Rabbi Heschel and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Commentary by Deoliver47, Black Kos Editor
On Blacks and Jews; dedicated to Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb. In memory of your life and work.
This commentary today cannot possibly cover the entire history of the relationship between US African American communities and Jewish communities. I’m presenting a little bit of history, from my perspective, and will hopefully bring to light a few things not generally known about those historic ties.
As we move forward as progressives, in the Democratic Party, perhaps it is a wise thing to examine, and remember those things that forged relationships, rather than dwelling upon the events that may have driven people into oppositional stances. Where do we find common ground? It is in this spirit that today’s comments are written.
As a child born of activist parents, I have had a long history of involvement with members of the Jewish community (both secular or cultural Jews, many of whom are atheists), and religious Jews, (who fall into many categories). I was born in the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in NY, in 1947. A place where my mom received loving care, and the Jewish obstetrician who cared for her and me, became a family friend. Growing up in my early years in Brooklyn in my grandparents home, my neighborhood was predominantly orthodox Jewish, (my grandfather was a Shabbous goy) and I briefly attended a local Hebrew School. My parents circle of friends and comrades included many people who you would call "white" these days, but in looking back I realize that most were Jewish; secular Jews; the majority were marxists, socialists and liberals. Some of their children, my playmates did not go to synagogue, but to Ethical Culture.
In the dark days of the McCarthy era, the witch-hunt to exterminate the "left" in America targeted in specific many Jewish leftists, though it is rarely portrayed that way. During the period of WW2 and afterward, when European nations resisted absorbing Holocaust survivors, though many European scholars and intellectuals arrived on US shores, anti-semitism in certain Ivy League institutions, though rarely mentioned these days, created an interesting historical circumstance, which was documented by my dear deceased mentor and friend, Washington DC poet and activist, Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb, in her book From Swastika to Jim Crow: Refugee Scholars. Her research, and book became the foundation for both a museum exhibit and documentary on PBS.
The exhibit opened with a quote:
"The segregationists and racists make no fine distinction between the Negro and the Jew"
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
When my parents met my friend Gabrielle in DC, I remember my dad discussing his own recollections of his college days with her.
My dad attended a Negro University in the South, West Virginia State on scholarship. These schools are now called " Historically black colleges (HBC’s) When there he studied with mostly black teachers, but he remembered the professor of science who taught him who had survived the holocaust to arrive on the campus, to a world foreign to not only a European Jew, but foreign to many white Americans.
Some background from the discussion guide about the film:
In January of 1933, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party legally and democratically rose to power in Germany. Almost immediately, Hitler began a systematic campaign of oppression and terror against Jews, who up until that point had been an integral part of German culture, commerce,and education. Jewish businesses were boycotted on April 1, 1933, but following an international outcry that boycott was limited to one day. Soon after, Hitler placed economic sanctions on Jews and limited their right to practice their trades. On April 25, 1933, the Law
for Preventing Overcrowding in German Schools and Schools of Higher Education took effect. This law restricted enrollment of Jews and soon thereafter Jewish professors began to be dismissed from universities. While few, if any, could imagine that by 1941 the Germans would begin the systematic slaughter of Jews – a slaughter that over the next four years would take the lives of close to six million souls – many of these scholars realized in the early 1930s that Jews had no future in Germany and fled to the United States. Most of the 1,200 refugee scholars who arrived in this country could not find work in their fields. A small number, however, would end up in the historically Black colleges of the American South.
In many ways, these scholars discovered that the American South was not unlike Germany in the mid 1930s before mass murder became the policy of the German state. Southern Blacks lived under the oppression of the Jim Crow laws, which legislated the strict segregation of Blacks from Whites. Forbidden from attending the same schools, eating in the same restaurants, playing in the same parks, Blacks were considered second-class citizens. The historically Black private colleges represented a rare opportunity for educational advancement and were havens for aspiring young Blacks. Exempt from local segregation laws, they were one of the few places where Blacks could freely associate with Whites without being arrested under the myriad of ordinances enforcing segregation. Many of these colleges needed qualified teachers and saw in these refugees prominent scholars to attract to their campuses, and who, having fled oppression themselves, might have special sensitivity to the experience of the Black students they would teach. For the scholars, employment at the Black colleges offered an invaluable opportunity to continue their professional work at a time when work in their fields was scarce.
