“Outside Agitators”: Jews and the Civil Rights Movement

Dixie

Kevin MacDonald writes:

“This does not follow. One surely can’t argue that because one Jewish politician in one state opposed desegregation that Jews did not have a decisive influence on the Civil Rights movement in general. South Carolina by itself could not withstand the onslaught against desegregation given that the laws against segregation were national in application.”

That’s certainly true.

It would be a mistake to generalize about American Jews on the basis of one example. The Strange Career of Solomon Blatt tells us a lot though about the Southern Jewish experience. From Colonial America through the Civil Rights Movement, Southern Jews never developed into a hostile minority in the way that they did in the North.

“Throughout the desegregation crisis that beset the South after the Second World War, African Americans and Jews in the region took no united action. In the Southern states at least, there was never any alliance between the two peoples.”

In Montgomery, Martin Luther King, Jr. couldn’t persuade the local Jewish community to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In Birmingham, the downtown department stores which were at the center of the 1963 demonstrations were owned by Jews who had enforced the local segregation laws for generations.

In Selma, the downtown stores had names like “Cohen’s, Levy’s, and Rothschild’s,” and Selma’s Jews had produced three former mayors and seven ex-presidents of the Selma Chamber of Commerce. Jews had always been members of the Selma Country Club and had even played a role in building it.

Sheriff Joe Clark’s official spokesperson was a Jew named Sol Tepper who was a diehard segregationist. When hundreds of Northern Jews arrived in Selma to participate in the Selma-to-Montgomery March, the local Jewish community attempted to persuade them that Selma was really a nice place for Jews to live:

“Mayor Joe Smitherman remembers asking Jewish members of the chamber of commerce to arrange a meeting with Jews who had journeyed south to join the demonstrations. The merchants were encouraged “to talk them out of being arrested” and “to assure them that we aren’t that evil of a community.” A delegation was duly dispatched, including prominent businessmen Sam Barton, Jacob Bendersky, and Maurice Hollonborg, but their efforts were unsuccessful.”

In South Carolina, we have already seen that Solomon Blatt was the Speaker of the House, and he used his power to oppose the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, no one in the South Carolina legislature was more opposed to integration.

In Mississippi and Alabama, large numbers of Jews joined the Citizens’ Councils and many of those who did genuinely supported the massive resistance movement and were ardent segregationists. Alabama’s Jews supported George Wallace’s campaigns and often appeared in public with him to oppose federal intervention.

Throughout the South, Jews more or less supported the status quo or were passive bystanders to it, and there was no organized pressure coming from Jews in places like Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, and Albany – the key battlegrounds in the Civil Rights Movement – to overthrow the South’s racial caste system.

It is certainly true that tons of Jews did come to the South to participate in the Civil Rights Movement: the Freedom Riders, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, SNCC volunteers, to work as volunteer lawyers, etc. Virtually all these Jews came from the Northern states like the Gentiles who came with them to stir up trouble.

Some of these Gentiles never went home: James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston; Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopalian from New Hampshire; Viola Liuzzo, a fanatic from Detroit. The entire Unitarian national convention came to Selma along with legions of Northern Protestant ministers and Northern Catholic priests.

In 1963, the Jim Crow South was a segregated island in an integrated United States. The South’s racial caste system had no parallel in the Northeast and Midwest which had been integrated since Reconstruction or in some places long before. The North’s culture at the time was boiling over with hippies and beatniks while Southern college campuses were rioting against integration.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the South during the Civil Rights Movement was more like a foreign country than part of the United States. In terms of its racial and cultural decline, the North had far more in common (in the 19C and 20C) with Great Britain and Canada, maybe even France, than the Southern states.

You could go one step further and compare the North’s relationship with the South to France’s relationship with Algeria or Britain’s relationship with Rhodesia where large numbers of Arabs and blacks fueled an unsuccessful White resistance to the insanity that had captivated the metropolitan central government.

By themselves, Southern Jews (who were a fraction of 1 percent of the population) weren’t inclined to challenge the South’s racial caste system. The South’s honor roll of race traitors – Harper Lee, Clifford and Virginia Durr, Morris Dees, Howell Raines, Frank Johnson, Paul Hemphill, these were all from Alabama – have tended to be White liberals.

