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Abstract
Among the political forces that have contributed to the universality of American democracy, none has played as crucial a role as the modern civil rights movement. This paper studies the internal political dynamics that were at play within the principal groups that supported the movement. In the forefront of the struggle for the civil rights of African Americans was the American Jewish community. Existing literature on the contributions of Jews to the success of the modern civil rights movement fails to highlight the internal rift that divided northern and southern Jews during the civil rights struggle. As a result, many of the contributions and personal sacrifices that were made by individuals at the local level have gone unrecorded, unsung, and unrecognized. The present study fills this void, It examines the direct and indirect contributions of Jews to the civil rights of African Americans, and explains the concerns of southern Jewish communities over the overt strategies that were adopted by national and northern Jewish organizations.
Introduction
The history of the modern civil rights movement in America is undeniably the story of cooperation among Blacks, Jews, and other progressive whites in the struggle to gain constitutional rights for Blacks and other dominated minorities. It is a history that is as old as the founding of the American nation, but a story that would reach revolutionary proportions in the 20th century. While the 1960s is frequently described as "the civil rights decade," the legal, intellectual, and organizational seeds that contributed to the success of the modern civil rights struggle were actually planted back at the turn of the 20th century. Foremost in the planting of these seeds was the historic commitment of American Jews to the promotion of civil rights and racial equality. Not only was this commitment expressed through financial support, it was also expressed in kind and in various other forms of personal sacrifice. As far back as to the era of institutionalized slavery, individual members of the Jewish community, in spite of the risk of personal persecution, frequently provided assistance to Blacks in their struggle for liberation. This was the case in the early 1800s when two Jewish brothers paid to liberate a Black man who had been kidnapped from the doorsteps...