Fifty-one refugee scholars would end up taking positions in 19 different institutions. Shunned by the White community for being both Jewish and foreign, unable to fully integrate with the Black community due to segregation laws, the experience of the refugee scholars would prove to be very difficult but, in many cases, very rewarding. As Gabrielle Edgcomb writes in her book, From Swastika to Jim Crow, "The significance of this historical episode lies in the encounter between two diverse groups of people, both victims of extreme manifestations of racist oppression and persecution, albeit under vastly different historical conditions. The Europeans came out of a middle class intellectual environment...African Americans at the time were two and three generations removed from slavery,under which even learning to read had been generally forbidden."
I can only imagine what it must have been like at that time in history. Though my own family taught me well our stories from slavery, and I experienced segregation and Jim Crow first hand as a child and teenager, I can only empathize with the plight of those Jewish people who survived to make it to the shores of the U.S, and what it must have been like to wind up in not only the South, but on campuses with Negro students and predominantly black faculty.
The German-Jewish refugees who came to the American South in the 1930s and 1940s were in many ways condemned to a "double exile" experience. Many arrived in New York, having left everything they had known, under the most difficult experience of persecution to find anti-Semitism and an anti-foreigner sentiment quite prevalent in American society. They then left the Northeast, where refugee resources existed, to look for job security at Black colleges in the South. Upon arrival, they soon realized that their life would now be a balancing act where they would have to live in a White community that did not welcome them, while working in the Black community. For many of these refugee scholars, it was their intellectual skill and personal integrity that enabled them to survive in this difficult situation. The irony of their own situation in Nazi Germany, and what they encountered in the American South of the 1930s and ’40s, was not lost on these scholars.
The students and faculty who attended and worked at the Black colleges and universities experienced a unique sense of freedom. Black colleges were exempt from Jim Crow laws. Because there were none of the restrictions that were common in the general community, the staff was often integrated and an atmosphere of mutual respect between the students and the faculty was fostered. The colleges provided opportunities for Black youth to receive higher education in a segregated society at a time when rural, Southern Blacks were denied equal K-12 educational opportunities. While these campuses often provided a "safe haven" where civilized discourse was encouraged and nurtured, off–campus students were still required to abide by the segregation laws of the United States.
I do remember my own first experience with antisemitism.
Growing up in the Crown Heights Brooklyn world where with the exception of my white grandmother, who was not Jewish, the majority of "white people" I came in contact were, I experienced "culture shock" when as a 9 year old my dad moved us out of NYC to the town of State College PA, and I joined a Brownie Troop there, along with my best friend, Carolyn who was also from NYC, and happened to be Jewish. She was the only "Jew" in the troop, and I was the only "Negro". The other little girls were "WASPS". Imagine my horror when a group of the little girls drew me aside to inquire, with whispers and giggles, if I had seen "Carolyn’s horns and tail yet" since I was invited to her home for sleepovers. Teh mind boggles. Horns and tail? What? My first encounter with antisemitism. It wouldn’t be my last, but it is firmly engraved in my memory.
In later years living in Washington DC in the mid-70’s, I discussed this memory with my dear friend Gabrielle. She was involved in legal battles with her co-op WASP dominated board. They didn’t want to allow her daughter from California to spend her vacation there, and issued a directive that any "guests" that stayed more than overnight had to have prior board approval. Her daughter was married to a black man, and their children looked "non-white". Gabrielle talked of her own feelings about the antisemitism of the board, and their racism.
Gabrielle, a leftist poet activist in DC circles, was noted for her work in bringing together "cultural workers" black, white, brown, straight and gay, was an astute observer of many of the black-jewish tensions of the time period and thought long and hard about how to begin to build rebuild bridges. Her research took many years.
