African Americans andJewish Americans have interacted throughout much of thehistory of the United States. This relationship has included widely publicized cooperation and conflict, and it has been an area of significant academic research since the 1970s.^[1] Cooperation during theCivil Rights Movement was strategic and significant, culminating in theCivil Rights Act of 1964.

The relationship has also featured conflicts and controversies which are related to such topics as theBlack Power movement,Zionism,affirmative action, and theantisemitic trope concerning the alleged dominant role of American and Caribbean-based Jews in theAtlantic slave trade.

Interactions between Black people and Jews in the Americas began duringEuropean colonization in theearly modern period. Black Africans first arrived in America in the 16th century. Captives from West and Central Africa were sold toEuropean slave traders andtransported across the Atlantic to the Americas, where they weresold to local slaveowners. A few were able to achieve freedom throughmanumission or escaping slavery and founded independent communities before and during theAmerican Revolution.^[2][3][4][5]

Early Jewish communities in what became the United States were primarilySephardi (Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent). Many were refugees and immigrants from Brazil, Amsterdam, or England. They settled in cities such asNew York City,Providence, Rhode Island,Charleston, South Carolina, andSavannah, Georgia, gradually integrating into the local society. Slavery was along-established institution in the colonies, and some Jews becameslaveholders, especially in the South. Despite theconspiracy theory thatJews had an outsize role in the slave trade, Jews comprised only 1.25% of Southern slaveowners.^[6] For the most part, American Jews did not accept a sense of responsibility for the larger society around them until the late 19th century. When they finally did so, Southern Jews lagged far behind Northern Jews.^[7]

Like manyChristians of the time, some Jews used theBible to justify the enslavement of Black people based onhistorical andscientific racism. For instance, a Jewish editor namedJacob N. Cardozo explained that "the reason the Almighty had made the colored black" was to mark him as inferior, providing an obvious, God-given approval of slavery. This scientific racism often characterized people as belonging to three broad categories or races:Caucasian,Mongoloid orNegroid. So, although Jews were often considered "other" and separate from European Christians, theNaturalization Act of 1790 classed them as "free white persons" and thus full citizens, unlike Native Americans, Africans, Pacific Islanders, and non-white Asians.^[8]

After the United States was founded in 1776, mostBlack people continued to be enslaved, a large majority of which were concentrated in theAmerican South; four million slaves wereliberated only during and at the end of theCivil War in 1865. DuringReconstruction, they gainedcitizenship and, in the case of adult males, theright to vote. Due to the widespread policy and ideology ofwhite supremacy, however, Black Americans were treated assecond-class citizens and soon found themselvesdisenfranchised in the South.

Recently, Jews have supported and participated inBlack Lives Matter protests.^[9]

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, millions ofAshkenazi Jews fromEastern Europe immigrated to the United States for social and economic opportunities due to widespread violentpogroms in their homelands. They mainly settled in New York and other major cities.

In theGreat Migration of the 1910s, Southern Black people began large-scale migration to Northern cities, where many Jews had already settled, in order to escape peonage and second-class citizenship.

Black people related to the Jews, seeing connections between slavery in America and the biblical accounts of the Israelites in Egypt.^[10] Northern Jews also began to see similar connections^[10] and began to express sympathy for the plight of Black Americans:

In the early 1900s, Jewish newspapers drew parallels between the Black movement out of the South and the Jews' escape from Egypt, pointing out that both Blacks and Jews lived in ghettos, and calling anti-Black riots in the South "pogroms". Stressing the similarities rather than the differences between the Jewish and Black experience in America, Jewish leaders emphasized the idea that both groups would benefit the more America moved toward a society of merit, free of religious, ethnic and racial restrictions.^[11]

TheAmerican Jewish Committee, theAmerican Jewish Congress, and theAnti-Defamation League were central to the campaign against racial prejudice. Jews made substantial financial contributions to many civil rights organizations, including theNAACP, theUrban League, theCongress of Racial Equality, and theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.^[11]

In theearly 1900s, Northern Jewish daily and weekly publications, many of them holding radical and secular views, often reported on violence against Black people at a time when non-Jewish publications would not. Some writers in these publications compared the anti-black violence in the South to the deadlyanti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, even though other Jewish writers strongly objected to such comparisons.^[12][13]

Despite many publications taking an anti-racist stance, coverage in Jewish periodicals could be deeply ambivalent: It was often inspired by principles of justice and by a desire to change racist policies in the United States,^[14] but it sometimes used racist language,^[13] occasionally blamed Black people for their own oppression (including racist incidents such as theTulsa massacre),^[15][12] and sometimes was paternalistic.^[15] Some of the ambivalence was motivated, as Uri Schreter puts it, by"anxieties about Black violence".^[15] At the same time, African-American writers often portrayed Jewish people through the lens of capitalism and exploitation of Black labor, and many Jews felt that the comparisons that Black people drew between themselves and Jews were offensive.^[16][17]

During this period, notable Northern Jewish leaders invested time, influence and economic resources into Black endeavors, supporting civil rights, philanthropy, social service, and organizing. HistorianHasia Diner notes that "they made sure that their actions were well publicized" as part of an effort to demonstrate increasing Jewish political clout.^[18]

Julius Rosenwald was a Northern Jewish philanthropist who donated a large part of his fortune to supporting Black education in the South by providing matching funds for construction of schools in rural areas.^[19] Northern Jews played a major role in theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in its early decades. Northern Jews involved in the NAACP includedJoel Elias Spingarn (its first chairman),Arthur B. Spingarn, and founderHenry Moskowitz. More recently,Jack Greenberg was a leader in the organization.^[20]

On the other hand, African Americans also experienced racism and shock from newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe,^[12] and they faced a lack of support from Jews in the South.^[21] Critics such asAlbert Lindemann have argued that pro-black attitudes amongst Southern Jews in this time period would have provoked fierce opposition from Christian white Southerners.^[21]

Southern Jewish attitudes towards Black people only started to change in 1915, when the much publicizedlynching ofLeo Frank, a Jew, inGeorgia by a mob of white Southerners caused many Southern Jews to "become acutely conscious of the similarities and differences between themselves and blacks." Some began feeling an increased sense of solidarity with Black people, as the trial exposed widespread antisemitism in Georgia.^[22]

However, the trial also pitted Jews against Black people because Frank's Jewish defense attorneys excluded Black jurors and exploited anti-black racism by shifting the blame for the murder of Mary Phagan, a white girl, to Jim Conley, a Black janitor and witness against Frank. Frank's lead attorney, Luther Rosser, called Conley a "dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger."^[23] Although many historians since the late 20th century have concluded that Conley did murder Phagan,^{[24][25][full citation needed]} most Southern Jews were quite racist towards Black people at the time and took advantage of their higher social status.^[26]

Baruch Charney Vladeck reported that, although he didn't see Jews attack Black people in the South, he did see them smile when Black people were assaulted, and argued that Jews ignored their "‘vayse’ privilegn" ("white" privilege).^[27] However, he felt that the lynching of Frank could improve relations with Black people, writing:

Now, when the white body of one of ours has been hung upon a tree, we will perhaps understand that the blacks feel every day what we have felt for only one day and become better citizens.^[28]

