African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict.

African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict. Edited by V. P. Franklin, Nancy L. Grant, Harold M. Kletnick, and Genna Rae McNeil. (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, c. 1998. Pp. x, 366. $34.95, ISBN 0-8262-1197-6.)

An addition to the growing literature on the subject of black-Jewish relations, this eclectic collection of thirteen essays grew out of a conference on "Blacks and Jews: An American Historical Perspective" at Washington University in St. Louis in December 1993. The volume's unremarkable thesis is that the history of black-Jewish relations was marked "by significant conflicts of interest between Jewish Americans and African Americans" (p. 2) and that while Jews have united with blacks "to pursue issues and objectives important to both groups," the two groups also had "public disagreements and overt conflicts" at various times (p. 3). Awkwardly invoking the themes of "convergence" and "conflict" as organizing principles, one editor concludes that black-Jewish relations have exhibited "more convergences in experiences and ideologies than conflicts" (p. 12). Yet to the extent that the volume's essays fit into this framework, they seem to place greater stress on conflictive relations.

A number of essays emphasize Jewish sympathy towards African Americans or Jewish contributions to civil rights struggles. Hasia R. Diner explores the early-twentieth-century Yiddish and English-language Jewish press and discovers that, regardless of their political orientation, these papers offered considerable critical coverage of American race relations. In an excerpt from his earlier book, What Went Wrong? (New York, 1995), Murray Friedman traces the involvement of Jewish leftist Stanley David Levison in a broader coalition of black activists including Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, and Martin Luther King Jr. Without offering examples, Friedman asserts that "Until Montgomery, Jews had dominated the alliance; after Montgomery, Blacks would do so" (p. 107). In his case study on Detroit between 1920 and 1950, Marshall F. Stevenson Jr. rightly stresses the need to explore not merely black-white but racial-ethnic relations within trade unions. Although relatively few Jews worked in the auto industry, many of those who did were attracted to the Communist Party and actively supported black demands.

Numerous essays explore Jewish ambivalence or opposition to black demands. Reprising a number of his earlier articles, Herbert Hill rehearses at length his account of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union's discrimination against black and Hispanic members in the 1950s and 1960s. In "Black Sacrifice, Jewish Redemption," Michael Rogin contends that Jews "had their own stain of shame ...: burnt cork," (p. 87) with Jewish entertainers playing a key role as blackface performers by the early twentieth century. Despite their efforts in the 1940s, Jewish leftist filmmakers, he argues, could not "escape" their past (p. 96). In one of the book's strongest essays, Cheryl Greenberg examines the ambivalence of southern Jews toward the modern civil rights movement and their opposition to national Jewish organizations' efforts to promote civil rights.

Finally, there are the essays that do not quite fit into the "convergence-conflict" framework. Vernon J. Williams Jr. explores the evolving thought of Franz Boas, a German Jewish immigrant to the United States, who became a leading critic of hereditarian anthropology. Concluding that "Boas was no racist" and that compared to most: early-twentieth-century white scholars he "was far ahead of his times" (p. 86), Williams also arrives at the unsurprising conclusion that Boas was unable to "completely rid himself of racist anthropological assumptions" (p. 83). Nancy Haggard-Gilson argues that it is wrong to place "Black conservatives and Jewish neoconservatives ... in close intellectual company" (p. 186), for substantial differences appear in their respective critiques of race and American social policy. In his essay on the Harlem jobs boycotts of the 1930s, Winston C. McDowell recreates "[t]he combative, unrestrained world of sidewalk politics" (p. 209) with activist and mystic Sufi Abdul Hamid at its center. Seeking to give Hamid credit for invigorating the boycott campaign, McDowell is critical of those who portray him as little more than "a gadfly with anti-Semitic leanings" (p. 211). V. P. Franklin's contribution seeks first to demonstrate that most blacks are not anti-Semitic and that charges of black anti-Semitism are overblown and second, to show that references to Jews in Malcolm X's Autobiography (New York, 1965) should not necessarily be read as evidence of anti-Semitism. "Malcolm did not consider himself an anti-Semite," Franklin argues, for "he felt he merely spoke the truth about the nature of Black-Jewish relations" (p. 308). Acknowledging that Malcolm X's various statements on Jews will "likely be a subject of debate for decades to come," (p. 308) Franklin misses an opportunity to evaluate critically the veracity of those statements.

One editor suggests at the outset that these essays "provide something of a blueprint for lessening tensions and building coalitions for the future" (p. 12). But they do not; perhaps the task is simply beyond the ability of historians and social scientists. Ultimately, this book is less about "Jewish-black relations" than it is about measuring and evaluating Jewish attitudes toward blacks and contributions to black civil rights.

ERIC ARNESEN

University of Illinois at Chicago