Samuel G. Freedman describes the genesis of Gabrielle’s research and the later film project at RaceMatters.org
A German Jewish refugee herself, Ms. Edgcomb had first heard of these scholars while active in the civil rights movement and devoted 12 years to researching her book. It was published by a tiny press and ignored by reviewers. When Mr. Sucher and Mr. Fischler first met with her in 1995 to begin developing the documentary, she warned them, "You'll never get the money to do it." While she readily passed along addresses and phone numbers for some refugee scholars to be interviewed, she said of the rest: "I don't know where they are. You'll never find them." Patching together a series of small and moderate grants from foundations interested in Jewish history, the filmmakers launched their search. After Ms. Edgcomb died in 1997, friends of hers raised about $12,000 at a screening of a 25-minute segment of unedited film. But it took a $150,000 infusion in 1998 from the Independent Television Service, an organization established by Congress to support programs that "involve creative risks and address the needs of underserved audiences," for the hourlong documentary to be completed in late 1999. Over their years of fitful research, the filmmakers tracked down four living scholars and the surviving spouses or children of several others. Ms. Cheatle, brought on as director, unearthed still photographs, home movies and television news footage from archival sources and personal collections. One of the most significant personages in the finished film, the sociologist Ernst Borinski, died in 1983, after a 37-year career at Tougaloo, and exists in the film only through such materials. The filmmakers also found a number of former students, now professors themselves, who spoke admiringly of their unlikely mentors. William Jackson, now the chairman of the German department at the University of Virginia, recalled Manasse pushing him to apply (successfully) for a Fulbright scholarship. Calvin Hernton, a professor emeritus from Oberlin, recounted how Fritz Pappenheim, his professor at Talladega, arranged for him to meet Langston Hughes.
In their classrooms and the surrounding towns, the refugee professors attacked segregation at some peril to their tenuous place in the South. Mr. Pappenheim, a socialist, had to testify before a Congressional committee investigating supposed Communist subversion in the civil rights movement. Two faculty members at Talladega, Lore and Donald Rasmussen, were charged with inciting to riot for eating in a "colored only" restaurant. AT the same time, the black college campuses offered the only genuine community the refugees knew in America. Local whites considered the Jews everything from Marxist agitators to Nazi spies, while blacks tended to view them as kindred souls, even racially. Black neighbors taught one of the refugees how to cook. As a Howard professor, Ralph Bunche assigned Mr. Herz to write about Nazism for the Journal of Negro Education. When Viktor Lowenfeld, an art professor at Hampton, learned that his family had been murdered in Nazi death camps, he confided it to his student protégé, John Thomas Biggers. "This notion of man's inhumanity to man was not foreign to African- American citizens," Clint Wilson, now a journalism professor at Howard, says in the film. "So, yes, there was not so much shock as there was empathy. Because when you've been through slavery, you're not shocked by anything that people will do."
This commentary, as mine are often wont to be (grin) is now quite lengthy. A tiny slice of history is often difficult for me to present in just a paragraph. Much of what I had planned to write about today, must be saved for future diaries, or discussed in comments.
I wanted to cover Freedom Summer, the murders of civil rights workers, Jews and Blacks in entertainment, the schisms in black and jewish relationships vis a vis certain statements made by leaders, and tensions that ensued in both communities. I won't. Simply because there is not enough space.
I will refer you to some diaries here at DKos that do discuss the civil rights history:
Two by Meteor Blades;Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman: Gone 40 Years Ago Today, Mississippi Turning, and one I wrote about Andrew Goodman’s mom, "Kill the 2 Jew-boys and the nigra".
For a nuanced look at many perspectives on the coalitions, schisms and tensions, I suggest reading Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States, edited by Jack Saltzman and Cornel West.
Saltzman has this to say at the end of his introduction to the essays in the text:
What has brought us together, as I said at the beginning of this introduction, is the conviction that knowing the past as well as we can, that, in this case, knowing what happened between Blacks and Jews, is not inconsequential. That conviction, in this case, grows out of a belief that to speak of the relationship between Blacks and Jews still resonates in a way that the relationship between no other two groups of people does. No doubt in the years to come we will speak more than we now do about Blacks and Latinos or Asians and Jews. But there is little reason to think, at least right now, that the forging of new alliances will have the same consequences for social justice in the United States as has the relationship between Blacks and Jews. For whatever the tensions that developed, however much alliances may have been determined by self-interest, no )matter how much one group may have felt betrayed by the other, the struggle for civil rights in this country has benefited enormously from the coming together of African Americans and American Jews. We are the poorer for what we have allowed to happen--what some have willed to happen--to the legacy of that struggle. We will continue to grow even poorer, I think, until we regain the conviction that without social justice and civil rights the United States has lost its purpose for being. This book, then, is meant to be both a corrective to the history of a relationship that has yet to be fully written and a reminder of the good that can come from even the most peculiar and difficult entanglements.
