- Today Israel can be a divisive topic,
especially between Black and Jewish Americans.
With BLM activists increasingly
using their platform to denigrate Zionism,
many believe the Black community
is growing increasingly anti-Zionist and antisemitic.
In fact, division between these communities
isn't anything new.
They've had their fair share of conflict over the years.
Yet, a short time ago,
Black and Jewish leadership were united on many fronts,
including support for Zionism,
so much so that Black leaders
like W.E.B. Dubois and Martin Luther King
were vocal supporters of the Jewish state.
So how did these two very distinct communities
come together in support of the Zionist cause?
While the Jewish people are a diverse multi-racial group,
for most of American history
when we speak about the interactions
between Blacks and Jews,
we're speaking about Jews of European descent.
Among those Jews were some of my family.
In the late 19th century,
my mom's side of the family were Ashkenazi Jews
living under harsh discrimination in Russia.
There was violence, state-sanctioned antisemitism
and Jews were forced to live in
what was essentially a giant ghetto
known as the Pale of Settlement.
Like many Jews, my great great grandparents
escaped persecution and came to America,
seeking religious and economic freedom.
And yet my mother's family immigrated
during the height of American antisemitism.
Jewish Americans were subjected to physical attacks,
discrimination, and vilification in the media.
My father's side of the family came to America
under very different circumstances.
They were kidnapped from Africa,
brought to America in shackles and sold into bondage.
My dad's great great grandparents
were the children of former slaves living in Georgia.
Haunted by the horrors of slavery,
they were still fighting for their lives
and a future in the racist South.
They too faced physical violence,
vilification in the media
and discrimination at almost every level,
including from the police,
the judicial system, banks, and schools.
While my family in Georgia
likely didn't have much interaction with Jews, if any,
Blacks and Jews were increasingly crossing paths
in other parts of the country.
After the Civil War,
many Black Americans went North
to join established black communities in urban areas.
There, they often lived side by side
with the nearly 3 million Jewish immigrants
who came to the US during that time.
My mom's Jewish grandparents came to America
and immediately moved to Kansas City, Missouri,
where discriminatory housing laws
kept Jews, Blacks and Catholics
separate from the White Protestants
who lived on the other side of town.
Kansas City's discriminatory laws were not unique.
Across the country,
Jews and Blacks faced housing discrimination
that kept them out of White areas
and often threw them together.
While most people are familiar with Jim Crow
and Whites Only establishment that barred Black people,
many people don't know about
antisemitic housing and job discrimination.
Even affluent Jews faced discrimination
from country clubs, private beaches,
and whole neighborhoods that wouldn't let them in
because of their ethnicity.
Of course, despite the antisemitism,
my Jewish family and other Jewish Americans
had many advantages.
For example, it was easy for shops to identify Blacks
and kick them out of their stores,
while most Jews could get by 'passing' as White.
Secondly, while both communities faced poverty,
Jews benefited from greater access to financial systems,
such as loans and the abundance of Jewish philanthropy
supporting the needs of their community.
An additional advantage was that
thousands of years of Jewish communal life
had bred strong Jewish leadership
that led a well-organized social and political machine.
Some Jews brought this organizational experience
over to the Black community as early supporters
of the National Urban League and the NAACP,
whose boards and leadership included Jewish activists.
Many of the lawsuits these Black institutions
brought to court were argued by Jewish lawyers.
One remarkable example of cooperation
between Jews and blacks began in 1910,
when Julius Rosenwald, the Jewish philanthropist
and president of the Sears, Roebuck & Co department stores,
read a book by Booker T. Washington,
an educator who started his life as a slave,
but eventually built up the illustrious
Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
The two men became friends and spent two decades
building 5,000 shops, homes for teachers
and schools that educated more than 600,000 Black children
in what became known as the Rosenwald School Project.
Washington went on to speak
at synagogues around the country.
He invited rabbis to be guest speakers
at the Tuskegee Institute and Jews served on the board.
But despite such meaningful cooperation,
there were also significant divisions.
Within a few years of my mom's family moving to Kansas,
one of the most divisive events between the communities
was playing out just a short drive away
from my family in Georgia.
In 1913, in Atlanta, a Jewish man named Leo Frank
was convicted of murdering a White girl
based on the testimony of a Black man named Jim Conley.
That testimony and the resulting media storm
drove a wedge between Blacks
and Jews who suspected Conley was not only lying,
but was the actual killer.
National attention on the case
brought out tremendous antisemitism
in both White and Black communities.
And while it's now clear that Frank was not actually guilty,
that didn't stop a White mob
from breaking into the local jail,
kidnapping Frank and lynching him.
It was in the aftermath of this event
that the Anti-Defamation League was formed
to stop the defamation of the Jewish people
and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.
Despite the ADL's universal approach
and the partnerships of those like Rosenwald and Washington,
Jews and Blacks didn't interact much.
Socially, they came from distinct cultures.
Politically, the groups did not see a reason to join forces
and Jewish groups were hesitant to make common cause
with a group as publicly reviled as the Black community.
With limited interaction,
both communities had their prejudices.
Many Jews were influenced by the general racism of the time,
and Black people by the antisemitism.
Blacks mostly only knew about the Jews from the Bible.
They were God's chosen people,
a nation formed in slavery and blamed for killing Jesus.
Black opinions of Jews could hinge on which of those ideas
was more prominent in their consciousness.
Economic differences also created divisions.
Jewish economic advancement and subsequent investment
in urban real estate meant that many Black tenants
came to know Jews as their bosses and landlords.
These factors, among others,
cultivated antisemitism in the Black community.
One early voice of such antisemitism was Marcus Garvey,
a Black Nationalist who claimed Jews were attempting
to destroy the black American population.
But in the 1930's and 40's,
the divisions between these two communities
largely fell by the wayside
with the rise of a new force in the world
that convinced both communities
that they needed to unite.
The late 1930's not only saw the rise of Nazism in Europe,
but also the rise of American groups
that supported the Nazis and fascism.
Groups composed of the same racists the Black community
had been fighting for a long time.
The growth of Nazism made it clear to American Jews
that their political isolation
undermined their efforts to save Europe's Jews
and fight the rise of domestic antisemitism.
The Holocaust was a turning point
that compelled many more Jews and Jewish institutions
to recognize the common cause they had
with the Black community in the fight against bigotry.
Black organizations were eager to join forces
with Jewish organizations,
not just to advance their own political interests
and not just because the Nazis were horribly racist.
Black Americans, like most Americans,
were horrified by the Holocaust,
spurring many to realize that Jews
were also a vulnerable minority
that needed protection and support.
Prominent black activists and organizations
began advocating for Jewish interests,
including the Jewish right to self-determination
in their historic homeland, aka Zionism.
In the wake of World War II,
the NAACP was outspoken for the rights of refugees
and the freedom of movement for minorities,
including Jews headed to the Jewish homeland.
Black scholar and diplomat Ralphe Bunche
led the UN commission charged with
setting up the young Jewish state.
He was hailed as a hero by the Jewish community,
yet a year later, W.E.B. Dubois criticized him
for not sufficiently championing
Jewish interests in the Holy Land.
Ultimately the horrors of the Holocaust
pushed Jewish and Black Americans to acknowledge
that they not only shared a common enemy,
but that they also shared a common vision for the future.
A world devoid of hatred and discrimination,
where people of all races and creeds
can live in freedom and fulfill their potential.
This was a critical value to the Zionist vision
and the nascent Jewish state.
The relationships developed
during the first half of the 20th century
created the foundations of significant partnerships
during the Civil Rights Movement,
partnerships that continue to serve as inspiration
for both communities.