Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

162 // CHERYL GREENBERG
turned anti-Semitic as well because it was a Jewish family that had rented to
them. The ADL, AJCongress, and the NAACP wrote investigative reports of this
and similar disturbances, and collaborated on their responses. 16 Meier Steinbrink,
President of the ADL, recognized the power of such cooperation in a 1949 fundraising
letter for the NAACP to be sent to potential Jewish donors.
I want to cite three of the many achievements of the NAACP which make
all Americans and particularly members of the Anti-Defamation League
indebted to the NAACP.
It was the NAACP which started the fight.. .against restrictive
covenants which culminated in the Supreme Court victory in 1948. Our
Anti-Defamation League filed a brief amicus curiae
And it was the NAACP which caused the United States Supreme Court
to reverse its unfortunate decision in the Leo Frank case...in Moore vs.
Dempsey
It was the Association which called the meeting on August 6, 1946 of
41 organizations of which the ADL was one out of which came the
President's Committee on Civil Rights. 17
Still, while this was mutual effort in the name of self-interest, most programs
jointly undertaken in fact had a greater impact on one community or the other.
Thus, for example, Jewish groups joined or spearheaded efforts to desegregate
restaurants and beaches, from which they were rarely excluded, as well as country
clubs and resorts which generally excluded both populations. African American
organizations added their voices to efforts to resettle refugees, the bulk of whom
were Jewish, and joined the battle against quotas in higher education which,
though raised against both Blacks and Jews, affected Jews more since they constituted
a larger proportion of the applicant pool. This represented a further
development in the Black-Jewish political relationship; increasingly by the end of
the 1940s, Black and Jewish groups joined in efforts primarily or exclusively
benefiting the other. The definition of self-interest, which had expanded during
wartime to include mutually overlapping concerns of discrimination, had expanded
again. Taking their own words seriously, defense agencies argued that protecting
the rights of one minority group protected the rights of all. As Isaac Toubin,
Associate Director of the AJCongress, wrote in 1953:
We must be concerned with safeguarding the democratic process as the
best way to preserve our integrity and our identity as Jews. But democracy
frequently ceases...at the boundaries of race, color and creed. It is not
always the same race, color or creed that: is subjected to abuse, but this
abuse, no matter what its target, always poses the identical threat—The
only really significant way to guarantee or protect or extend Jewish rights