The presence of so many notable White race traitors combined with the relative disinterest of Southern Jews in the Civil Rights Movement and the fact that virtually all the civil rights  demonstrators (Jew or White) came from the Northern states gave White Southerners the impression that it was all the work of “outside agitators.”

Note: I should emphasize here that the author says that 80 percent of the South’s Jewish population are now transplants. None of this implies that there isn’t a Jewish problem in, say, Atlanta or South Florida in 2013.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

21 Comments

  1. For Christ’s sake send them home. Literally. They are not us, and our interests are in eternal conflict.

  2. By themselves, Southern Jews (who were a fraction of 1 percent of the population) weren’t inclined to challenge the South’s racial caste system. The South’s honor roll of race traitors – Harper Lee, Clifford and Virginia Durr, Morris Dees, Howell Raines, Frank Johnson, Paul Hemphill, these were all from Alabama – have tended to be White liberals.

    Jews were always much more numerous in the north than in the south which likely explains why southern Jews were less likely to agitate southern whites. The southern Jews always knew that the southern whites could crush them if the Jews got out of line. For all we know, southern Jews may have secretly harbored hostile feelings against southern whites but were afraid to express those emotions openly.

  3. Hunter,

    The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was written mainly by Jewish assistant attorney general Norbert A. Schlei(1929-2003). Schlei is shown as the main author of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: obituary, Norbert Schlei, Los Angeles Times, April 21, 2003. The co-sponsor of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the House of Rep. was Jewish Congressman Emanuel Celler.

    The Civil Rights Act of 1968, aka the Fair Housing Act, wa introduced into Congress by Jewish congressman Emanuel Celler. The Fair Housing Act, outlawed racial or gender discrimination in the renting of homes, apartments, etc. After the Act was passed, Whites could no longer rent or sell a dwelling to whomever they wanted. The law forced non-whites onto the properties of Whites, whether or not the Whites desired it.

    The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was mostly written by Jewish assistant attorney general Norbert A. Schlei. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights(LCCR) was a major organizing force for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The LCCR was founded by Jew Arnold Aronson. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was written at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C., under the watch of the LCCR.

    The Immigration Act Amendments of 1965, aka the Hart-Celler Act, was co-written by Jewish Congressman Emanuel Celler. Celler introduced the bill into congress. Powerful Jewish organizations also greatly aided the passage of Hart-Celler. Both the ADL and the American Jewish Committee played major roles in supporting the Act.

    From the article “A Malicious Duo-Two Laws that Destroyed America’s Culture” by VNN Staff. See also L.A. Times article “Norbert Schlei, 73; Principal Author of Civil Rights Act, Other Landmark Laws” by Myrna Oliver.

  4. Joe Walker. That is correct. They did hold hostile feelings and unlike some of what you are seeing written here. Southern Jews were not see as equals by decent Whites of the old South. As long as they stayed in their place they were tolerated. It was this way up until the 60s. Where are the Jews defending the South’s traditional culture today? Show me the masses of Southern Jews out to leave a host that loves them like America?They have everything they could possibly ask for in America and in fact, if any of them actually believe in a promised land…it’s been Amurika, not Israel for Jews.

  5. More on the Jewish role in changing immigration law:

    Revealingly, an action by Jewish Senator Herbert H. Lehman– the son of an immigrant and a major player in pro-immigration legislation– showed how important the issue of immigration reform can be to Jews: in the early 1950’s, in what might be described as ‘Jewish networking on immigration matters,’ Lehman helped to install a Jew, Harry Rosenfield, as the executive director of the President’s Commission on Immigration and Naturalization. Then Lehman, his Jewish aid and Rosenfield endeavored to help pro-immigration Congressmen with matter pertaining to the liberalization of immigration laws. The chairman of the President’s Commission on Immigration and Naturalization was also a Jew, Philip Perlman. And telling of Jewish attitudes toward the McCarran-Walter law were Senator Lehman’s remarks that it had a “racist” and “xenophobic” aura. Apparently for Lehman, a post-WW2 Zionist, such an aura surrounding immigration law was okay in Israel, but not in American.

    From the article “A Malicious Duo: Two Laws that Destroyed America’s Culture”

  6. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act were voted down by lopsided margins in the South.

    The only reason any of those bills became law is because of the existence of the Union. For decades, the Southerners in Congress had blocked all federal civil rights legislation going back to Henry Cabot Lodge’s Force Act of 1890.

