African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict.

Abstract

African and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict. Edited V. P. Franklin, Nancy L. Grant, Harold M. Kletnick, and Genna Rae McNeil. (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, c. 1998. Pp. x, 366. $34.95, ISBN 0-8262-1197-6.) An addition the growing literature on the subject of black-Jewish relations, this eclectic collection of thirteen essays grew out of a conference on and Jews: An American Historical Perspective at Washington University in St. Louis in December 1993. The volume's unremarkable thesis is that the history of black-Jewish relations was marked by significant of interest between Jewish and African Americans (p. 2) and that while Jews have united with blacks to pursue issues and objectives important both groups, the two groups also public disagreements and overt conflicts at various times (p. 3). Awkwardly invoking the themes of convergence and conflict as organizing principles, one editor concludes that black-Jewish relations have exhibited more convergences in experiences and ideologies than conflicts (p. 12). Yet the extent that the volume's essays fit into this framework, they seem place greater stress on conflictive relations. A number of essays emphasize Jewish sympathy towards African or Jewish contributions civil rights struggles. Hasia R. Diner explores the early-twentieth-century Yiddish and English-language Jewish press and discovers that, regardless of their political orientation, these papers offered considerable critical coverage of American race relations. In an excerpt from his earlier book, What Went Wrong? (New York, 1995), Murray Friedman traces the involvement of Jewish leftist Stanley David Levison in a broader coalition of black activists including Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, and Martin Luther King Jr. Without offering examples, Friedman asserts that Until Montgomery, Jews dominated the alliance; after Montgomery, Blacks would do so (p. 107). In his case study on Detroit between 1920 and 1950, Marshall F. Stevenson Jr. rightly stresses the need explore not merely black-white but racial-ethnic relations within trade unions. Although relatively few Jews worked in the auto industry, many of those who did were attracted the Communist Party and actively supported black demands. Numerous essays explore Jewish ambivalence or opposition black demands. Reprising a number of his earlier articles, Herbert Hill rehearses at length his account of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union's discrimination against black and Hispanic members in the 1950s and 1960s. In Black Sacrifice, Jewish Redemption, Michael Rogin contends that Jews had their own stain of shame ...: burnt cork, (p. 87) with Jewish entertainers playing a key role as blackface performers the early twentieth century. …