Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

158 // CHERYL GREENBERG
later the AJC joined the NAACP in meetings with Black and Jewish newspaper
editors to explore tensions between the two communities, generally over employment
and customer relations. The ADL lent strong support to the effort to integrate
the armed forces, at least on a voluntary basis. Nevertheless, such cooperation
was halting and at least some Jewish leaders were extremely reluctant to
move toward closer ties with Black organizations. The AJC meetings, for example,
came only after a great deal of pressure from Charles Houston and Walter
White of the NAACP. Responding to complaints about allegedly anti-Semitic
remarks made by a Chicago NAACP representative, Houston wrote to A. Ovrum
Tapper, the ACLU's Chicago attorney,
You can depend on my doing everything in my power to have my people
see that anti-Semitism is Negro suicide.
But I wish on your side you would try to show some of the wealthy
Jews the fundamental identity between race persecution of minorities,
regardless who. Walter White has been trying for some time to get an
unpublicized conference of Jewish leaders and representative Negroes to
discuss the whole question of Negro-Jewish relations, but he has been
unable to get anywhere."
Jewish organizations focused on African Americans as much to scrutinize them for
changes in the level of anti-Semitism as to challenge American racism. Jewish
groups were far more reluctant to take on questions of Black civil rights directly,
partly out of fear that their already tenuous position in America might be further
jeopardized by any perceived alliance with an even more reviled group. As Philip
Frankel of the ADL put it in 1943, "The difficulties facing the Jews, as a minority
group, are sad enough without tying ourselves up with another minority
group of less influence, and by so doing, probably taking on some of their troubles—a
group whose difficulties, in my estimation, are even more deplorable than
our own." 6
Not only were Blacks similarly outcast in American political life, Black organizations
occasionally embraced more confrontational tactics to further their
goals. While Jews sought access to officials in power to convince them to intervene
in the European conflict, and therefore took the most conciliatory and politic
stance possible, Black groups recognized that their similarly conciliatory tactics
during World War I had resulted in no benefits for them. Therefore when A.
Philip Randolph proposed a mass March on Washington to insist on equitable
opportunities tor Black soldiers and workers during wartime, Black organizations
signed on, while many Jewish groups read it as a sign of possibly subversive activity.
Responding to a query about the possibility of working with Randolph, Paul
Richman of the ADL warned Director Leonard Finder, "I wonder if you are aware
that the Department of Justice is watching him closely for subversive activities in
connection with his 'March on Washington' movement. He has been causing the