Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

THE NEED TO REMEMBER
Three Phases in Black
and Jewish Educational Relations
He comes to collect the rent, so you know him in that role. He runs the grocery
EARL LEWIS
store and he give you credit, so you know him in that role. He runs the drug store
and he bandages your wounds, and you know him in that role... You don't really
know him from anybody else, but.. .you deal with it one way or another.
When I was growing up it was a time, after all, of the Second World War. My
best friends in high school were Jewish. It was a very, very important moment in
my life because it was a time when 1 realized in a way.. .my friends.. .were not so
far from the fiery furnace after all.
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Noted author James Baldwin used his childhood memories of Jewish friends,
merchants, and acquaintances to frame a discussion of Blacks and Jews in
American society. Baldwin had often seen the need to lean on those memories; he
did so again in a 1984 lecture to students at the University of Massachusetts-
Amherst, where he taught prior to his death. 1 At the time, he had no way of
knowing that his words would stir a controversy about academic freedom, education,
race, and Black-Jewish relations that pitted one iconoclastic scholar against
his colleagues, and interestingly exposed a twist in the intricacies of a fluid historical
relationship. 2 That day, Baldwin called on memory—both his own and
that of all African Americans. He asked them to recall the ways in which Blacks
and Jews, each with a history of deep oppression, found themselves sharing social,
cultural, and political space in the ghettos, ethnic enclaves, towns, and cities of
America. His call to memory worked because whether it was raised in Harlem,
Philadelphia, Detroit, Norfolk, or Atlanta, Black Americans had accessible memories
of Jews as neighbors, friends, and merchants.
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