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TODAY IN HISTORY
[] George Washington Carver, one of the most prolific black scientists, died Jan 5, 1943.
[] Kappa Alpha Psi was founded.
[] William H. Hastie, civilian aide to secretary of war, resigned to protest segregation and discrimination in the armed forces
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THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
[] Jan 4, 2003. First Super Bowl With 2 Black Coaches. Herman Edward, and Tony Dungy competed as rivals for the first time in NFL history.
[] Jan 5, 1931. Alvin Ailey was born n Rogers, Texas. He went on the found the exemplary Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which is internationally famous for performing dance masterpieces that celebrate the black experience.
[] Jan 6, 2004. Amadou Diallo Family Awarded $3 million The City of New York settled the case of Diallo's wrongful death.
[] Jan 7, 1927. The Harlem Globetrotters played their first game in Hinckley, Illinois. The group was founded by Abe Saperstein, a British-born Jew from Chicago.
[] Jan 7, 1891. Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama. Best known for her loving portrait of black life described in 'Their Eyes Were Watching God,' Hurston is quoted as having said: "I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions." Hurston passed away in 1960. An anthropologist, Hurston was the student of Franz Boas, known as "the father of American Anthropology". He was German-American and Jewish.
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News and Events by Amazing Grace, Black Kos Editor
Shinnecock Indians See Prosperity Ahead
SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — As Shinnecock Indians returned to their reservation on Long Island after World War II, elders warned that their tribe’s long struggle for survival was once again threatened.
Decent jobs were scarce and many Shinnecock veterans were leaving, draining the reservation of needed hands.
Southern Injustice
Convicted of murder in a deeply flawed trial, Herman Wallace has spent nearly 37 years in solitary confinement. Will new evidence finally lead to his release? For the better part of four decades, Victory Wallace, 70, has made a monthly trip from New Orleans to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola to visit her brother Herman, who just turned 68. The 140-mile journey has shades of Heart of Darkness, following the course of the Mississippi River to a remote prison colony from which most inmates never return. At the dark heart of this former slave plantation, Herman Wallace has lived most of the past 37 years in solitary confinement, imprisoned alone for 23 hours a day in a 6-by-9-foot cell.
Lawyer: Homeless Families Still Getting Runaround
Last December, the Bloomberg administration settled a quarter-century-old lawsuit over the right to shelter. Now clients and advocates charge that the city isn't holding up its end of the deal. A year after the city settled a major lawsuit over the treatment of homeless families, the Department of Homeless Services is still turning away families for whom it is supposed to offer emergency shelter, say advocates, the city comptroller and the applicants themselves.
Structural Racism 101 For The White Folks Who Need It Most
Tim Wise knows how to captivate a crowd. For years, he's traveled the country giving audiences scathingly critical talks on white privilege. Catch clips of them on YouTube, and you can see what's so captivating about him: he's a white man with a no-holds-barred approach to talking about race, one who speaks with the command of a Southern preacher and the conviction of a man who's frustrated that the rest of the world isn't up on his game yet. So it wasn't surprising when Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama (City Lights Publishers) was published soon after Barack Obama's presidential inauguration. If there was anyone who could make a public argument against the idea of a post racial society, Wise could. And he does.
Working With the N.F.L. on Diversity For the last seven years the Fritz Pollard Alliance has been the good shepherd and a tenacious bulldog.
As a shepherd, the alliance, named after the National Football League’s first African-American head coach, has prepared and guided minority coaches to opportunities in the league. As a bulldog, the alliance has compelled the commissioner’s office to make sure those opportunities exist fairly throughout the league.