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) was an early promoter ofpan-Africanism andAfrican redemption and led theUniversal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. His push to celebrate Africa as the original homeland of African Americans led many Jews to compare Garvey to leaders ofZionism.^[29] An example of this was that Garvey wantedWorld War I peace negotiators to turn over former German colonies in southwest Africa to Black people. In that period, Zionists were promoting a "return of Jews" after 2,000 years to the historic homeland ofIsrael, stressing self-determination for former colonies.^[29] At the same time, Garvey regularly criticized Jews in his columns in his newspaperNegro World for allegedly trying to destroy the Black population of America.^[30]

AfterWorld War II,Federal Housing Authority policy restricted certain neighborhoods to people of the "same social and racial classes". While some of these neighborhoods excluded them based on charter, Jews were usually permitted to move into white areas, while Black people were not. This reinforcedsegregation at the time and deepened the economic, social and political inequalities between African Americans and other ethnic groups, including Jews.^[8][31][32]

By the middle of the 20th century, many Southern Jews were supportive of theCivil Rights Movement. About 50 percent of the civil-rights attorneys in the South during the 1960s were Jews, as were over 50 percent of the whites who went to Mississippi in 1964 to challengeJim Crow laws.^[11] These pro-black Southern Jews tended to keep a low profile on "the race issue" in order to avoid attracting the attention of the anti-black (and antisemitic)Ku Klux Klan.^[33]

However, Klan groups exploited the issue of Black integration and Jewish involvement in the struggle in order to commit violently antisemitichate crimes. As an example of this hatred, in one year alone, from November 1957 to October 1958, temples and other Jewish communal gatherings were bombed and desecrated inAtlanta,Nashville,Jacksonville, andMiami, and dynamite was found undersynagogues inBirmingham,Charlotte, andGastonia. Somerabbis received death threats, although there were no injuries following these outbursts of violence.^[33]

Following theCivil War, Jewish shop-owners and landlords engaged in business with Black customers and tenants, often filling a need where non-Jewish, white business owners would not venture. This was true in most regions of the South, where Jews were often merchants in its small cities, as well as Northern urban cities such as New York, where they settled in high numbers. Jewish shop-owners tended to be more civil than other white people to Black customers, treating them with more dignity.^[34] Black people often had more immediate contact with Jewish people than to white Christians.^[35]

In 1903, Black historianW. E. B. Du Bois described the disparity between Black people and Jews in the South, describing the latter, who were often landlords, as successors to theslave-barons.^[36] In the 1953 edition, he changed the text to use the words "immigrant" and "foreigner", explaining, "What, of course, I meant to condemn was the exploitation of Black labor and that it was in this country and at that time in part a matter of immigrant Jews, was incidental and not essential. My inner sympathy with the Jewish people was expressed better in the last paragraph of page 152. But this illustrates how easily one slips into unconscious condemnation of a whole group.^[37] Du Bois also publicly spoke out against antisemitism for decades.^[38]

Black novelistJames Baldwin (1924–1987), who grew up inHarlem in the years between the world wars, also would highlight the visibility of Jewish landlords as a cause of antisemitism in the Black community. In the essay "Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White", in which he critiqued Black antisemitism,^[39] he noted that many landlords, grocers, butchers and pawnbrokers in Harlem were Jews, and that this represented Black people's daily experience not just of white people but of capitalism as well. As a result of these interactions, and the ongoing economic inequalities that Black people faced, he explained, many Black people wrongly "hated them [Jews]."^[40] He went on to end the article with a clear condemnation of antisemitism:

I also know that if today I refuse to hate Jews, or anybody else, it is because I know how it feels to be hated. I learned this from Christians, and I ceased to practice what the Christians practiced.The crisis taking place in the world, and in the minds and hearts of black men everywhere, is not produced by the star of David, but by the old, rugged Roman cross on which Christendom's most celebrated Jew was murdered. And not by Jews.^[40]

Despite this, the incendiary title and language earned him accusations of antisemitism. In his response, "Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They Want a Scapegoat; A Reply to James Baldwin",Robert Gordis described Baldwin's essay as "a passionate justification of Negro anti-Semitism."^[16] Later, Rabbi Samuel Silver said of Baldwin, "Like other Negro extremists, he has allowed his hostility to whites to run into extra-hostility to Jews, despite the fact that Jews were among the leaders of those championing the cause of the Negro."^[17]

Terrence L. Johnson andJacques Berlinerblau have argued that Baldwin's intent was to take aim at "racial capitalism".^[39] Baldwin would write other accounts of Jews that were similarly sympathetic and which would clarify that his target was "not Jews", but the capitalist systems that exploited Black people:

The first white man I ever saw was the Jewish manager who arrived to collect the rent, and he collected the rent because he did not own the building. I never, in fact, saw any of the people who owned any of the buildings in which we scrubbed and suffered for so long, until I was a grown man and famous. None of them were Jews. And I was not stupid: the grocer and the druggist were Jews, for example, and they were very very nice to me, and to us... I knew a murderer when I saw one, and the people who were trying to kill me were not Jews.^[41]

Like Baldwin,Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that some black antisemitism arose from the tensions of landlord-tenant relations. He acknowledged "irrational statements" made against Jews by Black people, blaming them on the dire situation of Black people in areas like Chicago:

When we were working in Chicago, we had numerous rent strikes on the West Side, and it was unfortunately true that, in most instances, the persons we had to conduct these strikes against were Jewish landlords... We were living in a slum apartment owned by a Jew and a number of others, and we had to have a rent strike. We were paying $94 for four run-down, shabby rooms, and .... we discovered that whites ... were paying only $78 a month. We were paying 20 percent tax.The Negro ends up paying a color tax, and this has happened in instances where Negroes actually confronted Jews as the landlord or the storekeeper. The irrational statements that have been made are the result of these confrontations.^[42]

Jewish producers in the United States entertainment industry produced many works on Black subjects in thefilm industry,Broadway, and the music industry. Many portrayals of Black people were sympathetic, but historianMichael Rogin has discussed how some of the treatments were racist and could be considered exploitative.^[43]

Rogin also analyzes the instances when Jewish actors, such asAl Jolson, portrayed Black people inblackface. He suggests that these were deliberately racist portrayals, and that they were alsoexpressions of the culture at the time. Black people were prohibited from appearing in leading roles in either the theatre or in movies, and blackface performances were relatively common. Despite this, Rogin argues that Jewish blackface did not cause significant tensions at the time, saying: "Jewish blackface neither signified a distinctive Jewish racism nor produced a distinctive black anti-Semitism".^[44]

Jews often drew on Black culture in film, music, and plays. Historian Jeffrey Melnick argues that Jewish artists such asIrving Berlin andGeorge Gershwin created the myth that they were the proper interpreters of Black culture, "elbowing out 'real' Black Americans in the process." Black academicHarold Cruse viewed the arts scene as a white-dominated misrepresentation ofBlack culture, epitomized by works like Gershwin's operaPorgy and Bess.^[45][46]

Evidence fromBlack musicians and critics suggests that Jews in the music business played an important role in paving the way for mainstream acceptance of Black culture, although Black people and Jews didn't benefit from this acceptance equally. Melnick concludes that, "while both Jews and African-Americans contributed to the rhetoric of musical affinity, the fruits of this labor belonged exclusively to the former."^[47][48]

