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January 16, 2004
Black-Jewish alliance
Support of the Bergson group crossed racial lines.
DR. RAFAEL MEDOFF SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
For many in the American Jewish community, Martin Luther King Jr.'s
birthday Jan. 16 is an occasion to recall the important role that
Jews played in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
But few remember the earlier alliance between Jews and prominent
African-Americans, in the 1940s, on the issues of rescuing Jews
from the Holocaust and creating a Jewish state.
This forgotten black-Jewish alliance was connected to a series of
political action campaigns undertaken in the 1940s by an activist
group led by Peter Bergson, a Zionist emissary from Jerusalem. The
Bergson group was one of the first Jewish organizations to use such
now-familiar protest tactics as full-page newspaper advertisements,
public rallies and lobbying on Capitol Hill.
The Bergson group was initially known as the Committee for a Jewish
Army. From 1940 to 1943, it sought the creation of a Jewish armed
force that would fight alongside the Allies against the Nazis. Eventually,
the British agreed to establish the 5,000-man force, known as the
Jewish Brigade.
When news of the Holocaust reached the West in 1942-1943, Bergson
created the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe
to press the Roosevelt administration to rescue Jews from Hitler.
The committee's dramatic tactics included full-page newspaper ads,
a march by more than 400 rabbis to the White House just before Yom
Kippur and a congressional resolution urging creation of a U.S.
government agency to rescue refugees. These efforts embarrassed
the administration and compelled Roosevelt to establish the War
Refugee Board, which saved an estimated 220,000 lives during the
Holocaust.
Sympathy for the Bergson group crossed racial lines; numerous prominent
African-Americans were among its supporters.
Black labor union leader A. Philip Randolph, president of the International
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was an early backer of Bergson's
Jewish army effort. So was W.E.B. DuBois, the leading African-American
intellectual of his era.
The author and poet Langston Hughes supported the Jewish army campaign
and was also among the sponsors of Bergson's July 1943 Emergency
Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe. The conference,
which was held in New York City, sought to counter the Roosevelt
administration's claim that rescuing Jews from Hitler was physically
impossible. More than 1,500 delegates listened to panels of experts
on transportation, relief methods, military affairs and other fields,
discussing specific, practical ways to save Jews from the Holocaust.
One of the speakers was Walter White, executive director of the
NAACP.
Several years later, White and the NAACP worked closely with the
Bergson group to help bring about the desegregation of theatres
in Baltimore which restricted African-Americans to less desirable
seats.
As well, black singer, actor and political activist Paul Robeson
was one of the stars of a Madison Square Garden "Show of Shows"
organized by Bergson in 1944 to raise money for his campaign to
rescue Jewish refugees.
Canada Lee, one of the most prominent black actors of the 1940s,
and congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., of Harlem – the first
African-American to represent New York in the U.S. House of Representatives
– were supporters of Bergson's Jewish statehood campaign. At
one Bergson group rally in 1948, Rev. Powell and the Irish-American
lawyer Paul O'Dwyer stood backstage and watched while an ineffective
speaker sought vainly to raise funds for Jewish statehood.
"Powell became impatient," O'Dwyer later recalled, "and
whispered to me, 'This guy is blowing it. Paul, I think this calls
for a Baptist minister and an Irish revolutionary. You handle that
microphone over there and I'll handle this one.' In unison we rose
and and in unison we took the microphones gently away from [the
speaker]. We collected $75,000 ... that night."
A decade before the famous black-Jewish alliance in the civil rights
movement, prominent blacks and Jews joined hands to support the
Bergson group and, in the process, helped desegregate Baltimore's
theatres. On the occasion of Martin Luther King's birthday, that
early collaboration between Jewish Americans and African-Americans
is worth remembering.
Dr. Rafael Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman Institute
for Holocaust Studies, which focuses on issues related to America's
response to the Holocaust (www.WymanInstitute.org).
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