{"id":1253,"date":"2017-07-26T17:58:09","date_gmt":"2017-07-26T17:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjhblog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2017\/07\/26\/creating-the-promised-land-american-jewish-voices\/"},"modified":"2017-07-26T17:58:09","modified_gmt":"2017-07-26T17:58:09","slug":"creating-the-promised-land-american-jewish-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2017\/07\/26\/creating-the-promised-land-american-jewish-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating the Promised Land: American Jewish Voices on Civil Rights and Discriminatory Legislation"},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/p>\n

Poorvi Bellur<\/p>\n

Conducted
\nover the course of Black History Month 2017, this research project is
\nstructured around primary sources from the archives and the personal
\ncollections of each of these individuals and their correspondences with other
\nimportant leaders of the Civil Rights movement. This study focuses on the
\numbrella organization of the American Jewish Congress and profiles 3 major
\nvoices in the Jewish fight for Civil Rights: Shad Polier, Justine Wise Polier
\nand Will Maslow.
<\/i><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

“The
\nproblem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line”<\/i><\/p>\n

WEB Dubois<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I am a current undergraduate student at
\nColumbia University in the City of New York studying postcolonial history and political
\nscience. From January to April of this year, I worked as an intern at the
\nCenter for Jewish History, as part of the Kenneth Cole Community Action
\nProgram. Specifically focused on the region of the Middle East and South Asia,
\nI am interested in the imperial legacies in the postcolonial world order,
\nespecially surrounding lines of race and caste. Recent coursework led me to
\nbecome interested in questions of American democracy and race, especially those
\nconcerning minority interactions and systems of privilege in legislation. With
\nthese topics in mind, I decided to dedicate my time at the Center to studying
\nthe history of African American-Jewish relations, particularly during the
\npost-World War II Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/figure>\n

Members of the AJC holding up a sign at Montgomery March (American Jewish Historical Society, American Jewish Congress records, undated, 1916-2006, Call #I-77, Box 744, Folder 41)<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This push against racism \u2013 punctuated by a
\nseries of revolutionary legislative acts and public demonstrations \u2013 revealed
\nan extremely complex relationship between the black and Jewish communities,
\nunited and divided at different times and by different degrees. \u00a0This complexity is in part a legacy of the
\nhistory of black and Jewish interactions in the United States. Since even
\nbefore the Civil War period, groups of American Jews protested and openly
\nopposed the practice of slavery, and discrimination against African Americans.
\nIndeed, the Scottsboro case of 1931, one of the most high profile cases of
\nracial discrimination in the legal system, when nine African American teenagers
\nfalsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama and jailed,
\nwith an all white jury condemning the group of young boys to death, Jewish
\nlawyer Samuel Leibowitz assumed the case without pay. He claimed to be inspired[1]<\/a> by
\nthe case of Leo Frank, a Jew in Georgia falsely accused for murder and lynched,
\ndemonstrating the sympathy that many American Jews felt for the plight of black
\nAmericans. However, other
\ngroups, who sought assimilation in order to avoid provoking anti-Semitism,
\ndenied such solidarity with the marginalized black community. The
\narchives of the Center\u2019s partners house a plethora of sources revealing the
\nintricacies of these interactions and the impact they had on the movement at
\nlarge. <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/figure>\n

Members of the American Jewish Congress on the chartered bus on their way to March on Washington
\n(American Jewish Historical Society, American Jewish Congress records, undated, 1916-2006, Call #I-77, Box 743, Folder 26)<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

This study specifically focuses on the activities
\nof the umbrella organization, the American Jewish Congress \u2013 whose archives are
\nheld by the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS). I was particularly
\ninterested in this organization because, as opposed to other Jewish social
\nactivist collectives at the time which focused on more passive educational reform,
\nthe AJC prioritized radical social legislative reform. Initially one of many
\nZionist organization and led by Stephen S Wise, the AJC came to broaden its
\nscope and become the beacon for Jewish voices supporting legal reform in
\nAmerica to combat systemic racism. Wise was also a founder of the NAACP and the
\nACLU, and was known for his emphasis on the spirit of pluralism and under his
\nguidance the \u201cAJCongress articulated the view that group, and not individual,
\ninterests needed to be advanced through appropriate organizational channels and
\nnot merely through a few well connected individuals\u201d[2]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By 1945 the broadened focus of the
\norganization moved to strengthen American democracy through social legislation
\nreform and the Commission on Law and Social Action was set up to fight
\ndiscriminatory practices by big institutions and corporations alongside groups
\nlike the NAACP and ACLU. What set the AJC apart from was that it over quiet
\neducational programs of other organizations such as the American Jewish
\nCommittee. The AJC of the 1930’s onwards could be characterized as the social
\nrights lawyer of the American Jewish Community with its focus on First
\nAmendment cases and civil rights. Through three upcoming blog posts, I will
\ndemonstrate the thrust of these activities through the lives of three of AJC\u2019s
\nmajor figures \u2013 Shad Polier, Justine Polier and William Maslow. Conducted over
\nthe course of Black History Month 2017, this research project is structured
\naround primary sources from the archives and the personal collections of each
\nof these individuals and their correspondences with other important leaders of
\nthe Civil Rights movement.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Norwood, Stephen H., and Eunice G. Pollack.\u00a0Encyclopedia
\nof American Jewish history<\/i>. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008.
\nPrint.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Jerome A Chanes-Norwood, Stephen H., and Eunice G.
\nPollack. Encyclopedia of American Jewish history. Vol. 2. Santa Barbara, CA:
\nABC-CLIO, 2008. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Poorvi Bellur Conducted over the course of Black History Month 2017, this research project is structured around primary sources from the archives and the personal collections of each of these individuals and their correspondences with other important leaders of the Civil Rights movement. This study focuses on the umbrella organization of the American Jewish Congress and profiles 3 major voices in the Jewish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,41,102,9,104],"class_list":["post-1253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-activism","tag-american-jewish-history","tag-civil-rights","tag-jewish-history","tag-poorvi-bellur"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}