Some Black people also have criticized Jewish movie producers for portraying them in a racist manner. In 1990, at an NAACP convention in Los Angeles, Legrand Clegg, founder of the Coalition Against Black Exploitation, a pressure group that lobbied against negative screen images of African Americans, alleged:

[T]he century-old problem of Jewish racism in Hollywood denies blacks access to positions of power in the industry and portrays blacks in a derogatory manner: "If Jewish leaders can complain of black anti-Semitism, our leaders should certainly raise the issue of the century-old problem of Jewish racism in Hollywood.... No Jewish people ever attacked or killed black people. But we're concerned with Jewish producers who degrade the black image. It's a genuine concern. And when we bring it up, our statements are distorted and we're dragged through the press as anti-Semites.^[49][50]

ProfessorLeonard Jeffries echoed those comments in a 1991 speech at theEmpire State Plaza Black Arts & Cultural Festival inAlbany, New York. Jeffries said thatRussian Jews and theMafia controlled the film industry, using it to paint a negativestereotype of Black people.^[51][52]

Jewish Americans are noted for playing asignificant role in jazz, a musical genre created and originally developed by African Americans.^[53] This is largely attributed to aligning through persecution, as Jews were not considered fully American or white throughout the 1920s and 1930s.^[54]Willie "The Lion" Smith,Slim Gaillard,Cab Calloway, and other Black musicians playedJewish and Jewish-themed songs.^[55] Meanwhile,Jewish Jazz was an attempt to combine Jewish music and jazz into a new genre.^[56]

This section is an excerpt fromJews in the civil rights movement.[edit]

During thecivil rights movement (1954–1968),American Jews andAfrican Americans formed strategic alliances to challenge racial inequality and injustice across the country. This built on earlier solidarity between the two communities, which had resulted in, among other things,Jewish activists taking many of the leadership positions within the earlyNAACP.^[57][58]Jewish individuals and organizations provided financial support, legal expertise, and grassroots activism to support the growing movement nationwide.^[57][58] Prominent Jewish organizations involved in this "Grand Alliance" included theAnti-Defamation League and theAmerican Jewish Congress.^[59] Prominent Jewish leaders such asRabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel andJack Greenberg marched alongside figures likeMartin Luther King Jr. and contributed significantly to landmark legal victories.^[60]

While this period is sometimes remembered as a "golden age" of African American–Jewish relations, modern scholars point out that there were still disagreements and tensions between Black people and Jews at the time.^[61] The reasons for collaborating were also diverse, and often motivated by politics as much as moral, ethical and religious concerns.^[61][62][63] Since the 1960s, despite disagreements on issues such asaffirmative action inhigher education, both Black and Jewish communities and community leaders have collaborated on general and specific campaigns to tackle discrimination.^[64][65]

A 1934 ore-miner strike that led to the killing of several Black miners was the catalyst for physicistJoseph Gelders' civil-rights activism and labor-organizing efforts. Gelders and his wife, Esther, started to host a weekly discussion group for students at theUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham. He established an Alabama committee that worked on theScottsboro Boys case.^[67]

Due to his efforts, Gelders was kidnapped and assaulted by members of theKu Klux Klan on September 23, 1936.^[67][68] Gelders and suffragistLucy Randolph Mason established theSouthern Conference for Human Welfare in 1938.^[69] In 1941, Gelders and activistVirginia Foster Durr led the creation of theNational Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax.^[70]

Cooperation between Jewish and African-American organizations peaked afterWorld War II—sometimes, it is called the "golden age" of the relationship.^[71] The leaders of each group jointly worked to launch a movement for racial equality in the United States, and Jews funded and led some national civil-rights organizations.^[72] After he visited the evisceratedWarsaw Ghetto, African-American civil-rights leaderW. E. B. Du Bois wrote testimonies and op-eds for Jewish publications that decried the Nazi violence in Europe.^[73]

Historically, Black colleges and universities hired Jewish refugee professors who were not given comparable jobs in white institutions because widerAmerican culture wasantisemitic. This era of cooperation culminated in the passage of theCivil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial andreligious discrimination in schools and other public facilities, and the passage of theVoting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited discriminatory voting practices and authorized the government to oversee and review state voting practices.^{[citation needed]}

Historian Cheryl Greenberg notes that one narrative of the relationship says: "It is significant that ... a disproportionate number of white civil rights activists were [Jewish] as well. Jewish agencies engaged with their African American counterparts in a more sustained and fundamental way than other white groups did largely because their constituents and their understanding of Jewish values and Jewish self-interest pushed them in that direction."^{[74][undue weight? –discuss]}

The extent of Jewish participation in the civil-rights movement frequently correlated with their branch of Judaism:Reform Jews participated more frequently thanOrthodox Jews. Many Reform Jews were guided by values that were reflected in the Reform branch'sPittsburgh Platform, which urged Jews to "participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society."^[75]

Religious leaders such asrabbis and ministers of BlackBaptist churches frequently played key roles in the civil-rights movement, includingAbraham Joshua Heschel, who marched withMartin Luther King Jr. during theSelma to Montgomery marches. To commemorate this moment, representatives from the Coalition of Conscience, theKing Center for Nonviolent Social Change, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (now the ADL) and the Atlanta Board of Education marched together again 20 years later.^[76]

Sixteen Jewish leaders were arrested while they were heeding King's call to participate in the June1964 Monson Motor Lodge protests inSt. Augustine, Florida. It was the occasion of the largest mass arrest of rabbis inAmerican history.^[77]Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, wroteShared Dreams: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Jewish Community (1999), recounting the historic relationship between African Americans and Jewish Americans as a way to encourage a return to strong ties following years of animosity that reached its apex during theCrown Heights riot in Brooklyn, New York.^[78]

Northern and Western Jews frequently supporteddesegregation in their communities and schools, even at the risk of diluting the unity of their close-knit Jewish communities, which were frequently a critical component of Jewish life.^[79]

The summer of 1964 was designated theFreedom Summer, and many Jews from the North and West traveled to the South to participate in a concentrated voter registration effort. Two Jewish activists,Andrew Goodman andMichael Schwerner, and one Black activist,James Chaney, were murdered by theKu Klux Klan nearPhiladelphia, Mississippi, as a result of their participation. Their deaths were consideredmartyrdom by some, and, as a result, Black–Jewish relations were temporarily strengthened.^{[citation needed]}

In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr., said,

How could there be anti-Semitism among Negroes when our Jewish friends have demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways, and often at great personal sacrifice. Can we ever express our appreciation to the rabbis who chose to give moral witness with us in St. Augustine during our recent protest against segregation in that unhappy city? Need I remind anyone of the awful beating suffered by Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland when he joined the civil rights workers there in Hattiesburg, Mississippi? And who can ever forget the sacrifice of two Jewish lives, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, in the swamps of Mississippi? It would be impossible to record the contribution that the Jewish people have made toward the Negro's struggle for freedom—it has been so great.^{[80][non-primary source needed]}

Some recent scholarship suggests that the "golden age" (1955–1966) of the Black–Jewish relationship was not as ideal as it is often portrayed.

