July 11, 2024 • 49 mins
In post-war America, Bess Myerson became the first Jewish woman to win the Miss America competition, but she confronted bigotry and exclusion far more daunting than any pageant. Meanwhile, changing demographics of urban neighborhoods and the emerging civil rights movement led to unprecedented tensions between American Jews and African Americans in New York.
Featuring: Kristen Fermaglich, Pamela Nadell, Britt Tevis, Jonathan Greenblatt, Jerald Podair, Charles Isaacs, and Glen Harris
Narrated by Mark Oppenheimer
Written by John Turner and Lincoln Mullen
This series is made possible with support from the Henry Luce Foundation and the David Bruce Smith Foundation.
Antisemitism, U.S.A. is a production of R2 Studios at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark Oppenheimer (00:00):
Support for Anti-Semitism, USA comes from
the Henry Luce Foundation andthe David Bruce Smith
The legendary crooner FrankSinatra was famous for many
Foundation.
things, his looks, his actingability, his voice of course,
and for being a friend of theJews. He was committed to
(00:24):
combatting anti Jewish hatred.He had objected to the exclusion
of Jews from hotels and clubs inthe United States. And during
World War Two, he helped raiseawareness about the Holocaust.
After the war, he became astaunch supporter of the State
of Israel. And in 1945, as WorldWar Two was coming to an end, a
young Frank Sinatra starred in ashort film called The House I
(00:48):
Live In.
Frank Sinatra (00:50):
If you are but a dream, I hope I never waken
Mark Oppenheimer (01:00):
In this 10 minute film, Sinatra records a
song
Frank Sinatra (01:03):
It's more than I can bear
Mark Oppenheimer (01:04):
then steps outside for a smoke. He sees a
group of kids chasing a boy andhe intervenes.
Kids (01:10):
(all shouting)
Frank Sinatra (01:16):
Somebody in for a lickin'?
Boy #1 (01:17):
You bet, we're gonna smear him
Frank Sinatra (01:17):
Yeah, but 10 against one that's not very
fair.
Boy #1 (01:21):
Ah come on
Kids (01:21):
(all shouting Come on)
Frank Sinatra (01:21):
What's it all about?
Boy #1 (01:23):
None of your business.
Frank Sinatra (01:25):
Scared to tell me?
Boy #1 (01:26):
No, I'm not scared. I'll fight you even.
Frank Sinatra (01:28):
(chuckles) Not if I can help it. I just want to
know why the gang war
Boy #2 (01:32):
We don't like him. We don't want him in our
neighborhood or going to ourschool.
Jewish Boy (01:36):
I been livin' here as long as you!
Frank Sinatra (01:39):
What's he got smallpox or something?
Boy #3 (01:40):
We don't like his religion!
Frank Sinatra (01:43):
His religion?
Boy #4 (01:44):
Look Mr. He's a dirt-
Frank Sinatra (01:45):
Now hold on. I see what you mean. You must be a
bunch of those Nazi werewolvesI've been reading about.
Mark Oppenheimer (01:54):
It's never stated. But it's obvious that
the boy being picked on isJewish. Sinatra then gives the
gang a lecture about religioustolerance. He tells them stories
about the war, about how aPresbyterian and a Jew worked
together to sink a Japanesebattleship, about how blood from
all sorts of different donorssaved the lives of American
(02:16):
soldiers.
Frank Sinatra (02:17):
Son anybody in your family ever go to the blood
bank?
Boy #1 (02:20):
Sure. My mother, my father both.
Frank Sinatra (02:22):
Uh huh. You know what? I bet ya maybe his pop's
blood helped save your dad'slife. That's bad.
Boy #5 (02:29):
What's bad about it?
Frank Sinatra (02:30):
Well, don't you see? Your father doesn't go to
the same church as his fatherdoes? That's awful. Do you think
maybe if your father knew aboutit in time, he would rather have
died than to take blood from theman of another religion? Would
you have wanted him to die?Would your mom want him to die?
Boy #1 (02:47):
No.
Frank Sinatra (02:49):
Look, fellas, religion makes no difference.
Except maybe to a Nazi orsomebody is stupid.
Mark Oppenheimer (02:57):
Because he's Sinatra. He then serenades the
boys.
Frank Sinatra (03:01):
The house I live in.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:03):
And because it's Hollywood. They listen
politely
Frank Sinatra (03:05):
A plot of earth, a street. The grocer and the
butcher. And the people that Imeet. The children in the
playground. The faces that Isee. All races and religions.
(03:26):
That's America to me. The placeI work in (fades but continues singing)
(behind narration) A worker atmy side. A little town or city.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:35):
In the house I Live In, Sinatra promoted
goodwill among Protestants,Catholics and Jews. It was one
of many signs of a new Americanera
Frank Sinatra (03:44):
Where my people lived and died.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:46):
Antisemitism had ceased being respectable.
Frank Sinatra (03:48):
The howdy and the handshake. (continues behind
narration) The air of feelingfree.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:50):
Of course, nothing about this change was as
simple as a 10 minute shortfilm.
Frank Sinatra (03:56):
And the right to speak my mind out.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:57):
For starters, bigotry against Jews wasn't just
a matter of people going to adifferent church. If
antisemitism was no longerrespectable, it was still there,
even if it was underground andout of sight.
Frank Sinatra (04:10):
That's America to me
Mark Oppenheimer (04:19):
Bigotry waned and waxed in many different
contexts. Sinatra's filmshowcases kids from different
European backgrounds. But inmany neighborhoods, the racial
composition was far morecomplex. The song The House I
Live In was written by AbelMeerepol. He was an activist on
the far left of the politicalspectrum. Meerepol was
(04:40):
particularly engaged in effortsto combat racism. He also wrote
Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday'ssong about lynching. When
Sinatra sang The House I Live Inin the film, he left out a verse
about neighbors white and black.According to some reports,
Meerepol was upset about theexclusion. It's not clear why
(05:00):
Sinatra didn't sing thatparticular verse. He shared
Meerepol's views on race andracism, and most likely left out
that and other verses just tokeep the film short. But it's a
reminder about how it's notalways easy to talk about the
intersection of antisemitism andanti black racism. In the
decades after the Second WorldWar, Jews and other American
(05:22):
minorities often made commoncause fighting against bigotry
and discrimination. There wereunprecedented successes in these
efforts, but also newchallenges.
I'm Mark Oppenheimer, and thisis Antisemitism, U.S.A., a
podcast on the history of antisemitism in the United States.
(05:45):
Episode Seven, The Houses WeLive In. On September 8 1945,
three days before the premiereof The House I Live In, a Jewish
woman became Miss America forthe first time. Bess Myerson was
born to Russian Jewish immigrantparents who raised her in the
Shalom Aleichem CooperativeHousing Complex in the northern
(06:08):
Bronx. It was a tight knitworking class, mostly Yiddish
speaking neighborhood. In waysthat would have alarmed many
Americans, the politics of theneighborhood ranged from
socialist to communist.Myerson's childhood wasn't
always happy. Her classmatesteased her about her height, she
was 5' 10" by her 12th birthday,but Myerson became a talented
(06:32):
pianist. She studied music atHunter College, the city's
public college for women. Sheworked part time, including a
modeling job that she keptsecret from her parents. About
the time of her graduation fromHunter, one of Myerson's sisters
sent her photograph to theorganizers of the Miss New York
City contest, whose winner wouldproceed to the Miss America
(06:55):
Pageant. The prize was $5,000,which Meyerson hoped to use for
graduate school, and she knewthat if she won, all sorts of
other doors would open to her.
At the Miss New York Citycontest, Leonora Slaughter, the
executive director of MissAmerica, pulled Myerson aside
for a chat. Slaughter waspleased when Myerson told her
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she intended to attend graduateschool, rather than pursue a
career in modeling or acting,and she thought Myerson had a
real chance to advance to thenational pageant. But Slaughter
had some advice. Bess Myersonshould change her name to
something that sounded lessJewish, like Betty Merrick or
Betty Meredith. It wasn't acrazy suggestion. Kirsten
(07:40):
Fermaglich, the author of ARosenberg by Any Other Name, has
looked at thousands of petitionsNew Yorkers filed in civil court
to change their names.
Kirsten Fermaglich (07:50):
For Jews, they are showing up in numbers
that are far disproportionate totheir residence in New York City
and far disproportionate totheir proportion of the
population. It's not only Jewsdoing it, but it really becomes
kind of a part of Jewish cultureat this moment. You can see if
(08:10):
you look at newspaper stories,magazines, films at this time,
especially during the war, andimmediately afterwards, it is
becoming sort of identified withJews. Name changing is really
identified with Jews and withJewish culture and with anti
semitism.
Mark Oppenheimer (08:28):
Most of the Jewish New Yorkers who change
their names were from the nextgeneration, men and women who
recognized that their outwardJewishness was an impediment.
Kirsten Fermaglich (08:38):
It is really about Jews' upward mobility that
is in part kind of motivatingtheir search for new names. But
that also sort of lets us knowthat Jews, especially because
Jews are disproportionatelydoing this, that they are also
the most concerned about theirnames and the ones who have the
(08:58):
most to fear what it would meanto put their names on an
application form. They are theones whose names are most
associated with the racialcategory of being Jewish. And
they are experiencing growingand then very high levels of
institutionalized anti semitismat this moment. So they're the
(09:19):
ones who are the most worriedthat if they put their names
down, they will not get a job atthe end of it.
Mark Oppenheimer (09:25):
About a third of these Jewish petitioners were
women who were seeking jobs inoffices and schools. Fermaglich
found that New York help wantedads and employment agencies made
it clear that Jewish applicantsweren't welcome.
Kirsten Fermaglich (09:37):
90, 95% of employers in New York City are
telling employment agenciesdon't send us Jewish girls. And
so Jews as they are seekingmiddle class jobs, they are also
being faced withinstitutionalized antisemitism
in these middle class spaces, ineducation and employment, that
(09:57):
is actively seeking to limittheir entry and their their
upward mobility. I see namechanging as kind of at the sort
of at this perfect storm ofthese two phenomena, which I
think are very closely intertwined.
