(Jewish Group)How the Black-Jewish alliance changed America -- and today's struggle for voting rights

[Behind the Aegis]

Civil rights leaders Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr., former UN Ambassador Ralph Bunche, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (l-r) wear leis during the start of a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The leis were given to the marchers from a group from Hawaii. Getty Images/Bettmann

In our research and teaching on African-American and Jewish-American relations, we often find ourselves puncturing misconceptions about their legendary civil rights-era partnership. Our efforts to "keep it real" aren't meant to diminish the accomplishments of their "Grand Alliance." Rather, our unsentimental assessment of relations between gentile Blacks and white Jews provides some context to think through today's challenges, like the battle to re-secure voting rights.

Let's start with the accomplishments. At mid-century, Southern states sought to expand Jim Crow, while Northern cities engaged in their own forms of discrimination. Black and Jewish strategists responded by orchestrating a nationwide plan of action. The ensuing "Fight for Freedom Campaign" of 1953 essentially framed the NAACP's legal strategy for the civil rights movement. The passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was another triumph, eliminating (albeit temporarily) barriers to voting for African Americans.

In that same year, the Alliance generated its most iconic image. There isn't a liberal Jewish institution in the United States that hasn't posterized America's greatest visual testament to interfaith, multicultural activism: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel with their arms linked in Selma, Alabama, leis draped around their necks. (That image appears above.)

Yet the accomplishments and the optics obscured more complex realities. One popular belief about the Alliance is that from its inception in 1909 (i.e., when the NAACP was founded) it was based on a sense of "fellow feeling" rooted in mutual recognition of common oppression. Certainly there were history buffs in both groups who recognized that their counterparts had endured (and continued to endure) the very worst that Western white Christendom had to offer. Yet in accordance with James Baldwin's dictum that suffering ennobles nobody, we must recognize that pragmatism, more than empathy, powered their relationship.

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[elleng]

1. 'pragmatism, more than empathy, powered their relationship.'

As it should be.