Civil rights movement

=== American Jews ===
{{See also|African American–Jewish relations|New York City teachers' strike of 1968|Brownsville, Brooklyn}}{{Main article|Jews in the civil rights movement}}
[[File:March on washington Aug 28 1963.jpg|250px|thumb|Jewish civil rights activist [[Joseph L. Rauh Jr.]] marching with [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] in 1963]]

Many in the [[American Jews|Jewish]] community supported the civil rights movement. In fact, statistically, Jews were one of the most actively involved non-black groups in the Movement. Many Jewish students worked in concert with African Americans for CORE, SCLC, and SNCC as full-time organizers and summer volunteers during the Civil Rights era. Jews made up roughly half of the white northern and western volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi [[Freedom Summer]] project and approximately half of the civil rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s.<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/itvs/fromswastikatojimcrow/relations.html ''From Swastika to Jim Crow''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150722212600/http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fromswastikatojimcrow/relations.html |date=July 22, 2015 }}—PBS Documentary</ref>

Jewish leaders were arrested while heeding a call from Martin Luther King Jr. in [[St. Augustine, Florida]], in June 1964, where the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place at the Monson Motor Lodge. [[Abraham Joshua Heschel]], a writer, rabbi, and professor of theology at the [[Jewish Theological Seminary of America]] in New York, was outspoken on the subject of civil rights. He marched arm-in-arm with King in the 1965 [[Selma to Montgomery marches#The march to Montgomery|Selma to Montgomery march]]. In the 1964 [[murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner]], the two white activists killed, [[Andrew Goodman (activist)|Andrew Goodman]] and [[Michael Schwerner]], were both Jewish.

[[Brandeis University]], the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college university in the world, created the Transitional Year Program (TYP) in 1968, in part response to the [[assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.]] The faculty created it to renew the university's commitment to social justice. Recognizing Brandeis as a university with a commitment to academic excellence, these faculty members created a chance for disadvantaged students to participate in an empowering educational experience.

The [[American Jewish Committee]], [[American Jewish Congress]], and [[Anti-Defamation League]] (ADL) actively promoted civil rights. While Jews were very active in the civil rights movement in the South, in the North, many had experienced a more strained relationship with African Americans. <!-- In communities experiencing white flight, racial rioting, and urban decay, Jewish Americans were more often the last remaining whites in the communities most affected.{{citation needed|date=March 2018}} --> It has been argued that with Black militancy and the [[Black Power]] movements on the rise, "Black Anti-Semitism" increased leading to strained relations between Blacks and Jews in Northern communities. In New York City, most notably, there was a major socio-economic class difference in the perception of African Americans by Jews.<ref>Cannato, Vincent "The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his struggle to save New York" Better Books, 2001. {{ISBN|0-465-00843-7}}</ref> Jews from better educated Upper-Middle-Class backgrounds were often very supportive of African American civil rights activities while the Jews in poorer urban communities that became increasingly minority were often less supportive largely in part due to more negative and violent interactions between the two groups.

According to political scientist [[Michael Rogin]], Jewish-Black hostility was a two-way street extending to earlier decades. In the post-World War II era, Jews were granted [[white privilege]] and most moved into the middle-class while Blacks were left behind in the ghetto.<ref>{{cite book |title=How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America |author=Karen Brodkin |date=2000 |publisher=Rutgers University Press}}</ref> Urban Jews engaged in the same sort of conflicts with Blacks—over [[integration busing]], local control of schools, housing, crime, communal identity, and class divides—that other [[white ethnics]] did, leading to Jews participating in [[white flight]]. The culmination of this was the [[New York City teachers' strike of 1968|1968 New York City teachers' strike]], pitting largely Jewish schoolteachers against predominantly Black parents in [[Brownsville, New York]].<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=va8wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA263 |title=Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot |last=Rogin |first=Michael |date=May 29, 1998 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-21380-7 |pages=262–267 |language=en}}</ref>

==== Public profile ====
Many Jews in the Southern states who supported civil rights for African Americans tended to keep a low profile on "the race issue", in order to avoid attracting the attention of the anti-Black and antisemitic Ku Klux Klan.<ref name="My Jewish Learning" /> However, Klan groups exploited the issue of African-American integration and Jewish involvement in the struggle in order to commit violently antisemitic [[hate crime]]s. As an example of this hatred, in one year alone, from November 1957 to October 1958, temples and other Jewish communal gatherings were bombed and desecrated in [[Atlanta]], [[Nashville]], [[Jacksonville, Florida|Jacksonville]], and [[Miami]], and [[dynamite]] was found under [[synagogue]]s in [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]], [[Charlotte, North Carolina|Charlotte]], and [[Gastonia, North Carolina]]. Some [[rabbi]]s received [[death threat]]s, but there were no injuries following these outbursts of [[violence]].<ref name="My Jewish Learning">{{cite web |last1=Sachar |first1=Howard |author-link1=Howard Sachar |title=A History of Jews in America |url=http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1948-1980/America/Liberal_Politics/Black-Jewish_Relations/Civil_Rights_Movement.shtml?p=2 |website=My Jewish Learning |publisher=Vintage Books |access-date=March 1, 2015 |date=November 2, 1993  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140721012334/http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1948-1980/America/Liberal_Politics/Black-Jewish_Relations/Civil_Rights_Movement.shtml?p=2 |archive-date=July 21, 2014}}</ref>