Mark Oppenheimer (10:15):
American Jews had many responses to job
discrimination. Even beforeWorld War Two, they could
sometimes use moral suasion orshame to get employers to change
their ways. Depending on laws intheir state, they might sue. The
most common strategy was simplyto move on and find a less
bigoted employer, perhaps aJewish employer. But Jewish men
(10:37):
and women often tried to masktheir Jewishness, at least when
they filled out applicationforms or interviewed for jobs.
Some Jewish women would wear across necklace or lie about
where they lived or where theirparents were born. And in the
face of discrimination, some menand women did change their
names.
Kirsten Fermaglich (10:57):
A woman named Dora Sarietzky tries to
change her name in the 1930s.She describes in her petition,
kind of the multiple places thatshe has gone to try to get a job
and that she was not able to geta job and so maybe five or six
years beforehand, she hadchanged her name.
Mark Oppenheimer (11:21):
And after she changed her last name to Watson,
she immediately landed a job.Just to be clear, antisemitism
didn't disappear in the US afterWorld War Two, in fact, named
changing petitions peaked in NewYork City in 1946. So it wasn't
crazy that in 1945 Bess Myerson,was encouraged to change her
(11:42):
name. But Myerson refused, sheknew that her parents would have
been mortified if she had doneso. Years later, she said "it
was the most important decisionI ever made. It told me who I
was that I was first andforemost a Jew." Myerson won the
New York City pageant, and wasone of 40 contestants in the
(12:03):
national pageant held inAtlantic City that September.
Historian Pamela Nadell, theauthor of America's Jewish
Women, explains the culturalsignificance of the Miss America
Pageant.
Pamela Nadell (12:15):
There wasn't something else like this. I
mean, we don't even havetelevision broadcasting it at
this point. This was Americafocused on the best and the
brightest of American womanhood,and she would be crowned Miss
America and she would then tourwearing her crown. She would go
on a tour across America and behonored in this way.
Mark Oppenheimer (12:38):
In Atlantic City, there were whispers about
whether or not a Jewish womancould win. Judges reported
getting phone calls, warningthem not to let Myerson win.
There were anonymous deaththreats, sponsors warned that
they would pull their funds if aJewish woman won. But Myerson
and the judges were undeterred.And on September 8, Myerson
became Miss America, draped inan ermine robe, wearing a
(13:02):
glittering crown and holding ascepter and a bouquet of roses.
For American Jews, this was astunning development.
Pamela Nadell (13:10):
When she was crowned, the Jews who were in
the hall were yelling, mazeltov. You could hear it ringing
out in the hall. But on hertour, what should have been her
tour, under the pageantsponsors, three out of the five
pageant sponsors refused to senda Jewish Miss America out on
tour and to use her in theirads.
Mark Oppenheimer (13:31):
One of those sponsors was the Ford Motor
Company. They'd promised a newcar to the winner, but Myerson
never got her car. Growing up ina predominantly Jewish part of
New York, Myerson hadn'trealized the extent of anti
semitism in the country. But shesoon discovered that even though
she had won the pageant, somedoors were still closed to her.
(13:52):
In 1974, nearly three decadesafter her pageant success,
Myerson talked with famedinterviewer Studs Terkel and
Terkel asked her about her lifeafter winning and when she
became interested in politics.
Bess Myerson (14:06):
I don't think the exterior and the invitation to
do that was as influencing as myown inner self of how I lived
and where I lived and my feelingof discrimination that I had
experienced and kind ofborderline poverty and
Studs Terkel (14:26):
discrimination as a woman you mean?
Bess Myerson (14:31):
No, interestingly, discrimination as the first
Jewish Miss America.
Studs Terkel (14:35):
Oh, I wasn't aware that. Oh, that's what was the
discrimination? What was thenature of the discrimination?
Bess Myerson (14:42):
Well, let me just say a couple of things before I
said that what I'm trying to sayis that is that having lived
through certain experiences, Icould identify very strongly
with what it was to be abused orfeel abused or feel
disadvantaged or taken advantageof. I think that was a lot, a
(15:03):
part of my desire to take thisjob. Umm, the discrimination was
obvious. You know, we wereliving at a time when there was
a great deal of bigotry aroundthe country. And I suddenly
discovered as Miss America, if Iwere going to use that portion
of it as a commercial ventureand make the money that the
(15:24):
other girls were making, therewere certain places I wasn't
invited to, certain things thatI couldn't do because the people
had never invited anyone intotheir home before who was
Jewish. If anything, I would getto a city and there'd be a
reception for me at a countryclub. And the hostess would say
to the person who wasaccompanying me, I'm terribly
(15:44):
sorry, but we just didn'trealize that Miss Myerson was
Jewish, you know we, why didn'tyou tell us, or how can we have
a reception for someone in a ina club that excludes members of
her faith. I remember packing mybag and walking out of a
community going home and tellingthe pageant that I wouldn't have
anything to do with themanymore, and that's what I did.
Mark Oppenheimer (16:04):
The year after Myerson won, the Anti Defamation
League asked her if she would goon a speaking tour. She started
visiting schools and communityhalls, speaking on the topic,
you can't be beautiful and hate.Myerson went on to a long and
varied career in television andlater in politics. Bess
Myerson's experience says a lotabout the still uncertain place
(16:27):
of Jews in America immediatelyafter World War Two. On the one
hand, a Jew could win the MissAmerica Pageant. But on the
other hand, many hotels andclubs were still off limits.
As of 1945, it was still legalin most of the country, for
(16:50):
employers or universities todiscriminate against Jews,
African Americans, or otherminorities. During the war, the
Fair Employment PracticesCommission had implemented a ban
on job discrimination in defenseindustries and government
agencies. The primary intendedbeneficiaries were African
Americans, but Jews benefited aswell. The ban wasn't enforced
(17:13):
perfectly, but it served as acheck against blatantly
discriminatory job ads. But thenthe commission vanished after
the war. And while some statespassed laws against employment
discrimination, others didn't.Here's Britt Tevis, author of
Jews Not Admitted (17:29):
Antisemitism, Civil Rights and Public
Accommodation Laws.
Britt Tevis (17:34):
What I think actually happens after World War
Two is there is a degree ofshame, people become much less
public about their intention todiscriminate. So the Henry
Hilton's of the world who comeout and very open about anti
Jewish discrimination thatbecomes disreputable. That's no
longer acceptable, because theawareness of the attempted
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genocide that happens in Europe,and because of the war effort,
and because of the effort of thefederal government to get the
entire country behind the wareffort. That being said, the
actual discrimination continues.
Mark Oppenheimer (18:10):
And frankly, there is a lot of duplicity.
Companies claimed they don'tknow which of their employees
are Jewish. Managers say it'shard to tell just by name or
appearance. Some companiesstopped placing Gentile only ads
but quietly code applicants asJewish. It may be that as better
educated Jews entered the whitecollar workforce, anti semitic
(18:31):
employers more activelydiscriminated against them. In
fact, some prominentuniversities started imposing
anti Jewish measures after thewar. Johns Hopkins introduced
limits on Jewish enrollment in1945. Stanford started
discriminating againstprospective Jewish students in
the 1950s.
(18:54):
In response to this ongoing andstill pervasive discrimination,
Jewish activists investigatedand pressured companies and
universities. They wrote expoesand attempted to shame and
persuade. In states that didhave fair hiring statutes,
activists brought lawsuits. AntiJewish discrimination didn't
(19:14):
vanish because Americans feltbad for Jews after the
Holocaust, or because they werecelebrating a new era of
religious toleration. It slowlydiminished because Jews and
others fought againstdiscrimination state by state,
school by school, company bycompany, hotel by hotel.
Jonathan Greenblatt is head ofthe Anti Defamation League, and
(19:35):
he explains how his organizationcombated antisemitism in the
years after the war
Jonathan Greenblatt (19:41):
that kind of advocacy really became part
of what ADL championed, filingamicus briefs, and also exposing
bad practices. So ADL leaderswould do things like call a
restaurant, call a hotel, andsay Hi, this is Mr. Goldberg and
I'd like to make a reservation.The hotel or the restaurant
would say No, we don't have anyavailability, then they would
(20:02):
call five minutes later and sayHi I'm Mr. Smith or Mr. O'Brien,
Oh yes, we have a table or aroom for you. ADL would do those
kinds of things then tell thebusiness they're going to expose
them discriminating, and thencause that embarrassment and get
the business to change itspolicies.
Mark Oppenheimer (20:17):
In 1964, those decades of advocacy by the ADL
and other organizations paidoff. Congress passed a landmark
civil rights act, oftenremembered for the impact it had
on the lives of AfricanAmericans. It also created the
legal basis for dismantling antiJewish discrimination. The law
(20:38):
banned employment discriminationon the basis of race or
religion, the two most commonways that Americans classify
Jews. The law also banneddiscrimination by educational
institutions. And it made itillegal for hotels, resorts, and
other places open to the publicto exclude or discriminate
against Jews. That doesn't meanthat antisemitic discrimination
(21:00):
entirely ceased. Just as theselaws didn't eliminate anti black
racism. But certain forms ofanti Jewish discrimination that
had been pervasive earlier inthe century were now against the
law. We'll have more after thebreak.
(21:30):
Four years after the passage ofthe 1964 Civil Rights Act, Fred
Nauman lost his teaching job. Hewas 38, his parents were German
Jews who had been fortunateenough to get the family to the
US right before the Second WorldWar. Nauman taught at junior
high 271 in Ocean Hill,Brownsville, part of Brooklyn,
(21:51):
New York. He was a union man,Chapter chairman for the United
Federation of Teachers or UFT,which represented 55,000 public
school teachers in New YorkCity. On May 9 1968, Nauman was
just a few minutes into teachinghis first class of the morning,
when he was asked to report tothe principal's office. He was
(22:15):
handed an envelope. The letterinside told him he'd lost his
position, effective immediately,and that he should report the
next morning to the centraloffice for reassignment. Nauman
didn't report for reassignment.Instead, he called his union
headquarters in Manhattan. Andhis reassignment set off a
firestorm that lasted almost ayear, engulfed the city, and
(22:38):
made national news. What was atthe heart of this conflict? Was
it about racism? Was it aconflict about antisemitism? Was
it all about class? It'scomplicated.
The Ocean Hill and Brownsvilleneighborhoods had undergone a
dramatic transformation betweenthe 1940s and the 1960s. Here's
(23:02):
historian Jerald Podair, authorof The Strike that Changed New
York (23:05):
Blacks, Whites and the Ocean Hill, Brownsville Crisis.
