The Relationship Between American Jews And Black Civil Right Movement

American Jews and Black Civil Right Movement
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American Jews and Black Civil Right Movement
As a minority group in the American society, Jews have been free from the mainstream Christian white system for a long time. The anti-semitism waves in the United States in the early 20th century has greatly impacted Jews. As the minority with the largest population in the United States, African American people suffered from the oppression of racial discrimination and apartheid for a long time, and their social status was extremely low. Since the 1950 s, in order to strive for equal rights of ethnic minorities, and the dominance and spread of African American civil rights movements in the United States, where American Jews are actively involved, some Jewish organizations, Jewish leaders, the black population in their run for promoting judicial reforms and social justice, they have played an important role. Moreover, the cooperation will involve black civil rights movement to a climax, this age also known as the "golden age" where the two big groups get along. After the cooperation achieved a series of judicial results, the contradiction between the two ethnic groups, which was concealed outside the cooperative appearance, was rapidly intensified, and the ethnic relations between Jews and blacks went from sincere cooperation to separatist confrontation. The accumulative literature review on the features of intergroup relations between the Jews and the African Americans yield the argument that the attitudes of each group towards each other is complex as well as their relationship is complicated characterized with cooperation and conflict.
The complexity of the relations between the Jews and the Blacks is caused by the different comparative frameworks that led to their alliance. These frameworks include the similarity of the problem and the history of oppression and discrimination that the two groups faced while under the colonial and the American rule. Therefore, basically, there are three distinct aspects to review the relations between the Jews and the Blacks in their civil rights movements (Adams, 2001). These aspects are memory, ideology and sociology where memory stands for the numerous accounts of past discrimination, oppression and other painful experiences that both groups encountered during their stay in the United States of America. This concept was used by the leaders of the Jews and the Blacks to carefully identify and stress the many similarities that existed between them and to create a genuine reason as to why they should form an alliance to monitor their stay and ensure that the government appreciated the adoption of a comfortable society. The concept of ideology narrowed to the ideological differences and similarities that existed between the two groups in terms of religion and politics while the complex aspect of sociology refers and deals with the fact that even after the two groups had formed political alliances and civil rights movements, there was some kind of forced friendship and pretentious love between them and in a social neighborhood comprising the Jews, no Blacks were allowed in the mid-1920s and 1930s.
The two groups migrated in to the United States of America in completely different fronts. In the earliest years of the colonial era, Jews migrated in to the British American society as merchants from London and settled in certain cities like Georgia, Charlestone, South Carolina and Rhode Island with the view of becoming full members of the society (Greenberg, 2013). Later, in 20th Century, there were further Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Germany who were profoundly moving in to the United States of America because of its economic and social excellence. At the same time, African American were also migrating in to the country through the south in a wave that came to be known as the Great Migration where both groups settled in the most industrialized cities such as New York City, Chicago, Boston and Cleveland where there was massive need for workers (Greenberg, 2013). This is where the Jews and the Blacks met in several encounters and experiences and marked their distinct relations for the following century and more.
The early 1900s was a significant era for the Jews and the African Americans since after their movement in to the United States of America, popular newspapers termed the groups to be living in poor households and environments called “Ghettos” and this led to several riots in the Black-dominated and the Jewish Southern environs (Klausner, 1994). Therefore, owing to the similarities rather than the numerous differences between the two minority populations, leaders from the Jewish society came up with and emphasized the idea that the two groups should join hands in driving America in to a society of advantage where religious differences, racism and ethnicity are not a problem. In this light, numerous organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, were founded to fight racial discrimination whereas several other civil rights movements such as the Urban League, Congress of Racial Equality and the NAACP were actively dominated by the Jews and against certain vices in the society such as racism and discrimination due to religious differences (Raden, 1998). The African American community, on the other hand, led by Marcus Garvey, founded and promoted Pan Africanism, the African Redemption and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in the run against racial discrimination and oppression of the Blacks by the Whites.
These liberal organizations contained different but similar grievances. The liberal organizations of the Jews were fighting for their civil rights but they were also massively concerned with politics and other legal struggles where they studied the certainty, the nature and the possibilities of their business and residential choices as well as notions of integration and the courses of action that they were to take in order to realize those goals. The Jews lived as liberals and victims in their political lives the same way that the African Americans did (Greenberg, 2012). However, they lived as white people in their personal lives and that explains the diversity of their grievances but according to the nature of their integrations, they were actively not racist but, nonetheless, in such a society where race determined each individuals’ opportunities and quality of life, even liberalism and other dilemmas led to racism. This was evident in the personal actions of most of the northern Jews and some of those located in the southern part as stated by Nathan Edelstein in the 1960 national conference where he described there has been too much concern with the existing close similarities and collaboration between the Jews and the Blacks but less concern with the personal actions of individuals who did not manifest the same for their colleagues (Margolies & Sundquist, 2007). This collects up to be the conflict between the two marginalized populations in spite of the huge collaboration.
Apart from the organizations, there was founded another body to boost the cooperation between the Jews and the Blacks and to build their growing relations. This is the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU)founded in 1900 (Green, 1997). The body has significantly aided in building and bringing an aspect of contrast in the relationship between the Jews and the Blacks in both a sociological and ideological ways. The union h...