How has the partnership between Jewish and Black Americans evolved from the early 20th century until now?
Let’s tell the truth. This country worked differently for our communities. Jews came fleeing pogroms and persecution, seeking refuge in an America that promised religious freedom. Black people built this country in chains. Bondage was written into the Constitution. Emancipation didn’t end legalized racism, it just changed its form. The afterlife to slavery persists to this day.
And yet, despite radically different origin stories a sacred thing happened between us. In the early and mid-20th century, we recognized in one another a shared moral language of the Exodus, of Pharoah, of freedom, or splitting seas. Jews carried memory, exile, expulsion, genocide. Black Americans carried the ongoing reality of caste, of Jim Crow terror, of legalized humiliation but a profound sense of redemption found.
We understood what it meant to be marked as “other.” So we built together. We litigated together. We marched together. We bled together. Though most Jewish people and most (non-Jewish) Black people do not know or care whether or not Martin Luther King Jr. linked arms with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the influence of this multiracial coalition helped shape the American values that sustain democracy today.
To be alive in the 1960s was to witness an American Redemption story of civil liberty. But after civil rights legislation passed, America opened unevenly. Jews, though never fully free from antisemitism, gained access to suburbs, universities, and capital in ways Black Americans were structurally denied. Redlining, mass incarceration, wealth gaps on purpose.
Distance grew. Social disparities grew. Geography shifted. Political language changed. And slowly, Black-Jewish historical alliance changed. Suspicion replaced proximity.
What lessons from the past can improve current relationships?
Nostalgia is not a strategy. The 1960s were not a fairy tale. They were dangerous. The alliance worked because leaders chose courage over comfort.
The lesson is not “remember when.” The lesson is: proximity prevents distortion. When we stop knowing each other personally, we start categorizing people into ideological or cultural groups. What the 2020s have shown us most sharply is when we view people through ideology without relationship, identity becomes weaponized, and culture wars ensue.
The next alliance cannot only be about shared suffering. It must be about shared power — economic collaboration, political courage, cultural partnership. Expanding opportunity. Reducing hate. Strengthening democracy. If we only work with people we agree with 100% of the time, we will be working alone.
How can we take action to address systematic racism and antisemitism?
Another lesson: our histories are interconnected. Antisemitism and Racism are two sides of the same coin, not two competing forms of hatred and oppression.
Nazi lawyers studied American race law. Jim Crow wasn’t just Southern, it was a teacher of Nazi Germany’s war machine that killed over 11 million people of which 6,000,000 were Jews. The same logic that produced Jim Crow also influenced Nazi racial law. The same conspiracy thinking that demonizes Jews fuels white nationalism.
White nationalists are happy when Jews and Black communities distrust one another. Authoritarian regimes exploit images and narratives to radicalize young people and fracture coalitions. When we fight each other, democracy weakens.
Systemic racism requires structural change — in wealth access, education, healthcare, criminal justice. Antisemitism requires confronting myths of Jewish power and the dangerous racialization of Jews as either permanently privileged or permanently foreign.
But policy won’t save us without relationship. The three most important things in strengthening Black-Jewish relations? Relationships. Relationships. Relationships. Real trust is built in rooms where we can say: “That hurt.” Real solidarity is built when we can say: “You’re wrong, and I’m still staying.”
Black Jews are watching this fracture from inside our own bodies. We experience racism in Jewish spaces and antisemitism in Black spaces. We must build a community where we are fully at home. This work starts internally. Community relations start with community.
How did prominent figures from each movement shape the relationships between the communities?
Leadership made the alliance real.
When Martin Luther King Jr. linked arms with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, it wasn’t symbolism. It was theology in motion. Heschel said he was “praying with his feet.” King spoke clearly against antisemitism and affirmed Israel’s right to exist. They understood something missing in today's justice movements: Faith in HaShem.
Jewish lawyers argued cases that dismantled segregation. Black colleges sheltered Jewish scholars fleeing Europe. Jewish philanthropists funded Black schools. The NAACP and Urban League were built with Black and Jewish hands together.
And let’s remember Black-Jewish relationship during Freedom Summer when Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered alongside James Chaney.
The alliance was never universal. It was built by brave people willing to risk safety, reputation, and comfort not because everyone agreed but because they agreed on moving our communities and our multiracial democracy toward the truths to be self-evident in America’s Promise.