An article in an African-American newspaper from 1918 shows how people of color used to look at Jews as both partners and role models ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Friday, September 06, 2024

An article in an African-American newspaper from 1918 shows how people of color used to look at Jews as both partners and role models

James Weldon Johnson was a civil rights pioneer in the early part of the 20th century. He was a leader of the NAACP. Johnson was also a gifted writer and poet. He was also US consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua and later became the first African American professor to be hired at New York University.[

He was also an editor at the The New York Age, "The National Negro Weekly."

Here was his column from February 02, 1918.

It describes how Black people in America had historically found inspiration from the stories of the Jews in the Bible, and how they should continue to learn how to achieve equality by emulating Jews of the day.

It is a remarkable editorial from a remarkable man. It has a couple of anachronisms and some subconscious antisemitism, but no more than any other American newspaper of the era.

There is far more wisdom from James Weldon Johnson in 1918 than we are hearing from too many Black leaders today.

It is a common thing for the American Negro to compare his condition with that of the Jews. The drawing of this comparison is not a modern thing; it dates back to the early days of our history in this country. As soon as the transplanted Negro became familiar with the Bible his imagination at once seized upon the similarity between his own servitude and the bondage which the Israelites underwent in the land of Egypt. This theme furnished the chief inspiration of the early preachers and the makers of the old slave songs. Even today, the sermons of the primitive Negro preachers are little more than a recital of the trials and tribulations of the Hebrew Children.

It was this theme which drew from the heart of some unknown Negro the noblest strain of music that America can call its own, "Go Down Moses." The influence for good of the story of Israel on the mind of the Negro slave cannot be estimated. He learned how the Lord's chosen people suffered under old Pharaoh, but were at last delivered; and he firmly kept the faith that some day the Lord would also deliver him. And his faith was justified, for his deliverance did come. And it came in a manner even more miraculous than did the deliverance of the Children of Israel; not through fleeing the land of his bondage, but through a life and death struggle between his oppressors and their own blood brothers. But who can say what would have been the story of the Negro in America under two centuries of slavery had he not been strengthened and sustained by that faith? And as the Negro in slavery drew inspiration and comfort from the story of the ancient Jews, so does the Negro of today draw encouragement and hope from the experiences of the modern Jews.

He feels that the Jewish race is set before him as an example of what can be accomplished by a people with great odds against them, and that what the Jew has done the Negro may do. This comparison is strikingly logical and at many points the parallel runs astonishingly close. Both peoples are physically marked; the Jew, however, in a much lesser degree than the Negro. Both peoples have a history of bondage and persecution. They both have to contend against unreasoning race prejudice.

Neither of them - unlike the Japanese - have a strong nation of their own blood behind them to force and enforce any demands whatsoever. And it has not been possible to crush either of them by oppression. Nevertheless, there are points of wide difference; and I believe the Negro can profit as much by a study of these differences as he can by a study of the points of similarity. In fact, it is these very points of difference rather than the points of similarity that offer the Negro the most valuable lessons.

It must be remembered that much of the prejudice against the Jew is of his own making. He generally holds himself apart and aloof from other peoples; and whatever humiliation he may suffer, deep down in his heart he feels a superiority to the gentile. And why should he not? The Jew is the one aristocrat among races. All the others are parvenus. His career began with the beginning of recorded history and continues down to the present in one long line of glorious accomplishment.

The great peoples that started with and even after him have perished or degenerated; Egypt and Babylon and Greece and Rome have passed away, but the Jew still remains a powerful influence in the world to-day. The great characters in no age of the world's whole history can be named without naming a Jew. And so it is that prejudice against the Jew does not spring from the feeling that he is an inferior. Indeed, it often springs from the direct opposite feeling.

Sometimes the fear of his strength and his intelligence outweighs all the other objections to him. Thus, he is minus the handicap under which the Negro constantly struggles. This characteristic of the Jew may be summed up in the common phrase, race pride. And the secret of his race pride is this: he has produced such an array of men who have helped shape the thought of the world that his equality stands demonstrated, it cannot be questioned. In like manner, the Negro to overcome the stigma of inferiority must produce exceptional men; he can do it in no other way.

No amount of mere mediocre progress or even phenomenal progress on the part of the mass can do it; there must stand out many peaks towering above the average level. It is often said that the American Negro made his gravest mistake in thinking of the accomplishment of this too soon; that the thing for him to do is to give up such dreams and apply himself to the common things of life; and that by faithful plodding he will some day reach the top and be hailed as an equal. England produced a Shakespeare when the ability to sign one's name was a mark of learning; and to-day her highest title, that which makes every Englishman proud of his race, rests not upon the fact that she produces more manufacturing cotton than any other country in the world, but upon the fact that she produced a Shakespeare.

Every time a Negro does something exceptional he weakens opinion as to the inferiority of the race. If in the next fifty years we should produce one universally acknowledged poet, one universally acknowledged musician, one universally acknowledged dramatist, and one universally acknowledged novelist, more would be done to break down the idea of Negro inferiority than could be done by all the faithful plodding of the whole mass. And I say this realizing fully how vitally important the faithful plodding is. I need not add that this idea of inferiority must be completely broken down before the Negro can have a fair chance with the other elements in the American group.

Now, of course, we cannot turn out geniuses by merely running our boys and girls through schools and colleges; but we can give encouragement and support to our talented youth., Whenever we find one that shows the divine spark, let us not put the spark out, but do all we can to help fan it into a flame. Cannot some of our men or women of wealth or some of our organizations with money see what a paying investment it would be to offer substantial scholarships to boys and girls in our schools that show exceptional talent in literature or art?