Philosopher and activistCornel West said, "There was nogolden age in which blacks and Jews were free of tension and friction". West said that this period of Black–Jewish cooperation is frequently downplayed byBlack people and is frequently romanticized by Jews: "It is downplayed by blacks because they focus on the astonishingly rapid entry of most Jews into the middle and upper middle classes during this brief period—an entry that has spawned... resentment from a quickly growing Black impoverished class. Jews, on the other hand, tend to romanticize this period because their present status as upper middle dogs and some top dogs in American society unsettles their historic self-image as progressives with a compassion for the underdog."^[81]

HistorianMelanie Kaye/Kantrowitz points out that the number of non-Southern Jews who went to the Southern states only numbered a few hundred, and she also points out that the "relationship was frequently out of touch, periodically at odds, with both sides failing to understand each other's point of view."^[82]

Political scientistAndrew Hacker wrote about the disparity between Jewish and Black experiences of the civil rights movement:

It is more than a little revealing that Whites who travelled south in 1964 referred to their sojourn as their 'Mississippi summer'. It is as if all the efforts of the local blacks for voter registration and the desegregation of public facilities had not even existed until white help arrived... Of course, this was done with benign intentions, as if to say 'we have come in answer to your calls for assistance'. The problem was... the condescending tone... For Jewish liberals, the great memory of that summer has been the deaths ofAndrew Goodman andMichael Schwerner and—almost as an afterthought—James Chaney. Indeed, Chaney's name tends to be listed last, as if the life he lost was only worththree fifths of the others.^[83]

Hacker also quoted authorJulius Lester, who was an African-American convert to Judaism, as writing:

Jews tend to be a little self-righteous about their liberal record, ... we realize that they were pitying us and wanted our gratitude, not the realization of the principles of justice and humanity... Blacks consider [Jews] paternalistic. Black people have destroyed the previous relationship which they had with the Jewish community, in which we were the victims of a kind of paternalism, which is only a benevolent racism.^[83]

In "The Complex Relationship between Jews and African Americans in the Context of the Civil Rights Movement", Hannah Labovitz argues, "this is not a story about white Jews intervening to save the day after experiencing their own challenges, but rather one damaged community doing what it could to help another."^[10]

By 1966, Jews were increasingly transitioning to middle-class and upper-class status, creating a gap in relations between Jews and Black people. At the same time, many Black leaders, including some leaders of theBlack Power movement, became outspoken in their demands for greater equality, frequently criticizing Jews along with other white targets.^[84]

In 1966, theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) voted to exclude whites from its leadership, a decision that resulted in the expulsion of several Jewish leaders.^[72][85]

In 1967, Black academicHarold Cruse attacked Jewish activism in his 1967 volumeThe Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, in which he argued that Jews had become a problem for Black people precisely because they had so identified with the Black struggle. Cruse insisted that Jewish involvement in interracial politics impeded the emergence of "Afro-American ethnic consciousness". For Cruse, as well as for other Black activists, the role of American Jews as political mediators between Black people and whites was "fraught with serious dangers to all concerned" and it must be "terminated by Negroes themselves."^[86]

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The vast majority ofcivil-rights activism byAmerican Jews was undertaken by Jews from the Northern andWestern states.Jews in the Southern states engaged in virtually no organized activities on behalf of civil rights.^[87][88] This lack of participation was puzzling to some Northern Jews, due to the "inability of the northern Jewish leaders to see that Jews, before the battle for desegregation, were not generally victims in the South and that the racialcaste system in the south situated Jews favorably in the Southern mind, or 'whitened' them."^[79] However, there were some Northern Jews who participated in the civil-rights movement as individuals.^[88][89]

From 1946 until his death in 1973,Rabbi Jacob Rothschild was the rabbi of Atlanta's oldest and most prominentsynagogue, The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, also known as "the Temple", where he distinguished himself by speaking out as an outspoken proponent of civil rights. Upon his arrival in Atlanta (after living in Pittsburgh for most of his life),Rabbi Rothschild was disturbed by the depth of the racial injustice which he witnessed, and he resolved to make civil rights a focal point of his rabbinical career. He first broached the topic of civil rights in his 1947Rosh Hashanah sermon, but he remained mindful of his status as an outsider and, during his first few years in Atlanta, he proceeded with caution in order to avoid alienating his supporters. By 1954, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued itsBrown v. Board of Education decision, which called for the desegregation of public schools, race relations had become a recurring theme of his sermons, and Temple members had grown accustomed to his support of civil rights.

At the same time, he reached out to members of the local Christian clergy and he also became active in civic affairs, joining the Atlanta Council on Human Relations, the Georgia Council of Human Relations, the Southern Regional Council, the Urban League, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews. In order to promote cooperation with his Christian colleagues, Rothschild established the Institute for the Christian Clergy, an annual daylong event that was hosted by the Temple each February. Black ministers were always welcome at the Temple's interfaith events, and, on other occasions, Rothschild invited prominent Black leaders, such as Morehouse College president Benjamin Mays, to lead educational luncheons at the Temple, despite objections from some members of his congregation.

In 1957, when other Southern cities were erupting in violent opposition to court-ordered school desegregation, eighty Atlanta ministers issued a statement in which they called for interracial negotiation, obedience to the law, and a peaceful resolution to the integration disputes that threatened Atlanta's moderate reputation.^{[citation needed]} The Ministers' Manifesto, as the statement came to be known, marked an important turning point in Atlanta's race relations. Although the Manifesto's strong Christian language prevented Rothschild from signing it himself, the rabbi assisted in the drafting and conception of the statement, and he endorsed it in an article that ran separately in the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution and later appeared in the Congressional Record.

While Rothschild's activism won admiration from some quarters of the city, it earned contempt from others. When 50 sticks of dynamite exploded at the Temple on October 12, 1958, many observers concluded that the rabbi's outspoken support of civil rights had made the synagogue a target of extremist violence. Because the bombing was condemned by elected officials, members of the press, and the vast majority of ordinary citizens, it resulted in a repudiation of extremism and a renewed commitment to racial moderation by members of official Atlanta.

Rather than withdraw from public life, Rothschild stepped up his activism after the bombing, regularly speaking in support of civil rights at public events throughout the city and throughout region, and assuming the vice presidency of the Atlanta Council on Human Relations. Members of his congregation followed Rothschild's lead, taking leadership positions in HOPE (Help Our Public Education) and OASIS (Organizations Assisting Schools in September), two influential organizations that helped ensure the peaceful integration of Atlanta's public schools in 1961.

During this period, Rothschild forged a close personal friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. After King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Rothschild assisted in the organizing of a city-sponsored banquet in King's honor, and, during the banquet, he served as its master of ceremonies. After King's assassination in 1968, the combined clergy of Atlanta paid their respects to King by holding a memorial service at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip, and Rothschild was selected by his peers to deliver the eulogy.

In the years after King's death, Rothschild's opposition to the more militant measures which were adopted by younger Black activists cost him much of the support that he once received from his African-American counterparts in the civil-rights movement. Despite his diminished stature in the Black community, Rothschild continued to candidly speak about social justice and civil rights on a regular basis until he died, after he suffered aheart attack, on December 31, 1973.