Jerry Podair (23:10):
If you visited Ocean Hill, Brownsville in the
1940s, you would find basicallya working class or lower middle
class, Jewish neighborhood, analmost completely white
neighborhood, a neighborhood ofpeople who worked with their
hands and whose children workedwith their hands. Now, their
children aspired to work withtheir minds and brains in the
(23:34):
1940s. But their fathers andmothers were working class
manual workers. It was, as Isaid, a predominantly Jewish
neighborhood. Some ItalianAmericans also lived there. Very
few people of color in the1940s.
Mark Oppenheimer (23:53):
A lot of Jewish immigrants came to this
part of Brooklyn. So whileantisemitism was pervasive in
the country in the 30s, and 40s,in Ocean Hill in Brownsville,
Jews could find community andthey could find jobs, and they
could live out the Americandream.
Jerry Podair (24:08):
And I think what was distinctive about Ocean
Hill, Brownsville in the 1940s,is the fact that you could come
to the United States, let's sayif you were a Jewish immigrant
or an Italian immigrant, withoutany educational skills, maybe
not even being able to read andwrite English, and still get a
(24:29):
job in a factory in the garmentcenter, maybe open a small
business, a small store, and youwere able to do that in the
1940s and 1960s. Because the NewYork economy was an industrial
based economy and there werejobs available. They may not
(24:50):
have been the best jobs in theworld, but they afforded a
living, and it allowed you tolive as an immigrant an American
life or At least the beginningsof it.
Mark Oppenheimer (25:01):
For many decades, the big divide in
Brooklyn had been between whiteCatholics and Jews. That's
what's shown in Frank Sinatra'sThe House I Live In. But in the
decades after the war, newfaultlines emerged as Ocean Hill
Brownsville underwent a rapidtransformation. Charles Isaacs,
the author of Inside Ocean Hill- Brownsville, explains what
Charles Isaacs (25:22):
But during the 40s and 50s, it changed very
happened.
rapidly. Brownsville was Jewish,Ocean Hill was Italian. The
Gambino mafia family was basedthere. By the mid 60s, Ocean
Hill was all black. Brownsvillewas black and Puerto Rican.
(25:47):
There were a few Italianfamilies left but very few.
Mark Oppenheimer (25:52):
It's a familiar American story, black
migration and white flight. Buthere's the twist. By the 1960s,
the students in Ocean Hill andBrownsville public schools were
black or Puerto Rican. But theteachers, including Fred Nauman,
were still almost entirely whiteand Jewish. A few months after
(26:12):
Naumann lost his position,Charles Isaacs got a job at
junior high 271. Here's Isaacstalking about the schools in the
neighborhood.
Charles Isaacs (26:20):
For me, the the most important aspect of that,
aside from them being undersupplied and physically falling
apart. They were the dumpingground for teachers from the
white schools who wereunderperforming. But it was it
(26:41):
was almost impossible to fire ateacher under the union rules.
So what they did was transferthem from the white schools
where they weren't any good, andjust dump them into the ghetto
schools. So these schools hadthe worst teachers. And this is
(27:02):
anecdotal, not statistical, butthey were known for their
racism. One of my students toldme that at the previous year,
the union chapter chairman inher school, routinely referred
to them as monkeys.
Mark Oppenheimer (27:21):
The Ocean Hill Brownsville schools were
segregated, not by law, but onthe basis of who lived in the
neighborhood. Civil Rightsleaders in Brooklyn demanded
school integration. But the onlykind of integration they got was
black and Puerto Rican. So bythe mid 60s, black leaders in
Ocean Hill and Brownsville beganpushing for community control of
their schools. They wantedcontrol over what was taught and
(27:44):
who taught it. It was part andparcel of the later more radical
civil rights movement in whichactivists demanded not just
integration, but Black Power.Here's historian Glen Harris,
the author of The Ocean HillBrownsville Conflict,
Glen Harris (28:00):
Community control really comes out of that radical
change in the civil rightsmovement and the growth of the
Black Power movement, who'sgoing to have the power and the
authority to address thoseconcerns about the school
systems in Ocean HillBrownsville? Who's going to
control that? And this is beforeit becomes a black and Jewish
(28:21):
conversation. There's a hugedisconnect between what the
parents see and what theirchildren are dealing with, and
who's in charge of those schoolsystems.
Mark Oppenheimer (28:32):
The New York City Board of Education made
some concessions towardcommunity control. In 1967, it
created local school boards forseveral neighborhoods, including
Ocean Hill Brownsville. Soon theneighborhood had its own elected
school board and a unitadministrator named Rhody McCoy.
McCoy had been teaching in theNew York City schools for nearly
(28:53):
30 years. He was a soft spokenman, but not one to back down
once he had committed himself toa cause. The local board
composed of neighborhood parentsclaimed for itself authority
over hiring, curriculum, andfinances. Along with the city's
school superintendent, McCoyhired a number of principals who
had not taken the customaryexams for their new positions.
(29:17):
The United Federation ofTeachers had not agreed to this
arrangement nor had theirpresident Albert Shanker. Here's
Jerald Podair again,
Jerry Podair (29:30):
Albert Shanker wasn't born in Ocean Hill
Brownsville, but he could havebeen in terms of his culture in
terms of his values. He was bornto a lower middle class or
working class Jewish family inQueens in the 1920s, and grew up
basically steeped in laborpolitics, and specifically
(29:53):
socialism. He grew up as a youngsocialist, he was a member of
the Young Socialist League,later on the Student League for
Industrial Democracy, which isoperated by the Socialist Party.
So Shanker's politics areliberal to left wing. Looking
back from our perspective, that,it would be more than liberal. I
(30:15):
mean, he did consider himself asocialist. Not all that many
liberals in New York and as hewas growing up in the 30s, 40s,
and 50s, are coming of age areeven going to openly identify
themselves as socialists, butAlbert Shanker did. He follows
the route of many other youngJews in that era. He becomes a
(30:39):
New York City public schoolteacher, and I think it's quite
natural for him in the 1950s.For him to get involved in labor
politics, and trying to organizethe New York City teachers into
a union.
Mark Oppenheimer (30:53):
Shanker supported the civil rights
movement. He was at the 1963March on Washington. Two years
later, he had marched in Selma,and he supported Martin Luther
King Jr.'s Poor People's March.But by 1968 Shanker's first
commitment was to collectivebargaining and due process for
New York City's teachers. WhenShanker had begun teaching, the
(31:14):
teachers in the public schoolsdidn't have a powerful union,
Jerry Podair (31:17):
In the 1950s in New York City, if you were a
teacher, you were pretty muchunder the thumb of your
principal. The principal couldmove you around, could make your
life miserable, could make yourlife great. You didn't have a
lot of autonomy or power as ateacher. And Shanker tried to
set out to change that.
Mark Oppenheimer (31:38):
The United Federation of Teachers, or UFT,
came about through a mergerbetween a socialist union and a
Marxist union.
Jerry Podair (31:45):
Shanker quickly became the leader of that union,
and basically established it asa powerful player in the
American labor movement in the1960s. Conducting a successful
strike for collective bargainingrights, becoming the sole
collective bargaining agent forthe New York City teachers in
(32:08):
the early 1960s, negotiating acontract and by 1968, the United
Federation of Teachers underShanker's leadership was
becoming and had become apowerful force in the New York
City educational system.
Mark Oppenheimer (32:27):
Now Ocean Hill Brownsville administrator Rhody
McCoy wasn't one to back down,but he met his match in Albert
Shanker. When the UnitedFederation of Teachers heard
about the irregularly hiredprincipals, it joined a lawsuit
to challenge not only thosehiring decisions, but also the
appointment of McCoy. ForShanker, these due process
(32:49):
issues were at the heart ofjustice. The lawsuits dragged on
for more than a year. Otherpoints of tension arose. By this
point, McCoy and his allies knewwhich teachers supported
community control and which didnot. Some black teachers
introduced lesson plans thatfeatured African culture and
(33:10):
African American revolutionariesfrom Nat Turner to Malcolm X. As
the union, the Board ofEducation, and the community
board continued to feud overmatters of hiring, McCoy
prepared to force the issue. InMay 1968, the local board sent a
letter of termination to FredNauman and 18 other teachers.
(33:32):
All of them were white, andalmost all of them were Jewish.
Just to be clear, these teachersweren't fired. They were
directed to the Central SchoolBoard Office for reassignment
but at the same time, theCentral School Board hadn't
given the local board theauthority to do that. These
reassignments led to a year ofrecriminations, lawsuits, and
(33:54):
strikes. The community activistswere determined that Nauman and
the other teachers would neverteach a junior high 271 again.
In response, Shanker fought backagainst what he saw as the
arbitrary punishment of teachersthat community members didn't
like. By the fall of 1968Shanker determined to bring
(34:15):
maximum pressure on the schoolboard and city government to
resolve the conflict. The UFTvoted to strike again and again,
trying to force the mayor andthe Board of Education to
reinstate Nauman and the otherteachers. Across the city tens
of thousands of teachers stayedhome. But not in Ocean Hill
Brownsville, there most of theteachers reported for work and
(34:40):
the schools stayed open. CharlieIsaacs had just started teaching
math at junior high 271. Duringthat time, our district was
under siege. 10% of the New YorkCity Police Department was
stationed in the one square mileof Ocean Hill, Brownsville. And
(35:00):
the kids had to walk throughthese this police gauntlet to
get to school.
Jerry Podair (35:07):
That fall, Karriema Jordan entered school
71 as an eighth grader.
Karriema Jordan (35:12):
We had to go through barricades to get to the
school and you'd look up and onthe rooftops, across the street
from the school, the cops werewith the helmet gear, the riot
helmets, and the nightsticks,and helicopters. And the
playground was converted into aprecinct. And walking up to the
(35:33):
school you have just massconfusion. You have the
community people out there, youhave the UFT, you have the black
teachers on the inside.
Mark Oppenheimer (35:43):
Meanwhile, the rest of the public schools in
New York City were closed. Amillion children were missing
out on weeks of education.Everyone was seething. And in
their anger, people blamedeither the Union or the
community control activists, andwho they blamed largely
dependent on whether they werewhite or black. In the early
(36:05):
60s, Al Shanker and Rhody McCoywould have considered themselves
allies, but not by 1968. The 68strikes showed just how much
things had changed. The strikesbecame about race and class. On
one side were white Catholicpolicemen and Jewish teachers.
