Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

Long-Distance Runners of the Civil Rights Movement \\ 149
His Life and Letters (Garden City, NY, 1929), I, 315; Wise, Challenging Years, pp. 117,
172-73; Herbert H. Lehman to Walter White, Feb. 12, 1934, and White to Caroline
Flexner, May 8, 1934, Herbert H. Lehman Papers, Special Files, Folder 931c, Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; Mervis, "The Social Justice
Movement and the American Reform Rabbi," pp. 194—95, 209.
40. Diner, In the Almost Promised Land, pp. 124-25; Roy Wilkins interview, June
4, 1957, p. 20, Herbert H. Lehman Oral History Project, Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Columbia University. See also the observation of Oswald Garrison Villard
that Jews "responded more quickly, often more generously" in support of philanthropic
causes: "I have never appealed to them for aid for the Negro, for the sick, the
poor, the distressed, or for any philanthropy and been rebuffed." lighting Years:
Memoirs of a Liberal Editor (New York, 1939), p- 529.
41. Herbert H. Lehman to Walter White, Feb. 27 (Lehman quote), Mar. 17,
1939, Lehman Papers, Special Files, NAACP Folder (c. 30-38); White to Walter T.
Brown, June 18, 1935; Lehman to John D. Hertz, June 21, 1935, both in ibid., Folder
93 lc; Diner, In the Almost Promised Land, p. 126 (White and Billikopf quotes).
42. NAACP, Twenty-First Annual Report, 1930, pp. 55-56. The Association
counted contributions separately from membership income. The sum of the contributions
for the early 1930s was calculated from the relevant annual reports.
43. In the Lehman Papers, Special Files, see: Walter White to Caroline Flexner,
Apr. 19, 1933 ("most dolorous"), Folder 931c; Herbert H. Lehman to Roy Wilkins,
Jan. 2, 1959 ("more compelling"), and Wilkins to Lehman, May 29, 1962 ("saviours
of the movement"), Folder 937. In the New York Foundation Archives, see: White to
William F. Fuerst, Feb. 6, 1934; Application of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People to the New York Foundation for Renewal of Grant
of $1,000, May 14, 1936; Fuerst to White, May 18, 1933, Feb. 23, 1934, Apr. 18,
1935, May 21, 1936, Sept. 27, 1937, all in the NAACP folder; and White to Fuerst,
Oct. 11, 1939, in the folder "NAACP—General, Prior to 1940." The New York
Foundation had made more modest contributions to the NAACP in the years
1911—15 and again in 1920-23; see the annual financial statements, which are held
at the Foundation's offices in New York City.
44. The rudiments of this analysis are laid out in Nancy J. Weiss, The National
Urban League, 1910-1940 (New York, 1974), pp. 52-54, 155. Even if all of the white
Urban Leaguers whose religious affiliations have not been established (eight in the
1910s, eleven in the 1920s, twelve in the 1930s) were Christians, Jews would still
have been significantly overrepresented: one sixth of white board members in the
1910s, one quarter in the 1920s, and almost one fifth in the 1930s.
45. On Adler, see Dictionary of American Biography, XXI (New York, 1944),
13-14, and Kraut, "Felix Adler," p. 29—30. On Seligman, see Who's Who in America,