In recent decades, Southern Jews have been more willing to speak out in support of civil rights, as was illustrated by the 1987 marches inForsyth County, Georgia.^[90]

Thelabor movement was another area of the African American–Jewish relationship that flourished before WWII, but it ended in conflict afterwards. In the early 20th century, one important area of cooperation was attempts to increase minority representation in the leadership of theUnited Automobile Workers (UAW). In 1943, Jews and Black people joined to request the creation of a new department within the UAW dedicated to minorities, but that request was refused by UAW leaders.^[91]

In the immediate post-World War II period, theJewish Labor Committee (JLC), which was founded in February 1934 to oppose the rise ofNazism in Germany, formed approximately two dozen local committees to combat racial intolerance in the United States and Canada. The JLC, which had local offices in a number of communities in North America, helped found theUnited Farm Workers and campaigned for the passage of California'sFair Employment Practices Act, and provided staffing and support for the 1963March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom led byMartin Luther King Jr.,A. Philip Randolph andBayard Rustin.^[92]

Beginning in early 1962, the NAACP's labor directorHerbert Hill alleged that, since the 1940s, the JLC had also defended the anti-black discriminatory practices of unions in both the garment and building industries.^[93][94] Hill claimed that the JLC changed "a Black-White conflict into a Black-Jewish conflict".^[93] He said that the JLC defended the Jewish leaders of theInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) against charges of anti-black racial discrimination, distorted the government's reports about discrimination, failed to tell union members the truth, and when union members complained, the JLC labeled them antisemites.^[95] Hill stated that ILGWU leaders denounced Black members for demanding equal treatment and access to leadership positions.^[95]

TheNew York City teachers' strike of 1968 also signaled the decline of African American–Jewish relations: The Jewish president of theUnited Federation of Teachers,Albert Shanker, made statements that were seen by some as straining African American–Jewish relations because in them, he accused Black teachers of being antisemitic.^{[96][verification needed]}

Black Hebrew Israelites are groups of people mostly ofBlack American ancestry mainly situated in theAmericas who claim to be the descendants of the ancientIsraelites.^[97] To varying degrees, Black Hebrews adhere to the religious beliefs and practices of both mainstreamJudaism and mainstreamChristianity, but they get most of their doctrines from Christian resources. They are generally not accepted as Jews byOrthodox,Conservative orReform Jews, nor are they accepted as Jews by the wider Jewish community, due to their degree of divergence from mainstream Judaism, and their frequent expressions of hostility towardstraditionally recognized Jews.^[98]

Many Black Hebrews consider themselves—and not Jews—to be the only authentic descendants of the ancient Israelites, claiming Jews are simply imposters.^[98] Some groups identify themselves as Hebrew Israelites, other groups identify themselves as Black Hebrews, and other groups identify themselves as Jews.^{[99][100][101][102]} Dozens of Black Hebrew groups were founded in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.^[103]

In 1969, a group of approximately 100 Black Hebrew Israelites, known as theAfrican Hebrew Israelites, led byBen Ammi Ben Israel, began immigrating to Israel, both from Liberia (where they had arrived in 1967) and the United States. They claimed that theLaw of Return was applicable to them. Although the first families that arrived claimed to be Jewish, and/or willing to undergo orthodox conversion, upon the arrival of the contingent, including the leadership, this was rescinded. All of the group except the first families had entered on tourist visas, which soon expired, and they lived in groups of sometimes twenty people in each of the homes allocated to the first few. Many members were provided or succeeded in finding work and were largely accepted into theHistadrut, which provided them employment and healthcare rights. The mixed response of Israeli officials led to much confusion, and the community survived in a liminal state. Relations deteriorated quickly through the 1970s and 1980s, with illegal immigration, antisemitic and antizionist propaganda on the one side, and deportations of members and harassment of any Black visitors by airport security on the other. Members in America began to promote boycott of Jewish businesses as a means of exerting pressure. The American Jewish media (like the Israeli), after an initial enthusiasm, portrayed the group mostly negatively, however the American Jewish establishment was usually supportive of the group's wish to remain in Israel. The situation began to be resolved in 1987 when the group's leadership, after meeting with representatives of theAmerican Jewish Congress andAnti-Defamation League, issued a statement retracting all antisemitic and antizionist claims and literature. In 1990, the leadership, Israeli officials and American officials entered into talks that resulted initially in the provision of Temporary Resident status to the community, which had grown to more than 1,000. This status was later upgraded to Permanent Resident, and, in 2003, 1,200 of the group were found to be eligible to apply for Israeli citizenship.^{[104][105][106][107][108]}

In April 2021, A spokesman for the Israeli government announced Israel's plans to deport dozens of members who had not received official status, including some who had lived their whole lives in Israel. 51 members of the community were ordered to leave their homes by September 23, 2021. In October 2021, the Beersheba court district issued an interim injunction that effectively halted the deportations.^[109][110] In May 2025, the remaining families were granted Temporary Resident status, which has previously been the first step toward citizenship for members.^[111]

AfterIsrael took over theWest Bank andGaza following the 1967Six-Day War, some Black Americans expressed theirsolidarity with the Palestinians andcriticized Israel's actions; for example, they publicly supported the Palestinian leaderYasser Arafat andcalled for the destruction of Israel.^[72] Some of them, such asMuhammad Ali andMalcolm X, also criticized theZionist movement.^[112][113]

Immediately after the Six Day War, the editor of theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) newsletter wrote an article that criticized Israel, asserted that the war was an effort to regain Palestinian land and asserted that, during the1948 Arab–Israeli War, "Zionists conquered the Arab homes and land through terror, force, and massacres". The publication of this article triggered a conflict between Jews and the SNCC, but Black SNCC leaders treated the war as a "test of their willingness to demonstrate the SNCC's break from its civil rights past".^[114]

The concerns of Black people continued to be expressed and, in 1993, the Black philosopherCornel West wrote the following inRace Matters: "Jews will not comprehend what the symbolic predicament and literal plight of Palestinians in Israel means to Blacks.... Blacks often perceive the Jewish defense of the state of Israel as a second instance of naked group interest, and, again, an abandonment of substantive moral deliberation."^[115]

Andrew Hacker argues that some African American support for Palestinians is due to the consideration of them aspeople of color: "The presence of Israel in theMiddle East is perceived as thwarting the rightful status of people of color. Some Black people view Israel as essentially a White and European power, supported from the outside, and occupying space that rightfully belongs to the original inhabitants of Palestine."^[116]

Martin Luther King Jr. criticized this position at the 68th Annual Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism, saying:

On theMiddle East crisis, we have had various responses. The responses of the so-called young militants does not represent the position of the vast majority of Negroes. There are some who are color consumed and see a kind of mystique in being colored, and anything non-colored is condemned. We do not follow that course in theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference, and certainly most of the organizations in thecivil rights movement do not follow that course.^[117]

Rebecca Pierce andBatya Ungar-Sargon have argued that Jewish criticism of Black political movements and individuals based on their support for Palestinians is based on "a racist hyper-policing of any Black support for Palestine".^[118][119]

Many Black people have supported government and businessaffirmative action, believing that meritocracies are subject toinstitutional racism andunconscious bias.^[120][121] Many Jews, meanwhile, associated affirmative action withquotas that have reduced, rather than increased, Jewish access to jobs and education.^[122] Historians believe that this difference in outlook contributed to the decline of the African American–Jewish alliance in the 1970s, when Black people began seeking ways to build on the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.^[72][123]

As Black people continued to face widespread discrimination and struggled to make progress in society, Black activism became increasingly outspoken. Greenberg believes that this increased resentment and fear among Jews.^[84] As this activism spread to the North, many liberal Jews also began to move out of areas with increasing Black populations, due to what Greenberg describes as the perceived "deterioration of their schools and neighborhoods", sometimes also citing civil rights protests as a motivator.^[124]