(36:25):
And on the other side were blackfamilies, students, and
activists. And when the twosides faced each other along
picket lines or in protestsoutside of schools or outside
City Hall, their interactionswere not always polite. As you
might imagine, there were vileanti black and anti semitic
slurs. In the late fall of 1968,copies of an unsigned letter
(36:50):
began to appear. They landed inschool mailboxes, they were
slipped under apartment doors,they were spread all over town.
The letter stated that quote,"Middle East murderers of
Colored People" could not teachblack children the truth. It
called Jews, "bloodsuckingexploiters and murderers" as
well as "money changers." Evenliberal Jews who might seem
(37:11):
friendly, were in reality"tricky" and "deceitful." To
this day, the authorship of thatletter remains unknown. Charles
Isaacs remembers the arrival ofthis letter,
Charles Isaasc (37:25):
I think I found a leaflet under my apartment
door, that was in two parts. Itwas a combination of two alleged
leaflets that had beendistributed. On the top of the
page was a reproduction of aleaflet that basically just
called for more black teachersin the schools. It was really
(37:50):
anti semitic. But it turned outto be mastheaded by an
organization that never existed.And then the bottom half was
virulently antisemitic. But ithad no signature. You couldn't
tell where it came from. And themessage was that this had been
(38:11):
placed in all the teachers'mailboxes in the district. The
Union reprinted half a millioncopies of this and spread it all
over the city. So with the dueprocess claim blown out, now,
the issue had become black antisemitism, and that was what they
(38:33):
ran on.
Mark Oppenheimer (38:35):
Regardless of who wrote the letter and who
disseminated it, the antisemitic letter reshaped the
dynamics of the conflict, makingit a struggle not just about due
process, but about hatred andbigotry. And there were other
incidents. On a radio broadcast,an African American teacher
named Les Campbell read aloud apoem that he dedicated to Albert
(38:56):
Shanker. The poem went in part,"hey Jew boy with that yarmulke
on your head, you pale faced Jewboy I wish you were dead."
Looking back on the conflict 30years later, Rhody McCoy
pinpointed that moment as theinflection point in the story.
Rhody McCoy (39:14):
The incident of Les Campbell reading a poem. You
just made Les Campbell, the bestpaid friend of Al Shanker, you
handed him what he needed.
Because on any number of speaking engagements
that I was asked to appearbefore, Jewish people would ask
(39:35):
me, Why are we trying to putthem in the ovens? Because the
overwhelming percentage ofteachers of that 19 were
obviously Jewish, because that'swhat you had in New York City.
So they were saying, Why are youdestroying and taking these
postures against Jews?
Mark Oppenheimer (39:52):
In an interview, Shanker acknowledges
that anti semitism only reallyemerged as an issue as the
conflict escalated.
Al Shanker (39:59):
Anti semitism was not it certainly had nothing to
do with starting the strike andit had nothing to do with
keeping the strike going and ithad nothing to do with the
settlement. It had an awful lotto do with how people came to
see the strike and public terms.During the course of the strike,
several of the leaders of theAfro American Teachers'
Association distributed, and asa matter of fact, some of the
(40:22):
official literature of the AfroAmerican Teachers' Association
contained anti semitic pieces.And this then, the issue of anti
semitism became a very importantissue.
Mark Oppenheimer (40:35):
Black community leaders found the talk
of antisemitism a distraction.McCoy said, "we have more
important things to be concernedabout than making anti semitism
a priority." After all, as McCoyknew, there was no shortage of
anti black racism amongBrooklyn's Jewish population.
For McCoy, the real problemremained an educational system
(40:57):
that put the interests of whitepeople, teachers, and
administrators, over those ofblack children. Math teacher
Charles Isaacs believes thataccusations of antisemitism were
largely manufactured byopponents of community control.
Charles Isaasc (41:11):
I was amazed because I had been in Ocean Hill
Brownsville for six months orso. I had been in the anti
poverty program before that. Inever saw any I mean, this is
really zero evidence ofantisemitism. I made no secret
that I was Jewish. In our schoolwas leadership of the African
(41:34):
American Teachers' Association,who was being accused, who were
friends of mine. And yeah thiswas just all made up.
Mark Oppenheimer (41:45):
And historian Glen Harris agrees, in the sense
that dueling narratives aboutracism and anti semitism
obscured the central issue ofcommunity control.
Glen Harris (41:54):
My position is that all the other conversations and
the necessary conversationsbecame second hand to dealing
with this issue about antisemitism and racism in the
school system. And I faultShaker (sic) for doing that
because before this, I believethat the outcome of Ocean Hill
(42:15):
Brownsville, and that what thatstarted was a a necessary and
important conversation aboutcommunity control and what
school curriculums will be.That's a conversation that would
have broadened into all of theboroughs of New York City.
Taking that away, and moving itinto a conversation about
(42:36):
antisemitism about racism andprejudice really took the
foundation away from theimportance of what was taking
place at Ocean Hill Brownsville.Albert Shanker took that away
from Ocean Hill Brownsville byinjecting antisemitism, if you
inject antisemitism, racism iscoming into play.
Mark Oppenheimer (42:57):
And historian Jerald Podair agrees that the
local board didn't reassign FredNauman and the other Jewish
teachers because they were Jews.At the same time, he
acknowledges the role of antiJewish sentiment in the black
community during the Ocean HillBrownsville dispute and beyond,
Jerry Podair (43:13):
there is antisemitism, and it's certainly
wrong to try to minimize it, itwould be the same thing to try
to minimize instances of racism.Sometimes you can't disentangle
the antisemitism or the racismfrom the other issue here, which
is the idea of communitycontrol, which almost transcends
(43:35):
race, but I still think it'sthere. And marginalized groups
obviously have much less in theway of agency for their actions.
They are much more hemmed in, interms of the choices that they
are allowed to make. So theyhave much less agency, but they
do have some agency. And I thinkthat covers these instances of
(44:00):
antisemitism. Just as you know,a marginalized, let's say, lower
class or working class, whitecommunity has enough agency not
to engage in racism or to beheld responsible when they do
engage in it.
Mark Oppenheimer (44:15):
How does any antisemitism that might have
been present among the blackresidents of Ocean Hill
Brownsville relate to the largerstory of anti Jewish hate?
Jerry Podair (44:24):
I view the antisemitism that comes out of
Ocean Hill Brownsville as aproduct of social conditions. In
other words, if you're anAfrican American living in Ocean
Hill Brownsville in 1968, whoare the white people that you
see and interact with, with theexception of the police, who are
(44:47):
Irish or Irish American, theonly whites you see pretty much
are Jews - Jewish landlords,Jewish storekeepers, and of
course Jewish teachers. Thoseare the whites that you see. If
you are going to to lash out atthese whites, if you're going to
attack these whites in a crisissituation like Ocean Hill,
(45:10):
Brownsville, it is notsurprising that you will shift
from white to Jewish in terms ofyour attacks. So I view the anti
semitism as not particularlyblack anti semitism, but the
result of social conditions, andalso what I call situational
anti semitism, as opposed towhat I call systemic anti
(45:33):
semitism. Situational antisemitism comes out of specific
situations, specificcircumstances, like the Ocean
Hill Brownsville school strike.
Mark Oppenheimer (45:45):
In November 1968, the strike finally ended.
The Union got most of what itwanted. The reviled teachers got
to go back to Ocean HillBrownsville schools, but they
left for other positions as soonas they possibly could. The
strikes and the unsatisfyingresolution left a bad taste in
the mouths of nearly everyone,including Jewish teachers and
(46:06):
black parents. In the end, thebiggest losers in Ocean Hill
Brownsville were theneighborhood's children and
families. They didn't getmeaningful community control.
They didn't get integration. Andthey didn't get the education
they deserved. Ocean HillBrownsville illustrated that
African Americans and AmericanJews were not on parallel
(46:29):
trajectories after the passageof the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
While it was the legal end ofdiscrimination in voting rights,
employment, education, housing,and public accommodations, the
law did not produce rapid socioeconomic gains for black
Americans. The color line wasstill there. And for black
Americans, Jews were on theother side of it.
(46:52):
Here's Glen Harris.
Glen Harris (46:54):
Are Jews going to be Jewish? Or are they going to
be white? Well black Americanslook at them, originally, they
make no distinction betweenthose two. They're like, well,
Jews are white. And becausethey're becoming a part of the
American establishment, that iswhat the conflict becomes,
because those obstacles arestill there for black Americans.
And they see Jews making theseinroads. They don't see them as
(47:17):
Jews originally, they just seethem as other white Americans
making these inroads.
Mark Oppenheimer (47:21):
There is solid data that suggests that African
Americans today hold antisemiticviews at somewhat higher rates
than white Americans. The sameholds for Latino Americans. And
rates of antisemitic beliefsamong those and other
populations have grown sharplyin recent years. Social
(47:42):
scientists haven't reached aconsensus on why this is the
case. And that's just one of thevexatious things about anti
semitism in the US, past andpresent. Anti Jewish prejudice
and hatred isn't confined to onesmall pocket of the American
population, nor is it confinedto one party, religion, or race.
(48:05):
Ocean Hill Brownsville is areminder of how hatred and
injustice are deeply entangledthroughout American history, in
ways that we still don't understand.
(48:25):
Thank you for listening toAntisemitism, U.S.A. it's a
production of R2 Studios, partof the Roy Rosenzweig Center for
History and New Media at GeorgeMason University. Visit
R2studios.org for a completetranscript of today's episode
and for suggestions for furtherreading. I'm your host Mark
Oppenheimer. Antisemitism,U.S.A. is written by John Turner
and Lincoln Mullen. Britt Tevisis our lead scholar, Jim Ambuske
(48:47):
is our producer, JeanettePatrick is our executive
producer. We'd like to thank ZevEleff for being our lead advisor
and we'd like to thank ouradvisory board members, Laura
Shaw Frank, Riv-Ellen Prell, andJonathan Sarna. Our graduate
assistants are Rachel Birch,Alexandra Miller, and Amber
Pelham. Many thanks to KirstenFermaglich, Pamela Nadell, Britt
Tevis, Jonathan Greenblatt,Jerald Podair, Charles Isaacs
(49:09):
and Glen Harris, for sharingtheir expertise with us in this
episode, archival audio materialcourtesy of the Library of
Congress, Washington UniversityLibraries, and the Studs Terkel
Archive. We're able to bring youthis show through the generosity
of the Henry Luce Foundation,the David Bruce Smith
Foundation, and many individualdonors like you. Thank you for
listening. And we hope you'lljoin us for the next episode.
