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The Relationship of Southern Jews to Blacks and the Civil Rights Movement

In: Religion Topics

Submitted By tarheel1524
Words 2899
Pages 12
Clark Farley
AMST 486: Shalom Y’all
Dr. Marcie Cohen Ferris
08 December, 2010 The Relationship of Southern Jews to Blacks and the Civil Rights Movement
Since the 1960’s historians and many other scholars have tried to delve into the relationship of blacks and Jews. The experiences of blacks and Jewish people have common histories of dispersion, bondage, persecution, and emancipation. Their relationship can be primarily recognized since the formation of the NAACP in 1909. During the civil rights movement, this organization played a key role in the black-Jewish alliance. However, many scholars have argued if there ever was an alliance between the two, and if so, what might have caused this alliance to break? We may generalize that today’s relationship between the two groups is a relationship in which Jews are superior in regards to social position. In my research I analyzed the works of several scholars to seek the involvement of southern Jews with blacks and the Civil Rights movement. In his 1973 publication of The Provincials, Eli Evans argues that the South is one of the least anti-Semitic regions in the Nation. Among their gentile neighbors, Jews had been accepted as white members of Southern society during the civil rights movement. At this time Jews barely made up one percent of the South's population. Even though a large portion of white civil rights activists were Jewish, the percentage of Jews in the South that took part in the civil rights movement was significantly smaller compared to Jews in the North, because many Southern Jews were afraid to actively support the civil rights movement. For years they maintained the racial status quo among white gentiles by keeping a low profile. If they were to support desegregation they would be risking their own acceptance within the white community. Although the majority of southern Jews stayed

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