Herbert Hill's survey of affirmative-action lawsuits found that Jewish organizations have generally opposed affirmative-action programs.^[125] A widely publicized example of the African American–Jewish conflict arose in the 1978 affirmative-action case ofRegents of the University of California v. Bakke, when Black and Jewish organizations took opposing sides in the case of a white student who sued for admission, claiming that he was unfairly excluded by affirmative-action programs.^[126]

Some leaders of the Black community have publicly made comments or expressed opinions which have been deemed antisemitic. These include accusing Jews of being over-aggressive or exploitative in their business relations with Black people, accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel than the United States, alleging that Jews had a central role in the slave trade, and accusing Jews of economically oppressing Black people.^[127]

Most analysts, including the ADL, attribute Black antisemitism to poor education in disadvantaged communities (in which Black people may be overrepresented due to systemic racism)^[128][129] or to unequal power dynamics and opportunities between Jews and Black people living in close proximity in places like Harlem and the West Side.^{[130][40][39]} Other explanations include scapegoating,^[16] competition for resources or support,^[131] rising identity politics which caused both groups to become more insular,^[8][130] anti-Black racism among Jews,^[13][12] Israeli support for South Africa during apartheid, increasing pro-Palestinian support among Black people and leftists, the failure of white and Jewish liberalism to advance Black rights, resentment over what Judith Rosenbaum called "Jewish feelings of moral proprietorship in the civil rights struggle",^[130] or to a perceived failure to show or maintain solidarity with Black communities, particularly in the South.^[132][133] Tema Smith has argued that many of these explanations sharesystemic racism as a cause.^[129]

In 1935, during theGreat Depression, the Black activistSufi Abdul Hamid led boycotts against certainHarlem merchants and establishments which he claimed discriminated against Black people. Many of them were owned by Jewish proprietors, but others were owned by Greeks and Italians. In response to these activities,The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle accused him of fomenting African American–Jewish "disturbances" in Harlem.^[134][135] He argued that he merely targeted shops that refused to hire Black workers, and he was acquitted of charges of trying to drive out Jewish shopkeepers and of maligning Jews.^{[136][137][138]}

Hamid later claimed that Nazi groups had tried to offer him money to organize a "black legion" against the Jews, but that he had refused, since "they had no better feeling for me or my people than for the Jews. either."^[136] Hamid renounced antisemitism, saying it was wrong to condemn "Jews as a race" based on the actions of a few who denied jobs to Black people.^[136] He founded the Universal Order of Tranquility with the aim of uniting Jews, Christians, white people, and Black people.^[136]

In 1984, presidential candidateJesse Jackson and former United Nations ambassadorAndrew Young made antisemitic comments, which were widely publicized.^[139] Many have argued that these remarks extended the era of African-American and Jewish distrust into the 1980s.^{[72][140][139]}

In 1991, a mob of young Black men killed Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jew, in aBrooklynrace riot incited by the death of a 7-year-old Black boy in a car accident involving a Jewish driver. The two ethnic groups lived in close proximity to each other in this neighborhood.^[141]

During the 1990s, ProfessorLeonard Jeffries of theCity College of New York was a proponent of the idea that Jewish businessmen financed the Atlantic slave trade and used the movie industry to hurt Black people. He was sacked by CUNY and his conclusions have been rejected by major African American historians of the slave trade, includingDavid Brion Davis.^[142]

According to a 2016 survey conducted by theAnti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization, the prevalence of antisemitism among African Americans was found to be 23%, compared to 14% for the general population, 19% for U.S.-born Hispanics, 31% for "foreign-born" Hispanics and 10% for white Americans. This prevalence has fallen significantly since surveys in 1998, 1992 and 1964.^[143] Conversely, a survey by PRRI in 2018 found that 44% of Black Protestants believe Jewish people face "a lot" of discrimination in America, compared to 31% of religiously unaffiliated Americans, 29% of Catholics, 28% of white mainline Protestants and only 20% of white evangelical Protestants.^[144]

TheNation of Islam, aBlack separatist religious and political group, made several antisemitic pronouncements in the late 20th century. FounderElijah Muhammad asserted that white people—as well as Jews—were devils implicated in racism against Black people, but that he did not consider Jews to be any more corrupt or oppressive than other whites were.^[145]

In 1993, Nation of Islam spokesmanKhalid Abdul Muhammad publicly called Jews "bloodsuckers". Current leaderLouis Farrakhan has also made several remarks that theAnti-Defamation League and others consider antisemitic. Although Farrakhan has denied it,^{[146][147][148][149][150]} a tape obtained byThe New York Times supports claims that he referred to Judaism as a "dirty religion" and calledAdolf Hitler a "very great man."^[151]

Elijah Muhammad claimed that Black people—not white people or Jews—are thechosen people.^[152] In a 1985 speech, Farrakhan similarly said, "I have a problem with Jews ... because I am declaring to the world that they are not the chosen people of God. ... You, the black people of America and the Western Hemisphere [are]."^[153]

Nation of Islam leaderMalcolm X was also widely accused of being antisemitic.^[154][155] His autobiography contains several antisemitic charges andcaricatures of Jews.^[156]Alex Haley, his co-author, had to make rewrites to eliminate a number of negative statements about Jews in the manuscript.^[157] Malcolm X believed the fabricated antisemitic textProtocols of the Elders of Zion was authentic and introduced it to NOI members, while blaming Jews for "perfecting the modern evil" ofneo-colonialism.^[158][159] He was a leading figure in shaping Black antisemitism, engaging inHolocaust trivialization and claiming the Jews "brought it on themselves".^[160]

In 1961, Malcolm X spoke at an NOI rally alongsideGeorge Lincoln Rockwell, head of theAmerican Nazi Party. At a different rally, Rockwell claimed there was overlap between Elijah Muhammed's ideas andwhite supremacy, although the crowd was hostile towards him and booed at his comments.^[161] Even after leaving the NOI and during the last months of his life, Malcolm X's statements about Jews continued to call Jews "bloodsucker[s]".^[162]

The American Jewish population from the 1600s–1800s was extremely low, with few settling in the South.^{[163][164][165]} As such, the Jewish role in the American slave trade was minimal. Overall, Jews accounted for 1.25 percent of Southern slave owners.^[6] Of all the shipping ports in Colonial America, only in Newport, Rhode Island, did Jewish merchants play a significant part in the slave-trade.