Support for Anti-Semitism, USA comes from
the Henry Luce Foundation andthe David Bruce Smith
The legendary crooner FrankSinatra was famous for many
Foundation.
things, his looks, his actingability, his voice of course,
and for being a friend of theJews. He was committed to
(00:24):
combatting anti Jewish hatred.He had objected to the exclusion
of Jews from hotels and clubs inthe United States. And during
World War Two, he helped raiseawareness about the Holocaust.
After the war, he became astaunch supporter of the State
of Israel. And in 1945, as WorldWar Two was coming to an end, a
young Frank Sinatra starred in ashort film called The House I
(00:48):
Live In.
Frank Sinatra (00:50):
If you are but a dream, I hope I never waken
Mark Oppenheimer (01:00):
In this 10 minute film, Sinatra records a
song
Frank Sinatra (01:03):
It's more than I can bear
Mark Oppenheimer (01:04):
then steps outside for a smoke. He sees a
group of kids chasing a boy andhe intervenes.
Kids (01:10):
(all shouting)
Frank Sinatra (01:16):
Somebody in for a lickin'?
Boy #1 (01:17):
You bet, we're gonna smear him
Frank Sinatra (01:17):
Yeah, but 10 against one that's not very
fair.
Boy #1 (01:21):
Ah come on
Kids (01:21):
(all shouting Come on)
Frank Sinatra (01:21):
What's it all about?
Boy #1 (01:23):
None of your business.
Frank Sinatra (01:25):
Scared to tell me?
Boy #1 (01:26):
No, I'm not scared. I'll fight you even.
Frank Sinatra (01:28):
(chuckles) Not if I can help it. I just want to
know why the gang war
Boy #2 (01:32):
We don't like him. We don't want him in our
neighborhood or going to ourschool.
Jewish Boy (01:36):
I been livin' here as long as you!
Frank Sinatra (01:39):
What's he got smallpox or something?
Boy #3 (01:40):
We don't like his religion!
Frank Sinatra (01:43):
His religion?
Boy #4 (01:44):
Look Mr. He's a dirt-
Frank Sinatra (01:45):
Now hold on. I see what you mean. You must be a
bunch of those Nazi werewolvesI've been reading about.
Mark Oppenheimer (01:54):
It's never stated. But it's obvious that
the boy being picked on isJewish. Sinatra then gives the
gang a lecture about religioustolerance. He tells them stories
about the war, about how aPresbyterian and a Jew worked
together to sink a Japanesebattleship, about how blood from
all sorts of different donorssaved the lives of American
(02:16):
soldiers.
Frank Sinatra (02:17):
Son anybody in your family ever go to the blood
bank?
Boy #1 (02:20):
Sure. My mother, my father both.
Frank Sinatra (02:22):
Uh huh. You know what? I bet ya maybe his pop's
blood helped save your dad'slife. That's bad.
Boy #5 (02:29):
What's bad about it?
Frank Sinatra (02:30):
Well, don't you see? Your father doesn't go to
the same church as his fatherdoes? That's awful. Do you think
maybe if your father knew aboutit in time, he would rather have
died than to take blood from theman of another religion? Would
you have wanted him to die?Would your mom want him to die?
Boy #1 (02:47):
No.
Frank Sinatra (02:49):
Look, fellas, religion makes no difference.
Except maybe to a Nazi orsomebody is stupid.
Mark Oppenheimer (02:57):
Because he's Sinatra. He then serenades the
boys.
Frank Sinatra (03:01):
The house I live in.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:03):
And because it's Hollywood. They listen
politely
Frank Sinatra (03:05):
A plot of earth, a street. The grocer and the
butcher. And the people that Imeet. The children in the
playground. The faces that Isee. All races and religions.
(03:26):
That's America to me. The placeI work in (fades but continues singing)
(behind narration) A worker atmy side. A little town or city.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:35):
In the house I Live In, Sinatra promoted
goodwill among Protestants,Catholics and Jews. It was one
of many signs of a new Americanera
Frank Sinatra (03:44):
Where my people lived and died.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:46):
Antisemitism had ceased being respectable.
Frank Sinatra (03:48):
The howdy and the handshake. (continues behind
narration) The air of feelingfree.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:50):
Of course, nothing about this change was as
simple as a 10 minute shortfilm.
Frank Sinatra (03:56):
And the right to speak my mind out.
Mark Oppenheimer (03:57):
For starters, bigotry against Jews wasn't just
a matter of people going to adifferent church. If
antisemitism was no longerrespectable, it was still there,
even if it was underground andout of sight.
Frank Sinatra (04:10):
That's America to me
Mark Oppenheimer (04:19):
Bigotry waned and waxed in many different
contexts. Sinatra's filmshowcases kids from different
European backgrounds. But inmany neighborhoods, the racial
composition was far morecomplex. The song The House I
Live In was written by AbelMeerepol. He was an activist on
the far left of the politicalspectrum. Meerepol was
(04:40):
particularly engaged in effortsto combat racism. He also wrote
Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday'ssong about lynching. When
Sinatra sang The House I Live Inin the film, he left out a verse
about neighbors white and black.According to some reports,
Meerepol was upset about theexclusion. It's not clear why
(05:00):
Sinatra didn't sing thatparticular verse. He shared
Meerepol's views on race andracism, and most likely left out
that and other verses just tokeep the film short. But it's a
reminder about how it's notalways easy to talk about the
intersection of antisemitism andanti black racism. In the
decades after the Second WorldWar, Jews and other American
(05:22):
minorities often made commoncause fighting against bigotry
and discrimination. There wereunprecedented successes in these
efforts, but also newchallenges.
I'm Mark Oppenheimer, and thisis Antisemitism, U.S.A., a
podcast on the history of antisemitism in the United States.
(05:45):
Episode Seven, The Houses WeLive In. On September 8 1945,
three days before the premiereof The House I Live In, a Jewish
woman became Miss America forthe first time. Bess Myerson was
born to Russian Jewish immigrantparents who raised her in the
Shalom Aleichem CooperativeHousing Complex in the northern
(06:08):
Bronx. It was a tight knitworking class, mostly Yiddish
speaking neighborhood. In waysthat would have alarmed many
Americans, the politics of theneighborhood ranged from
socialist to communist.Myerson's childhood wasn't
always happy. Her classmatesteased her about her height, she
was 5' 10" by her 12th birthday,but Myerson became a talented
(06:32):
pianist. She studied music atHunter College, the city's
public college for women. Sheworked part time, including a
modeling job that she keptsecret from her parents. About
the time of her graduation fromHunter, one of Myerson's sisters
sent her photograph to theorganizers of the Miss New York
City contest, whose winner wouldproceed to the Miss America
(06:55):
Pageant. The prize was $5,000,which Meyerson hoped to use for
graduate school, and she knewthat if she won, all sorts of
other doors would open to her.
At the Miss New York Citycontest, Leonora Slaughter, the
executive director of MissAmerica, pulled Myerson aside
for a chat. Slaughter waspleased when Myerson told her
(07:17):
she intended to attend graduateschool, rather than pursue a
career in modeling or acting,and she thought Myerson had a
real chance to advance to thenational pageant. But Slaughter
had some advice. Bess Myersonshould change her name to
something that sounded lessJewish, like Betty Merrick or
Betty Meredith. It wasn't acrazy suggestion. Kirsten
(07:40):
Fermaglich, the author of ARosenberg by Any Other Name, has
looked at thousands of petitionsNew Yorkers filed in civil court
to change their names.
Kirsten Fermaglich (07:50):
For Jews, they are showing up in numbers
that are far disproportionate totheir residence in New York City
and far disproportionate totheir proportion of the
population. It's not only Jewsdoing it, but it really becomes
kind of a part of Jewish cultureat this moment. You can see if
(08:10):
you look at newspaper stories,magazines, films at this time,
especially during the war, andimmediately afterwards, it is
becoming sort of identified withJews. Name changing is really
identified with Jews and withJewish culture and with anti
semitism.
Mark Oppenheimer (08:28):
Most of the Jewish New Yorkers who change
their names were from the nextgeneration, men and women who
recognized that their outwardJewishness was an impediment.
Kirsten Fermaglich (08:38):
It is really about Jews' upward mobility that
is in part kind of motivatingtheir search for new names. But
that also sort of lets us knowthat Jews, especially because
Jews are disproportionatelydoing this, that they are also
the most concerned about theirnames and the ones who have the
(08:58):
most to fear what it would meanto put their names on an
application form. They are theones whose names are most
associated with the racialcategory of being Jewish. And
they are experiencing growingand then very high levels of
institutionalized anti semitismat this moment. So they're the
(09:19):
ones who are the most worriedthat if they put their names
down, they will not get a job atthe end of it.
Mark Oppenheimer (09:25):
About a third of these Jewish petitioners were
women who were seeking jobs inoffices and schools. Fermaglich
found that New York help wantedads and employment agencies made
it clear that Jewish applicantsweren't welcome.
Kirsten Fermaglich (09:37):
90, 95% of employers in New York City are
telling employment agenciesdon't send us Jewish girls. And
so Jews as they are seekingmiddle class jobs, they are also
being faced withinstitutionalized antisemitism
in these middle class spaces, ineducation and employment, that
(09:57):
is actively seeking to limittheir entry and their their
upward mobility. I see namechanging as kind of at the sort
of at this perfect storm ofthese two phenomena, which I
think are very closely intertwined.
Mark Oppenheimer (10:15):
American Jews had many responses to job
discrimination. Even beforeWorld War Two, they could
sometimes use moral suasion orshame to get employers to change
their ways. Depending on laws intheir state, they might sue. The
most common strategy was simplyto move on and find a less
bigoted employer, perhaps aJewish employer. But Jewish men
(10:37):
and women often tried to masktheir Jewishness, at least when
they filled out applicationforms or interviewed for jobs.
Some Jewish women would wear across necklace or lie about
where they lived or where theirparents were born. And in the
face of discrimination, some menand women did change their
names.