There is a compelling argument for diversity: five of the last six Super Bowl teams have had either an African-American head coach or an African-American general manager.
Misterioso
"You know people have tried to put me off as being crazy," said Thelonious Sphere Monk. "Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy." He ought to have known. Monk was one of only a few jazz musicians to appear on the cover of Time magazine (others include Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis) and was celebrated as a genius by everyone who mattered. Bud Powell, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins could not have imagined (or transmuted) the language of jazz without him. Yet the pianist was also constantly underpaid and underappreciated, rejected as too weird on his way up and dismissed as old hat once he made his improbable climb. Performer and composer, eccentric and original, Monk was shrouded in mystery throughout his life. Not an especially loquacious artist (at least with journalists), he left most of his expression in his inimitable work, as stunning and unique as anyone's in jazz--second only to Duke Ellington's and perched alongside Charles Mingus's.
In Katrina’s Aftermath, Still a Struggle to Help NEW ORLEANS — When Renaissance Village, the vast trailer park that housed Hurricane Katrina evacuees outside Baton Rouge, was closing down in May 2008, Theresa August was one of the last to leave. Babbling, singing and wearing a baby’s onesie on her head, she had to be coaxed into packing up the clothes and trash that crammed the trailer she called home. Now, Ms. August, 40, lives in a small apartment in New Orleans that she decorated with flowers and Christmas lights. A team of social workers ensures that she takes her anti-psychosis medication and gets treatment for H.I.V. infection. Still shy and fettered by a speech impediment, she can carry on conversations far more coherently than at any other time since the storm.
Naomi Sims: Cover Girl On the same day she graduated from Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh, Naomi Sims set out for Manhattan, leaving behind a city where she never felt as if she belonged. She was like many New York aspirants — creative, ambitious, an escapee from somewhere too small and stifling. Except that her sense of isolation, in the place she left, was extreme. What Naomi Sims would soon experience was a newly arrived New Yorker’s fairy tale: extraordinary and nearly instant success....
Bob Findlay says his mother never spoke publicly about her mental illness, and told few friends, out of a sense of propriety and perhaps from a fear of damaging the Naomi Sims brand. "Three months ago, as she knew she was dying, she told me, ‘I’m ready to share it.’"
Salad Bar Gets Warm Welcome In Historic Harlem NEW YORK (Reuters) - The historic neighbourhood of Harlem has been left behind in New York City's war on obesity, but one entrepreneur is trying to reverse the trend -- and fight a stereotype. The area that gave rise to some of the great achievements in African-American culture and commerce is now inundated with fast-food restaurants and suffers from high rates of obesity and diabetes.The unhealthy turn has occurred despite the city's ban on artery-clogging trans fats, expansion of bike lanes and launch of attack ads on sugary drinks, which are blamed by some health activists for the country's obesity epidemic.
Eritrea's controversial push to feed itself
Eritrea's drive for food self-sufficiency is opening it to allegations of grain confiscation - a charge the government denies, and which is difficult to verify. Nineteen million people in the Horn of Africa are expected by the UN to need food aid to survive after failing rains aggravated a drought which has already destroyed crops and starved livestock. However, Eritrea is turning down food aid.
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Voices and Soul by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Editor
My Mother has been in and out of the hospital these last weeks. She's
home now, after all, she is a tough gal from a family with a history
of tough gals; but my siblings and myself are on a "watch." No family
is exempt from sickness and loss. When it comes, especially during the
holidays, a renewed appreciation arises; an appreciation of how
motherly love and warmth envelopes us. This week's poem by Nikki
Giovanni, on the irrevocable passing of life, reminds me of my Mother
and of all the women here and elsewhere who have embraced me and us;
how none will be forgotten and they will warm us still; because their
memories and lives are gifts that can be stitched onto...
Quilts
Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure
No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold
I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection
I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past
I offer no apology only
this plea:
When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm
And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers
And cuddle
near
-- Nikki Giovanni
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A quilt by Carolyn Mazloomi called, "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around ", which honored those who participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March
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It's 2010!
Happy New Year Black Kos family and friends.
Welcome back, and pull up a seat.
The front porch is now open.