HistorianEli Faber says that "[t]he numbers just aren't there to support the view" of significant numbers of Jewish slaveholders, and that "Jews were involved, but to an insignificant degree."^[166]

During the 1990s, much of the Jewish–Black conflict centered on allegations of antisemitism made against studies of Jewish involvement in theAtlantic slave trade and allegations that they were over-represented as prominent figures in it. ProfessorLeonard Jeffries stated in a 1991 speech that "rich Jews" financed the slave trade, citing the role of Jews in slave-trading centers such asRhode Island,Brazil, theCaribbean,Curaçao, andAmsterdam.^[51] His comments drew widespread outrage and calls for his dismissal from his position.^[167]

As a source, Jeffries citedThe Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews (1991), published by theNation of Islam.^[168] That book alleges that Jews played a major role in the African slave trade, and it generated considerable controversy.^[168] Scholarly works were published which rebutted its charges.^[169] Mainstream scholars of slavery such asDavid Brion Davis concluded that Jews had little major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery.^[170]

Dutch-American historian of the Atlantic world Wim Klooster notes that "[i]n no period did Jews play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades. They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean. Even when Jews in a handful of places owned slaves in proportions slightly above their representation among a town's families, such cases do not come close to corroborating the assertions of The Secret Relationship."^{[171][172][173]}

Tony Martin ofWellesley College includedThe Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews in the reading list for his classes, leading to charges of antisemitism against him in 1993.^{[174][175][176]}

Henry Louis Gates Jr. ofHarvard University called the book "the bible ofnew anti-Semitism" and added that "the book massively misinterprets the historical record, largely through a process of cunningly selective quotations of often reputable sources."^[177]

The counterpoint to Black antisemitism isJewish anti-black racism.^[178] Criticisms of Black activists by Jewish authors often portrayed them as "extremists" or "militants,"^{[17][174][118]} and sometimes blamed Black people for their own oppression.^[12] The civil rights movement was sometimes seen as violent or dangerous, and affirmative action was seen as a threat to the quality of schools.^[8][15][12] Rebecca Pierce and Batya Ungar-Sargon have also argued that "a racist hyper-policing of any Black support for Palestine" has often led American Jews to denounce Black political movements and figures, includingAngela Davis, theMovement for Black Lives and anti-police brutality events.^[118][119]

A number of Jewish and Black commentators have also highlighted racism against Black Jews and Jews of color from within their own communities, which has sometimes resulted in "pushing black Jews out".^{[179][180][181]} Rebecca Pierce has criticized the policing of Jewish identities among Jews of color, or accusations of "Jewface", which she argues are based on a conspiracy theory and constitute part of an "undeniable pattern of racist harassment and abuse" levied against Jews of color.^[180]

According to the 2022 PRRI-EPU Religion and Inclusive Spaces Survey, American Jews score 0.39 on the Structural Racism Index, scoring slightly lower (i.e., less racist) than the average American (0.45) on issues regarding structural and anti-black racism. Black Americans score 0.20, Hispanic Americans score 0.33 and white Americans score 0.52.^[182]

Robert Moses was a Jewish-Americanurban planner and public official who worked in theNew York metropolitan area during the early to mid-20th century. Moses repeatedly denied being Jewish,^[183] and he converted toEpiscopalian Christianity.^[184] Moses built highways splitting many Jewish neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn, devastating those Jewish communities.^[185][186] He also threatened to sue the editors of the Jewish encyclopedia for libel if they included him in it. At the 1964 World's Fair in New York, he had an exhibit on every religion but Judaism.^[187][188]

In his Pulitzer-winning biographyThe Power Broker,Robert Caro accused Moses of building low bridges across his parkways in order to make them inaccessible to public-transit buses, thereby restricting "the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families" that did not own cars. Caro argues that Moses attempted to discourage Black people from visiting Jones Beach, the centerpiece of the Long Island state park system, by such measures as making it difficult for Black groups to get permits to park buses, even if they came by other roads, and assigning Black lifeguards to "distant, less developed beaches" instead.^[189] While the exclusion of commercial vehicles and the use of low bridges were standard on earlier parkways for aesthetic reasons, Caro argues that Moses made greater use of such bridges, which his aide Sidney Shapiro said was done to make it more difficult for future legislators to allow commercial vehicles.^[190][191] Steve Woolgar and Geoff Cooper refer to the claim about bridges as an "urban legend".^[192]

In response to the biography, Moses defended the displacement of poor and minority communities as an inevitable part of urban revitalization: "I raise mystein to the builder who can removeghettos without moving people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs."^[193]

There were allegations Moses selectively chose locations for recreational facilities based on the racial compositions of neighborhood, such as when he selected sites for 11 pools that opened in 1936. According to Jeff Wiltze, Moses purposely placed some pools in neighborhoods with mainly white populations to deter African Americans from using them, and other pools intended for African Americans, such as the one in Colonial Park (nowJackie Robinson Park), were placed in inconvenient locations.^[194]Steven A. Reiss notes that, of 255 playgrounds built in the 1930s under Moses's tenure, only two were in largely Black neighborhoods.^[195] Caro wrote that close associates of Moses had claimed they could keep African Americans from using theThomas Jefferson Pool, in then predominantly whiteEast Harlem, by making the water too cold.^[196] However, no other source has corroborated the claim that heaters in any particular pool were deactivated or excluded from the pool's design.^[197]

Moses took a favorable view on theBritish Empire, and his comments have been called "excruciatingly racist" by local journalist Glen Jeffries. He said the British Empire was useful in stemming the "rise of the lesser breeds without the law".^{[198][199][200]}

William Jaird Levitt was a Jewish-Americanreal-estate developer and housing pioneer. As president ofLevitt & Sons, he is widely credited as the father of modern Americansuburbia. In 1998, he was named one ofTime Magazine's "100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century."^[201]

While Levitt is credited as being the "father of suburban development", African Americans were explicitly prohibited frompurchasing or otherwise settling in hisLevittown, New York development, setting the stage for other suburban towns nationwide. Levitt wrote [in the Levittown standard lease, clause 25, 1947], "Levittown homes must not be used or occupied by any person other than members of theCaucasian race."^[202]

Before theCivil War, Jewish slave ownership practices in theSouthern United States were governed by regional practices, rather thanJudaic law.^{[203][204][205]} Many Southern Jews held the view that Black people weresubhumans fit only for slavery, which was also the predominant view held by many of their non-Jewish Southern Christian neighbors.^[206]

Jews were not significantly different from other Southern slave owners in their treatment of slaves.^[203] Wealthy Jewish families in the American South generally preferred employing white servants rather than owning slaves.^[205] Jewish slave owners includedAaron Lopez,Francis Salvador,Judah Touro, andHaym Salomon.^[207] Jewish slave owners were mostly found in business or domestic settings, rather than plantations, so most of the slave ownership was in an urban context — running a business or working as domestic servants.^[204][205] Jewish slave owners freed their Black slaves at about the same rate as non-Jewish slave owners.^[203] Sometimes, Jewish slave owners bequeathed slaves to their children in their wills.^[203]

After the Civil War, Southern Jews often bemoaned the abolition of slavery.^[7] For instance, Solomon Cohen, a Confederate Jewish leader in Savannah, Georgia and Georgia's first Jewish senator,^[208] described slavery as "the only institution that could elevate the Negro from barbarism and develop the small amount of intellect with which he is endowed."

While anti-black racism animated the original Ku Klux Klan, antisemitism did not. Many prominent Southern Jews identified wholly with southern culture, leading some to participate in the Klan. In 1896, an editorial in the newspaperThe Jewish South observed that "Twenty-five years of education resulted in making the colored women more immoral and the men more trifling... Negroes are intellectually, morally and physically an inferior race — a fact none can deny."