Kirsten Fermaglich (10:57):
A woman named Dora Sarietzky tries to
change her name in the 1930s.She describes in her petition,
kind of the multiple places thatshe has gone to try to get a job
and that she was not able to geta job and so maybe five or six
years beforehand, she hadchanged her name.
Mark Oppenheimer (11:21):
And after she changed her last name to Watson,
she immediately landed a job.Just to be clear, antisemitism
didn't disappear in the US afterWorld War Two, in fact, named
changing petitions peaked in NewYork City in 1946. So it wasn't
crazy that in 1945 Bess Myerson,was encouraged to change her
(11:42):
name. But Myerson refused, sheknew that her parents would have
been mortified if she had doneso. Years later, she said "it
was the most important decisionI ever made. It told me who I
was that I was first andforemost a Jew." Myerson won the
New York City pageant, and wasone of 40 contestants in the
(12:03):
national pageant held inAtlantic City that September.
Historian Pamela Nadell, theauthor of America's Jewish
Women, explains the culturalsignificance of the Miss America
Pageant.
Pamela Nadell (12:15):
There wasn't something else like this. I
mean, we don't even havetelevision broadcasting it at
this point. This was Americafocused on the best and the
brightest of American womanhood,and she would be crowned Miss
America and she would then tourwearing her crown. She would go
on a tour across America and behonored in this way.
Mark Oppenheimer (12:38):
In Atlantic City, there were whispers about
whether or not a Jewish womancould win. Judges reported
getting phone calls, warningthem not to let Myerson win.
There were anonymous deaththreats, sponsors warned that
they would pull their funds if aJewish woman won. But Myerson
and the judges were undeterred.And on September 8, Myerson
became Miss America, draped inan ermine robe, wearing a
(13:02):
glittering crown and holding ascepter and a bouquet of roses.
For American Jews, this was astunning development.
Pamela Nadell (13:10):
When she was crowned, the Jews who were in
the hall were yelling, mazeltov. You could hear it ringing
out in the hall. But on hertour, what should have been her
tour, under the pageantsponsors, three out of the five
pageant sponsors refused to senda Jewish Miss America out on
tour and to use her in theirads.
Mark Oppenheimer (13:31):
One of those sponsors was the Ford Motor
Company. They'd promised a newcar to the winner, but Myerson
never got her car. Growing up ina predominantly Jewish part of
New York, Myerson hadn'trealized the extent of anti
semitism in the country. But shesoon discovered that even though
she had won the pageant, somedoors were still closed to her.
(13:52):
In 1974, nearly three decadesafter her pageant success,
Myerson talked with famedinterviewer Studs Terkel and
Terkel asked her about her lifeafter winning and when she
became interested in politics.
Bess Myerson (14:06):
I don't think the exterior and the invitation to
do that was as influencing as myown inner self of how I lived
and where I lived and my feelingof discrimination that I had
experienced and kind ofborderline poverty and
Studs Terkel (14:26):
discrimination as a woman you mean?
Bess Myerson (14:31):
No, interestingly, discrimination as the first
Jewish Miss America.
Studs Terkel (14:35):
Oh, I wasn't aware that. Oh, that's what was the
discrimination? What was thenature of the discrimination?
Bess Myerson (14:42):
Well, let me just say a couple of things before I
said that what I'm trying to sayis that is that having lived
through certain experiences, Icould identify very strongly
with what it was to be abused orfeel abused or feel
disadvantaged or taken advantageof. I think that was a lot, a
(15:03):
part of my desire to take thisjob. Umm, the discrimination was
obvious. You know, we wereliving at a time when there was
a great deal of bigotry aroundthe country. And I suddenly
discovered as Miss America, if Iwere going to use that portion
of it as a commercial ventureand make the money that the
(15:24):
other girls were making, therewere certain places I wasn't
invited to, certain things thatI couldn't do because the people
had never invited anyone intotheir home before who was
Jewish. If anything, I would getto a city and there'd be a
reception for me at a countryclub. And the hostess would say
to the person who wasaccompanying me, I'm terribly
(15:44):
sorry, but we just didn'trealize that Miss Myerson was
Jewish, you know we, why didn'tyou tell us, or how can we have
a reception for someone in a ina club that excludes members of
her faith. I remember packing mybag and walking out of a
community going home and tellingthe pageant that I wouldn't have
anything to do with themanymore, and that's what I did.
Mark Oppenheimer (16:04):
The year after Myerson won, the Anti Defamation
League asked her if she would goon a speaking tour. She started
visiting schools and communityhalls, speaking on the topic,
you can't be beautiful and hate.Myerson went on to a long and
varied career in television andlater in politics. Bess
Myerson's experience says a lotabout the still uncertain place
(16:27):
of Jews in America immediatelyafter World War Two. On the one
hand, a Jew could win the MissAmerica Pageant. But on the
other hand, many hotels andclubs were still off limits.
As of 1945, it was still legalin most of the country, for
(16:50):
employers or universities todiscriminate against Jews,
African Americans, or otherminorities. During the war, the
Fair Employment PracticesCommission had implemented a ban
on job discrimination in defenseindustries and government
agencies. The primary intendedbeneficiaries were African
Americans, but Jews benefited aswell. The ban wasn't enforced
(17:13):
perfectly, but it served as acheck against blatantly
discriminatory job ads. But thenthe commission vanished after
the war. And while some statespassed laws against employment
discrimination, others didn't.Here's Britt Tevis, author of
Jews Not Admitted (17:29):
Antisemitism, Civil Rights and Public
Accommodation Laws.
Britt Tevis (17:34):
What I think actually happens after World War
Two is there is a degree ofshame, people become much less
public about their intention todiscriminate. So the Henry
Hilton's of the world who comeout and very open about anti
Jewish discrimination thatbecomes disreputable. That's no
longer acceptable, because theawareness of the attempted
(17:57):
genocide that happens in Europe,and because of the war effort,
and because of the effort of thefederal government to get the
entire country behind the wareffort. That being said, the
actual discrimination continues.
Mark Oppenheimer (18:10):
And frankly, there is a lot of duplicity.
Companies claimed they don'tknow which of their employees
are Jewish. Managers say it'shard to tell just by name or
appearance. Some companiesstopped placing Gentile only ads
but quietly code applicants asJewish. It may be that as better
educated Jews entered the whitecollar workforce, anti semitic
(18:31):
employers more activelydiscriminated against them. In
fact, some prominentuniversities started imposing
anti Jewish measures after thewar. Johns Hopkins introduced
limits on Jewish enrollment in1945. Stanford started
discriminating againstprospective Jewish students in
the 1950s.
(18:54):
In response to this ongoing andstill pervasive discrimination,
Jewish activists investigatedand pressured companies and
universities. They wrote expoesand attempted to shame and
persuade. In states that didhave fair hiring statutes,
activists brought lawsuits. AntiJewish discrimination didn't
(19:14):
vanish because Americans feltbad for Jews after the
Holocaust, or because they werecelebrating a new era of
religious toleration. It slowlydiminished because Jews and
others fought againstdiscrimination state by state,
school by school, company bycompany, hotel by hotel.
Jonathan Greenblatt is head ofthe Anti Defamation League, and
(19:35):
he explains how his organizationcombated antisemitism in the
years after the war
Jonathan Greenblatt (19:41):
that kind of advocacy really became part
of what ADL championed, filingamicus briefs, and also exposing
bad practices. So ADL leaderswould do things like call a
restaurant, call a hotel, andsay Hi, this is Mr. Goldberg and
I'd like to make a reservation.The hotel or the restaurant
would say No, we don't have anyavailability, then they would
(20:02):
call five minutes later and sayHi I'm Mr. Smith or Mr. O'Brien,
Oh yes, we have a table or aroom for you. ADL would do those
kinds of things then tell thebusiness they're going to expose
them discriminating, and thencause that embarrassment and get
the business to change itspolicies.
Mark Oppenheimer (20:17):
In 1964, those decades of advocacy by the ADL
and other organizations paidoff. Congress passed a landmark
civil rights act, oftenremembered for the impact it had
on the lives of AfricanAmericans. It also created the
legal basis for dismantling antiJewish discrimination. The law
(20:38):
banned employment discriminationon the basis of race or
religion, the two most commonways that Americans classify
Jews. The law also banneddiscrimination by educational
institutions. And it made itillegal for hotels, resorts, and
other places open to the publicto exclude or discriminate
against Jews. That doesn't meanthat antisemitic discrimination
(21:00):
entirely ceased. Just as theselaws didn't eliminate anti black
racism. But certain forms ofanti Jewish discrimination that
had been pervasive earlier inthe century were now against the
law. We'll have more after thebreak.
(21:30):
Four years after the passage ofthe 1964 Civil Rights Act, Fred
Nauman lost his teaching job. Hewas 38, his parents were German
Jews who had been fortunateenough to get the family to the
US right before the Second WorldWar. Nauman taught at junior
high 271 in Ocean Hill,Brownsville, part of Brooklyn,
(21:51):
New York. He was a union man,Chapter chairman for the United
Federation of Teachers or UFT,which represented 55,000 public
school teachers in New YorkCity. On May 9 1968, Nauman was
just a few minutes into teachinghis first class of the morning,
when he was asked to report tothe principal's office. He was
(22:15):
handed an envelope. The letterinside told him he'd lost his
position, effective immediately,and that he should report the
next morning to the centraloffice for reassignment. Nauman
didn't report for reassignment.Instead, he called his union
headquarters in Manhattan. Andhis reassignment set off a
firestorm that lasted almost ayear, engulfed the city, and
(22:38):
made national news. What was atthe heart of this conflict? Was
it about racism? Was it aconflict about antisemitism? Was
it all about class? It'scomplicated.
The Ocean Hill and Brownsvilleneighborhoods had undergone a
dramatic transformation betweenthe 1940s and the 1960s. Here's
(23:02):
historian Jerald Podair, authorof The Strike that Changed New
York (23:05):
Blacks, Whites and the Ocean Hill, Brownsville Crisis.
Jerry Podair (23:10):
If you visited Ocean Hill, Brownsville in the
1940s, you would find basicallya working class or lower middle
class, Jewish neighborhood, analmost completely white
neighborhood, a neighborhood ofpeople who worked with their
hands and whose children workedwith their hands. Now, their
children aspired to work withtheir minds and brains in the
(23:34):
1940s. But their fathers andmothers were working class
manual workers. It was, as Isaid, a predominantly Jewish
neighborhood. Some ItalianAmericans also lived there. Very
few people of color in the1940s.
