
Samuel Pels, and the New York Foundation, where Lehman was a longtime
trustee. Lehman's generosity made such an important difference to the
Association's financial solvency in the difficult years of the 1930s that Roy
Wilkins was prompted to write, "In a very real sense you were one of the saviours
of this movement." 43
Ill
The essential contribution of Jews to the work of the NAACP found important
parallels in the major major role that Jews played, principally in governance and finance,
in sustaining the National Urban Urban League. Whereas the the contribution of Jews to
the governance governance of the NAACP came chiefly through the work of individual individual
officers, in the case of the National Urban League it came through the the significant significant
overrepresentation of Jews among the the members members of the national board. board. In the
1910s, 1910s, of the twenty-eight twenty-eight white LJrban League League board members whose religious
affiliations are known, six were Jews or Jewish-born members of Ethical Culture
Societies: Felix Adler, Adler, then a professor of social and political ethics at Columbia
University; Abraham Lefkowitz, a teacher and and labor organizer in in New York (and
the sole sole Eastern European Jew in the the group); and four members of two of the leading
New York York German Jewish Jewish banking families—Ella Sachs Plotz and her brotherer
Paul J. Sachs, and Edwin R. A. Seligman and his brother brother George. In the 1920s,
the number of Jews Jews on the the board grew to ten out of of the twenty-eight twenty-eight whites
whose religious affiliations are known. Adler, Lefkowitz, Ella Sachs Plot*, Plotx, Paul
Sachs, Sachs, and George Seligman Seligman continued continued to serve, and the new members members included
another Sachs sibling, Arthur; Arthur; Julius Rosenwald's wife, wife, Augusta Nusbaum Nusbaum
Rosenwald, Rosenwald, and their daughter, daughter, Adele Rosenwald Levy, Levy, both of Chicago; Dorothy
Straus, a New York lawyer; and Lucy Goldschmidt Moses, Moses, a New York philanthropist.
In the 1930s, of the twenty-six white white board members whose whose religious
affiliations can be be identified, seven were Jews: Lefkowitz; Levy; Moses; Arthur
Sachs; Sachs; Straus; Alice Naumburg Naumburg Proskauer, a New Yorker active in civic and philanthropic
affairs; and Joseph N. Ulman, a judge on the Supreme Bench of
Baltimore/' 4
Baltimore/' 4
These men and women's support for racial reform stemmed from religious
commitment, social conscience, conscience, personal ties, and family connections. connections. Adler and
Seligman provide cases cases in point. Both were were German Jews by by birth birth (Seligman's
father, Joseph, Joseph, the founder of the the international banking house, J. & W. W. Seligman
& Company, was widely regarded as the leading Jewish financier in New York);
both came came to embrace Ethical Culture (Seligman served as president of the the Society