Ten years later, the board ofAtlanta, Georgia's Carnegie Library rejected a petition to admit Black people; a Jewish board member voted with the majority. These were not isolated incidents.^[7] In 1903, Leon Pinsker argued, inAuto-Emancipation, that Jewish suffering was worse than Black suffering, because "unlike the negroes, they [Jews] belong to an advanced race".^[13][209]

Gil Ribak argues that when Jewish immigrants began arriving in large numbers from Eastern Europe, they brought with them prejudices about Gentile peasants, which they transferred to African Americans.^[12][210] He points to late-19th century portrayals of Gentiles in Yiddish folklore as "that of a peasant, portrayed as inherently Jew-hating, strong, coarse, drunk, illiterate, dumb, and sexually promiscuous," and the work of scholars such as Israel Bartal, Ewa Morawska, and David Roskies who have illustrated that "Jews differentiated between what they saw as high-cultured and low-cultured Gentiles".^[12] Because of the role of many Jewish immigrants as "storeowners, tavern keepers, peddlers, and landlords" to Black people, this reinforced those attitudes and "African Americans were frequently seen as the new country's reincarnation of peasant folk" or thepoyerim/muzhikes.^[12][210]

Ribak has also noted how newly arrived Jews in America, as opposed to those who were born there, often considered Black people in exoticized or racialized ways. Sholem Aleichem (Sholem Yankev Rabinovitsh) would describe Black people on the train as "Crude creatures. Frightfully thick lips. Big white teeth and white finger-nails."^[12] Even those sympathetic to Black people still expressedanti-black sentiments. Arriving in 1914, Hebrew-language educator and entrepreneurZvi Scharfstein noted:

It was the first time we saw black people. Beforehand we saw them only in books and newspapers’ illustrations. Now they actually passed by us, showing their white teeth and pouting their thick lips, whose strong redness lit their faces’ blackness. With each encounter or brushing elbows against them — my heart quivered.^[12]

After 40 years of having Black men and women as servants in his house, Scharfstein later admitted, "I cannot remove completely the traces of that hidden fear from my heart."^[12] Despite penning a moving story, "Lynching", about the horrors of anti-black racism, Yiddish playwright Yoysef Opatoshu described an old Black man in the story as "an old Orangutan."^[12]

In Harlem, the West Side and other Black neighborhoods, Black customers and tenants felt that Jewish shopkeepers and landlords treated them unfairly because they were racists. Hacker quotesJames Baldwin's comments about Jewish shopkeepers in Harlem in support of his racism claim.^[178] RabbiMax Raisin believed that Jews andwhites fled Harlem because of the number of Black people moving there.^[12] The notorious Bronx "slave markets", predominantly based in Jewish neighborhoods, often saw Black women exploited to work as domestic help. Many were hired by Jewish households and were often extremely underpaid, further straining African American–Jewish relationships.^[211][12]

In 1904, a Board of Education plan to move Jewish children from overcrowded schools on the East Side to the West Side drew condemnation from 2,000 Jewish parents. The newspaperYidishe Velt (Jewish World) pointed out that this move would put Jewish children into "a Negro neighborhood, not far from the Tenderloin [district]" with "Negroes and painted-up hussies."^[12] The President of the Zionist Council of Greater New York, Abraham H. Fromenson, who served as co-editor of theYidishes Tageblat (Jewish Daily News), wrote that children would be moved to "a street infested with the dirtiest rabble, the scum of the colored race."^[12] Fromenson would later defend Booker T. Washington from a racist attack in a Jewish weekly newspaper from St. Louis,The Modern View, though he said in the same defense, "if [the black man] manifests evil inclinations we should not wonder at it, seeing the many years of slavery his race has gone through."^[12]

An example of Jewish ambivalence to Black people, Rabbi Max (Mordecai Ze’ev) Raisin expressed his concern about the plight of African Americans, saying, "I bow before blacks in respect," but also, "I thank God that we Jews have at least white skin and are able to intermingle among whites" (a thought which immediately brought him "burning shame"). He would also say, "Negroes must not be likened to Jews. They never wrote a bible, did not give prophets and messiahs to the world," and that "only white trash will agree to marry blacks."^[12]

In the early 1970s, Atlanta's first Jewish mayor,Sam Massell, used overt anti-black rhetoric in his re-election bid for mayor against the city's first Black mayoral candidate,Maynard Jackson. As a result, many progressive and college-educated whites in the city (includingAtlanta's largest daily newspaper) publicly endorsed Jackson, which caused Massell to lose his re-election campaign.^[212][213]

In his 1992 essay "Blacks and Jews: The Uncivil War," historianTaylor Branch asserted that Jews had been "perpetrators of racial hate." He noted that 3,000 members of theAfrican Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, founded in 1966 in Chicago, were denied citizenship as Jews when they moveden masse to Israel. The Americans claimed that they had the right of citizenship as Jews under the IsraeliLaw of Return. Under the law, the only people who are recognized as Jews are people who areborn Jews (having a Jewish mother or having a Jewish maternal grandmother), those with Jewish ancestry (having a Jewish father or having a Jewish grandfather), and people who convert toOrthodox,Reform, orConservative Judaism.^[a]

Branch believed that the rejection of the Chicago group was based onanti-Black sentiment among Israeli Jews.^[214][215] Branch was criticized by Seth Forman, who said that his claims seemed baseless. He said that Israel hadairlifted thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in the early 1990s.^[216] A group of American civil rights activists which was led by Bayard Rustin investigated the 1966 case. They concluded thatracism was not the cause of the Black Hebrews' rejection in Israel; they were considered acult rather than a group of historic Jewish descendants.^[217]

Albert Shanker, who was president of theUnited Federation of Teachers from 1964 to 1985 and president of theAmerican Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1974 to 1997, has been accused of anti-black racism.^[218] Early on, he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., but later moved to the right and proudly supported the Vietnam War.^[219][220]

In the 1968Ocean Hill–Brownsville crisis, Black and Puerto Rican parents in Brooklyn were piloting a community school program (known ascommunity control) intended to fight segregation and racial inequity in education, including improving attainment for students of color.^[221] The school board was also concerned about the lack of role models for the mostly Black and Puerto Rican students.^[130]

When the school board fired 19 white union teachers for underperforming, Shanker ledUFT teachers in a strike. He also shared antisemitic leaflets that he said were put in teachers' lockers, which the school board argued was a deliberate attempt to fan the flames; they pointed out that half the new teachers they had hired to cover the strike were Jewish.^[130][222] Shanker also personally cut chapters on Malcolm X and a quote from Frederick Douglass ("power concedes nothing without a demand") from the proposed courseLesson Plans on African-American History, which he deemed too "radical".^[223][224]

Shanker would eventually propose charter schools in the United States, which, according toThe New York Times, became "even more racially and economically segregated than traditional public schools." Charter schools deepened the issues against which Black and Puerto Rican parents had fought and helped widen the rift between Black people and Jews nationally.^[225]

• African Americans in Israel
• African-American Jews
• African-American Muslims
• Antisemitism in the United States

• History of the Jews in the United States
• Interminority racism in the United States
• Racism in Jewish communities
• Jews in the civil rights movement

• Green, Emma. "Why Do Black Activists Care About Palestine?"The Atlantic. August 18, 2016.
• Levy, Richard S., ed. (2005).Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. pp. 4–6.
• Phillips, William M. (1991).An Unillustrious Alliance: The African American and Jewish American Communities. Greenwood.
• Webb, Clive. "Counterblast: How the Atlanta Temple Bombing Strengthened the Civil Rights Cause".Southern Spaces. June 22, 2009.

• African American–Jewish relations
• 1950s in the United States
• 1960s in the United States
• History of African-American civil rights
• History of civil rights in the United States
• Movements for civil rights

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