Mark Oppenheimer (23:53):
A lot of Jewish immigrants came to this
part of Brooklyn. So whileantisemitism was pervasive in
the country in the 30s, and 40s,in Ocean Hill in Brownsville,
Jews could find community andthey could find jobs, and they
could live out the Americandream.
Jerry Podair (24:08):
And I think what was distinctive about Ocean
Hill, Brownsville in the 1940s,is the fact that you could come
to the United States, let's sayif you were a Jewish immigrant
or an Italian immigrant, withoutany educational skills, maybe
not even being able to read andwrite English, and still get a
(24:29):
job in a factory in the garmentcenter, maybe open a small
business, a small store, and youwere able to do that in the
1940s and 1960s. Because the NewYork economy was an industrial
based economy and there werejobs available. They may not
(24:50):
have been the best jobs in theworld, but they afforded a
living, and it allowed you tolive as an immigrant an American
life or At least the beginningsof it.
Mark Oppenheimer (25:01):
For many decades, the big divide in
Brooklyn had been between whiteCatholics and Jews. That's
what's shown in Frank Sinatra'sThe House I Live In. But in the
decades after the war, newfaultlines emerged as Ocean Hill
Brownsville underwent a rapidtransformation. Charles Isaacs,
the author of Inside Ocean Hill- Brownsville, explains what
Charles Isaacs (25:22):
But during the 40s and 50s, it changed very
happened.
rapidly. Brownsville was Jewish,Ocean Hill was Italian. The
Gambino mafia family was basedthere. By the mid 60s, Ocean
Hill was all black. Brownsvillewas black and Puerto Rican.
(25:47):
There were a few Italianfamilies left but very few.
Mark Oppenheimer (25:52):
It's a familiar American story, black
migration and white flight. Buthere's the twist. By the 1960s,
the students in Ocean Hill andBrownsville public schools were
black or Puerto Rican. But theteachers, including Fred Nauman,
were still almost entirely whiteand Jewish. A few months after
(26:12):
Naumann lost his position,Charles Isaacs got a job at
junior high 271. Here's Isaacstalking about the schools in the
neighborhood.
Charles Isaacs (26:20):
For me, the the most important aspect of that,
aside from them being undersupplied and physically falling
apart. They were the dumpingground for teachers from the
white schools who wereunderperforming. But it was it
(26:41):
was almost impossible to fire ateacher under the union rules.
So what they did was transferthem from the white schools
where they weren't any good, andjust dump them into the ghetto
schools. So these schools hadthe worst teachers. And this is
(27:02):
anecdotal, not statistical, butthey were known for their
racism. One of my students toldme that at the previous year,
the union chapter chairman inher school, routinely referred
to them as monkeys.
Mark Oppenheimer (27:21):
The Ocean Hill Brownsville schools were
segregated, not by law, but onthe basis of who lived in the
neighborhood. Civil Rightsleaders in Brooklyn demanded
school integration. But the onlykind of integration they got was
black and Puerto Rican. So bythe mid 60s, black leaders in
Ocean Hill and Brownsville beganpushing for community control of
their schools. They wantedcontrol over what was taught and
(27:44):
who taught it. It was part andparcel of the later more radical
civil rights movement in whichactivists demanded not just
integration, but Black Power.Here's historian Glen Harris,
the author of The Ocean HillBrownsville Conflict,
Glen Harris (28:00):
Community control really comes out of that radical
change in the civil rightsmovement and the growth of the
Black Power movement, who'sgoing to have the power and the
authority to address thoseconcerns about the school
systems in Ocean HillBrownsville? Who's going to
control that? And this is beforeit becomes a black and Jewish
(28:21):
conversation. There's a hugedisconnect between what the
parents see and what theirchildren are dealing with, and
who's in charge of those schoolsystems.
Mark Oppenheimer (28:32):
The New York City Board of Education made
some concessions towardcommunity control. In 1967, it
created local school boards forseveral neighborhoods, including
Ocean Hill Brownsville. Soon theneighborhood had its own elected
school board and a unitadministrator named Rhody McCoy.
McCoy had been teaching in theNew York City schools for nearly
(28:53):
30 years. He was a soft spokenman, but not one to back down
once he had committed himself toa cause. The local board
composed of neighborhood parentsclaimed for itself authority
over hiring, curriculum, andfinances. Along with the city's
school superintendent, McCoyhired a number of principals who
had not taken the customaryexams for their new positions.
(29:17):
The United Federation ofTeachers had not agreed to this
arrangement nor had theirpresident Albert Shanker. Here's
Jerald Podair again,
Jerry Podair (29:30):
Albert Shanker wasn't born in Ocean Hill
Brownsville, but he could havebeen in terms of his culture in
terms of his values. He was bornto a lower middle class or
working class Jewish family inQueens in the 1920s, and grew up
basically steeped in laborpolitics, and specifically
(29:53):
socialism. He grew up as a youngsocialist, he was a member of
the Young Socialist League,later on the Student League for
Industrial Democracy, which isoperated by the Socialist Party.
So Shanker's politics areliberal to left wing. Looking
back from our perspective, that,it would be more than liberal. I
(30:15):
mean, he did consider himself asocialist. Not all that many
liberals in New York and as hewas growing up in the 30s, 40s,
and 50s, are coming of age areeven going to openly identify
themselves as socialists, butAlbert Shanker did. He follows
the route of many other youngJews in that era. He becomes a
(30:39):
New York City public schoolteacher, and I think it's quite
natural for him in the 1950s.For him to get involved in labor
politics, and trying to organizethe New York City teachers into
a union.
Mark Oppenheimer (30:53):
Shanker supported the civil rights
movement. He was at the 1963March on Washington. Two years
later, he had marched in Selma,and he supported Martin Luther
King Jr.'s Poor People's March.But by 1968 Shanker's first
commitment was to collectivebargaining and due process for
New York City's teachers. WhenShanker had begun teaching, the
(31:14):
teachers in the public schoolsdidn't have a powerful union,
Jerry Podair (31:17):
In the 1950s in New York City, if you were a
teacher, you were pretty muchunder the thumb of your
principal. The principal couldmove you around, could make your
life miserable, could make yourlife great. You didn't have a
lot of autonomy or power as ateacher. And Shanker tried to
set out to change that.
Mark Oppenheimer (31:38):
The United Federation of Teachers, or UFT,
came about through a mergerbetween a socialist union and a
Marxist union.
Jerry Podair (31:45):
Shanker quickly became the leader of that union,
and basically established it asa powerful player in the
American labor movement in the1960s. Conducting a successful
strike for collective bargainingrights, becoming the sole
collective bargaining agent forthe New York City teachers in
(32:08):
the early 1960s, negotiating acontract and by 1968, the United
Federation of Teachers underShanker's leadership was
becoming and had become apowerful force in the New York
City educational system.
Mark Oppenheimer (32:27):
Now Ocean Hill Brownsville administrator Rhody
McCoy wasn't one to back down,but he met his match in Albert
Shanker. When the UnitedFederation of Teachers heard
about the irregularly hiredprincipals, it joined a lawsuit
to challenge not only thosehiring decisions, but also the
appointment of McCoy. ForShanker, these due process
(32:49):
issues were at the heart ofjustice. The lawsuits dragged on
for more than a year. Otherpoints of tension arose. By this
point, McCoy and his allies knewwhich teachers supported
community control and which didnot. Some black teachers
introduced lesson plans thatfeatured African culture and
(33:10):
African American revolutionariesfrom Nat Turner to Malcolm X. As
the union, the Board ofEducation, and the community
board continued to feud overmatters of hiring, McCoy
prepared to force the issue. InMay 1968, the local board sent a
letter of termination to FredNauman and 18 other teachers.
(33:32):
All of them were white, andalmost all of them were Jewish.
Just to be clear, these teachersweren't fired. They were
directed to the Central SchoolBoard Office for reassignment
but at the same time, theCentral School Board hadn't
given the local board theauthority to do that. These
reassignments led to a year ofrecriminations, lawsuits, and
(33:54):
strikes. The community activistswere determined that Nauman and
the other teachers would neverteach a junior high 271 again.
In response, Shanker fought backagainst what he saw as the
arbitrary punishment of teachersthat community members didn't
like. By the fall of 1968Shanker determined to bring
(34:15):
maximum pressure on the schoolboard and city government to
resolve the conflict. The UFTvoted to strike again and again,
trying to force the mayor andthe Board of Education to
reinstate Nauman and the otherteachers. Across the city tens
of thousands of teachers stayedhome. But not in Ocean Hill
Brownsville, there most of theteachers reported for work and
(34:40):
the schools stayed open. CharlieIsaacs had just started teaching
math at junior high 271. Duringthat time, our district was
under siege. 10% of the New YorkCity Police Department was
stationed in the one square mileof Ocean Hill, Brownsville. And
(35:00):
the kids had to walk throughthese this police gauntlet to
get to school.
Jerry Podair (35:07):
That fall, Karriema Jordan entered school
71 as an eighth grader.
Karriema Jordan (35:12):
We had to go through barricades to get to the
school and you'd look up and onthe rooftops, across the street
from the school, the cops werewith the helmet gear, the riot
helmets, and the nightsticks,and helicopters. And the
playground was converted into aprecinct. And walking up to the
(35:33):
school you have just massconfusion. You have the
community people out there, youhave the UFT, you have the black
teachers on the inside.
Mark Oppenheimer (35:43):
Meanwhile, the rest of the public schools in
New York City were closed. Amillion children were missing
out on weeks of education.Everyone was seething. And in
their anger, people blamedeither the Union or the
community control activists, andwho they blamed largely
dependent on whether they werewhite or black. In the early
(36:05):
60s, Al Shanker and Rhody McCoywould have considered themselves
allies, but not by 1968. The 68strikes showed just how much
things had changed. The strikesbecame about race and class. On
one side were white Catholicpolicemen and Jewish teachers.
(36:25):
And on the other side were blackfamilies, students, and
activists. And when the twosides faced each other along
picket lines or in protestsoutside of schools or outside
City Hall, their interactionswere not always polite. As you
might imagine, there were vileanti black and anti semitic
slurs. In the late fall of 1968,copies of an unsigned letter
(36:50):
began to appear. They landed inschool mailboxes, they were
slipped under apartment doors,they were spread all over town.