    The reason why everything suddenly changed in the 1950s and 1960s is because Northern racial attitudes changed during WW2. That’s why FDR refrained from pushing desegregation while Truman began the process in his term.

    When the North was divided on civil rights, the Southern wing of the Democratic Party could block even antilynching bills. When the North united on civil rights, Southern filibusters began to fail.

    The attitude of White Northerners was decisive to success or failure. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was sold to Northern Catholics as a tribute to JFK.

  7. When the African-Americans started rioting and burning down Northern cities, White Northerners turned against further civil rights legislation and voted against Humphrey and McGovern. Pat Moyinhan called this change of attitude “benign neglect.”

  8. That’s why FDR refrained from pushing desegregation while Truman began the process in his term.Truman,shoe salesman, desegregated the military.

  9. “That’s why FDR refrained from pushing desegregation while Truman began the process in his term.”

    Truman,shoe salesman, desegregated the military.

  10. First order of the business was to desegregate the military-remove cue within-Got the ball rolling. Then they went after the public sector with its national guards.

  11. Hunter,

    All of that legislation that I noted was written by Jews. The “Northerners” didn’t write those destructive laws, it was Jewish lawmakers and jewish organizations that wrote, introduced, and advocated those “civil rights” laws.

    You continue to dismiss the information because it doesn’t fit your current narrative of Northern vs Southern and Southern secession.

  12. “The Civil Rights Act of 1964……. were voted down by lopsided margins in the south.”

    Hunter,

    Those southern politicians were voting down laws written by Jews. It was jews and jewish organizations who wrote and introduced those laws in Congress. Without jews, those laws wouldn’t even have been created. The issue is who was writing those laws in the first place.

    Is it your philo-semitic Protestant christianity which is blinding you to the main point, or is it your focus on Southern secession? If the new immigration amnesty bill, S. 744, passes then your highly unlikely Southern secession dream is over. 120 to 220 million new Americans will be added via chain migration, most of whom will be non-European.

  13. The federal civil rights laws changed nothing in the North which already had similar laws at the state level dating back to Reconstruction.

    90 percent of Northerners voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was filibustered for over 50 days in the Senate and 95 percent of Southerners in Congress voted against it.

    As for the Immigration Act of 1965, every member of the House from the Northeast and every single senator from the Midwest voted for it. Naturally, you want to focus on a handful of Jews out of the 50 or so representatives from New York and New Jersey alone who voted for it, and you also want to ignore the Northern White liberals like Hubert Humphrey and Ted Kennedy who relentlessly pushed for both laws.

    Yes, it is true that New York Jews had pushed for civil rights and liberal immigration laws, but they had failed to get their way for decades. The only reason we got both back to back in the 1960s is because White Northerners supported the legislation.

  14. “All of that legislation that I noted was written by Jews. The “Northerners” didn’t write those destructive laws, it was Jewish lawmakers and jewish organizations that wrote, introduced, and advocated those “civil rights” laws.

    You continue to dismiss the information because it doesn’t fit your current narrative of Northern vs Southern and Southern secession.”

    Damn. I didn’t know that Jews were a majority in the north back then. That really explains a lot of what happened back then.

    I always wondered why so many yankees voted for these destructive laws. I now see that they didn’t. They were innocent and as pure as driven snow. All along they have secretly been on the side of white Southerners when it comes to race. Who knew?

    Those evil Southern Jews like June Cohn have had us beguiled for a very long time. She may look like a sweet little old lady but we are no longer fooled. Saying bad things about the innocent yankees. For shame!

    Maybe your narrative is one in denial of the facts, Craig.
    Kind of like the yankee narrative around here before the last election.
    I don’t think you people care much for the truth one way or another.
    Which is why yours and ours should go their separate ways.

    Deo Vindice

  15. They are both right.The jews were a major force in the creation of civil rights and immigration legislation,but they couldnt have succeeded without the many traitorous whites who supported the legislation and who ultimately were responsible for getting it passed.I`m a major anti-semite and even i accept this fact.Whats not clear is if whites would`ve supported the movement without the existence of jews or if there would`ve even been a movement without jews. As much as jews should be blamed for the ruination of america as a unified homogeneous nation,they still needed the help of our people to accomplish the task.

Comments are closed.