Jews and Blacks in Modern America

In the past century, Jews have often been the most sympathetic to the oppression of Blacks in the United States of America, and they have often worked together at critical points in their history.

W.E.B. Dubois, Henry Malkewitz, Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch and Stephen Wise formed the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). Jewish and Black leaders formed the Urban League. Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington improved the educational system for Blacks in the Southern states of the USA. Black leaders like Canada Lee, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Robeson, helped raise funds for Peter Bergson's work to Save the Jewish People of Europe and to support the founding of modern Israel.

Several Jewish professors who arrived in America from Europe in the 1930s and '40s taught in the Southern Black Colleges. During the Civil Rights movement in America, the Jewish Press was often in support of the Black community and many Jews marched with the Black protesters. Around half of the civil rights lawyers in the Southern United States during the 1960s were Jews, and of the Whites who went to Mississippi in 1964 to challenge the Jim Crow Laws, over 50 percent were Jews. The Jewish commun