The letter stated that quote,"Middle East murderers of
Colored People" could not teachblack children the truth. It
called Jews, "bloodsuckingexploiters and murderers" as
well as "money changers." Evenliberal Jews who might seem
(37:11):
friendly, were in reality"tricky" and "deceitful." To
this day, the authorship of thatletter remains unknown. Charles
Isaacs remembers the arrival ofthis letter,
Charles Isaasc (37:25):
I think I found a leaflet under my apartment
door, that was in two parts. Itwas a combination of two alleged
leaflets that had beendistributed. On the top of the
page was a reproduction of aleaflet that basically just
called for more black teachersin the schools. It was really
(37:50):
anti semitic. But it turned outto be mastheaded by an
organization that never existed.And then the bottom half was
virulently antisemitic. But ithad no signature. You couldn't
tell where it came from. And themessage was that this had been
(38:11):
placed in all the teachers'mailboxes in the district. The
Union reprinted half a millioncopies of this and spread it all
over the city. So with the dueprocess claim blown out, now,
the issue had become black antisemitism, and that was what they
(38:33):
ran on.
Mark Oppenheimer (38:35):
Regardless of who wrote the letter and who
disseminated it, the antisemitic letter reshaped the
dynamics of the conflict, makingit a struggle not just about due
process, but about hatred andbigotry. And there were other
incidents. On a radio broadcast,an African American teacher
named Les Campbell read aloud apoem that he dedicated to Albert
(38:56):
Shanker. The poem went in part,"hey Jew boy with that yarmulke
on your head, you pale faced Jewboy I wish you were dead."
Looking back on the conflict 30years later, Rhody McCoy
pinpointed that moment as theinflection point in the story.
Rhody McCoy (39:14):
The incident of Les Campbell reading a poem. You
just made Les Campbell, the bestpaid friend of Al Shanker, you
handed him what he needed.
Because on any number of speaking engagements
that I was asked to appearbefore, Jewish people would ask
(39:35):
me, Why are we trying to putthem in the ovens? Because the
overwhelming percentage ofteachers of that 19 were
obviously Jewish, because that'swhat you had in New York City.
So they were saying, Why are youdestroying and taking these
postures against Jews?
Mark Oppenheimer (39:52):
In an interview, Shanker acknowledges
that anti semitism only reallyemerged as an issue as the
conflict escalated.
Al Shanker (39:59):
Anti semitism was not it certainly had nothing to
do with starting the strike andit had nothing to do with
keeping the strike going and ithad nothing to do with the
settlement. It had an awful lotto do with how people came to
see the strike and public terms.During the course of the strike,
several of the leaders of theAfro American Teachers'
Association distributed, and asa matter of fact, some of the
(40:22):
official literature of the AfroAmerican Teachers' Association
contained anti semitic pieces.And this then, the issue of anti
semitism became a very importantissue.
Mark Oppenheimer (40:35):
Black community leaders found the talk
of antisemitism a distraction.McCoy said, "we have more
important things to be concernedabout than making anti semitism
a priority." After all, as McCoyknew, there was no shortage of
anti black racism amongBrooklyn's Jewish population.
For McCoy, the real problemremained an educational system
(40:57):
that put the interests of whitepeople, teachers, and
administrators, over those ofblack children. Math teacher
Charles Isaacs believes thataccusations of antisemitism were
largely manufactured byopponents of community control.
Charles Isaasc (41:11):
I was amazed because I had been in Ocean Hill
Brownsville for six months orso. I had been in the anti
poverty program before that. Inever saw any I mean, this is
really zero evidence ofantisemitism. I made no secret
that I was Jewish. In our schoolwas leadership of the African
(41:34):
American Teachers' Association,who was being accused, who were
friends of mine. And yeah thiswas just all made up.
Mark Oppenheimer (41:45):
And historian Glen Harris agrees, in the sense
that dueling narratives aboutracism and anti semitism
obscured the central issue ofcommunity control.
Glen Harris (41:54):
My position is that all the other conversations and
the necessary conversationsbecame second hand to dealing
with this issue about antisemitism and racism in the
school system. And I faultShaker (sic) for doing that
because before this, I believethat the outcome of Ocean Hill
(42:15):
Brownsville, and that what thatstarted was a a necessary and
important conversation aboutcommunity control and what
school curriculums will be.That's a conversation that would
have broadened into all of theboroughs of New York City.
Taking that away, and moving itinto a conversation about
(42:36):
antisemitism about racism andprejudice really took the
foundation away from theimportance of what was taking
place at Ocean Hill Brownsville.Albert Shanker took that away
from Ocean Hill Brownsville byinjecting antisemitism, if you
inject antisemitism, racism iscoming into play.
Mark Oppenheimer (42:57):
And historian Jerald Podair agrees that the
local board didn't reassign FredNauman and the other Jewish
teachers because they were Jews.At the same time, he
acknowledges the role of antiJewish sentiment in the black
community during the Ocean HillBrownsville dispute and beyond,
Jerry Podair (43:13):
there is antisemitism, and it's certainly
wrong to try to minimize it, itwould be the same thing to try
to minimize instances of racism.Sometimes you can't disentangle
the antisemitism or the racismfrom the other issue here, which
is the idea of communitycontrol, which almost transcends
(43:35):
race, but I still think it'sthere. And marginalized groups
obviously have much less in theway of agency for their actions.
They are much more hemmed in, interms of the choices that they
are allowed to make. So theyhave much less agency, but they
do have some agency. And I thinkthat covers these instances of
(44:00):
antisemitism. Just as you know,a marginalized, let's say, lower
class or working class, whitecommunity has enough agency not
to engage in racism or to beheld responsible when they do
engage in it.
Mark Oppenheimer (44:15):
How does any antisemitism that might have
been present among the blackresidents of Ocean Hill
Brownsville relate to the largerstory of anti Jewish hate?
Jerry Podair (44:24):
I view the antisemitism that comes out of
Ocean Hill Brownsville as aproduct of social conditions. In
other words, if you're anAfrican American living in Ocean
Hill Brownsville in 1968, whoare the white people that you
see and interact with, with theexception of the police, who are
(44:47):
Irish or Irish American, theonly whites you see pretty much
are Jews - Jewish landlords,Jewish storekeepers, and of
course Jewish teachers. Thoseare the whites that you see. If
you are going to to lash out atthese whites, if you're going to
attack these whites in a crisissituation like Ocean Hill,
(45:10):
Brownsville, it is notsurprising that you will shift
from white to Jewish in terms ofyour attacks. So I view the anti
semitism as not particularlyblack anti semitism, but the
result of social conditions, andalso what I call situational
anti semitism, as opposed towhat I call systemic anti
(45:33):
semitism. Situational antisemitism comes out of specific
situations, specificcircumstances, like the Ocean
Hill Brownsville school strike.
Mark Oppenheimer (45:45):
In November 1968, the strike finally ended.
The Union got most of what itwanted. The reviled teachers got
to go back to Ocean HillBrownsville schools, but they
left for other positions as soonas they possibly could. The
strikes and the unsatisfyingresolution left a bad taste in
the mouths of nearly everyone,including Jewish teachers and
(46:06):
black parents. In the end, thebiggest losers in Ocean Hill
Brownsville were theneighborhood's children and
families. They didn't getmeaningful community control.
They didn't get integration. Andthey didn't get the education
they deserved. Ocean HillBrownsville illustrated that
African Americans and AmericanJews were not on parallel
(46:29):
trajectories after the passageof the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
While it was the legal end ofdiscrimination in voting rights,
employment, education, housing,and public accommodations, the
law did not produce rapid socioeconomic gains for black
Americans. The color line wasstill there. And for black
Americans, Jews were on theother side of it.
(46:52):
Here's Glen Harris.
Glen Harris (46:54):
Are Jews going to be Jewish? Or are they going to
be white? Well black Americanslook at them, originally, they
make no distinction betweenthose two. They're like, well,
Jews are white. And becausethey're becoming a part of the
American establishment, that iswhat the conflict becomes,
because those obstacles arestill there for black Americans.
And they see Jews making theseinroads. They don't see them as
(47:17):
Jews originally, they just seethem as other white Americans
making these inroads.
Mark Oppenheimer (47:21):
There is solid data that suggests that African
Americans today hold antisemiticviews at somewhat higher rates
than white Americans. The sameholds for Latino Americans. And
rates of antisemitic beliefsamong those and other
populations have grown sharplyin recent years. Social
(47:42):
scientists haven't reached aconsensus on why this is the
case. And that's just one of thevexatious things about anti
semitism in the US, past andpresent. Anti Jewish prejudice
and hatred isn't confined to onesmall pocket of the American
population, nor is it confinedto one party, religion, or race.
(48:05):
Ocean Hill Brownsville is areminder of how hatred and
injustice are deeply entangledthroughout American history, in
ways that we still don't understand.
(48:25):
Thank you for listening toAntisemitism, U.S.A. it's a
production of R2 Studios, partof the Roy Rosenzweig Center for
History and New Media at GeorgeMason University. Visit
R2studios.org for a completetranscript of today's episode
and for suggestions for furtherreading. I'm your host Mark
Oppenheimer. Antisemitism,U.S.A. is written by John Turner
and Lincoln Mullen. Britt Tevisis our lead scholar, Jim Ambuske
(48:47):
is our producer, JeanettePatrick is our executive
producer. We'd like to thank ZevEleff for being our lead advisor
and we'd like to thank ouradvisory board members, Laura
Shaw Frank, Riv-Ellen Prell, andJonathan Sarna. Our graduate
assistants are Rachel Birch,Alexandra Miller, and Amber
Pelham. Many thanks to KirstenFermaglich, Pamela Nadell, Britt
Tevis, Jonathan Greenblatt,Jerald Podair, Charles Isaacs
(49:09):
and Glen Harris, for sharingtheir expertise with us in this
episode, archival audio materialcourtesy of the Library of
Congress, Washington UniversityLibraries, and the Studs Terkel
Archive. We're able to bring youthis show through the generosity
of the Henry Luce Foundation,the David Bruce Smith
Foundation, and many individualdonors like you. Thank you for
listening. And we hope you'lljoin us for the next episode.
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