In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915-1935

by Hasia R. Diner

Overview

"Diner has neither idolized nor debunked the Jewish leaders who sought to help blacks achieve a better life. What she has done, and this should be a model for others writing ethnic history, is to examine the complexities that motivated one group of individuals to help another." -- Labor History

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780837194004
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/17/1977
Series:	Contributions in American History , #59
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Hasia Diner is professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Erin's Daughters in America and A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820-1880 (Volume II in the series The Jewish People in America), both available from Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Jews and Blacks in American Society
Chapter 2. "The Souls of Two Nations": Images of Blacks in the Yiddish Press
Chapter 3. "To Fight Their Battles": English-Language Jewish Magazines and Images of Blacks
Chapter 4. "A Covenant Kept": Jews in the Black Civil Rights Movement
Chapter 5. "To Serve at the Common Alter": Jews and Black Philanthropy
Chapter 6. "Our Exploited Negro Brothers": Jewish Labor and the Organization of Black Workers
Conclusion. Blacks and the Jewish Quest for Identity
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Based upon thorough research and documentation, In the Almost Promised Land vividly illustrates the well-known but little-understood phenomenon of Jewish support for a better life for American blacks. Diner has produced a significant contribution to the examination of ethnic studies and an insightful analysis of certain aspects of the early years of the civil rights movement in the twentieth century."

Cithara: Essays in the Judeo-Christian Tradition

Based upon thorough research and documentation, In the Almost Promised Land

Jewish Book World

Based upon thorough research and documentation, In the Almost Promised Land vividly illustrates the well-known but little-understood phenomenon of Jewish support for a better life for American blacks. Diner has produced a significant contribution to the examination of ethnic studies and an insightful analysis of certain aspects of the early years of the civil rights movement in the twentieth century.
—Cithara: Essays in the Judeo-Christian Tradition

Helps explain why a special relationship between Jews and blacks developed within the context of a particular historical period and why that relationship ultimately ended.
—Historical Review

Diner has neither idolized nor debunked the Jewish leaders who sought to help blacks achieve a better life. What she has done, and this should be a model for others writing ethnic history, is to examine the complexities that motivated one group of individuals to help another.
—Labor History

No one has equaled the American historian Hasia Diner in richly documenting the strong support given to African-American legal, economic, and educational rights, between 1880 and 1935, by Jewish newspapers, religious leaders, lawyers, labor leaders, social workers, and philanthropists.
—David Brion Davis, New York Review of Books

From the Publisher

No one has equaled the American historian Hasia Diner in richly documenting the strong support given to African-American legal, economic, and educational rights, between 1880 and 1935, by Jewish newspapers, religious leaders, lawyers, labor leaders, social workers, and philanthropists.

New York Review of Books - David Brion Davis

Diner has neither idolized nor debunked the Jewish leaders who sought to help blacks achieve a better life. What she has done, and this should be a model for others writing ethnic history, is to examine the complexities that motivated one group of individuals to help another.

Labor History

Helps explain why a special relationship between Jews and blacks developed within the context of a particular historical period and why that relationship ultimately ended.

Historical Review

Based upon thorough research and documentation, In the Almost Promised Land vividly illustrates the well-known but little-understood phenomenon of Jewish support for a better life for American blacks. Diner has produced a significant contribution to the examination of ethnic studies and an insightful analysis of certain aspects of the early years of the civil rights movement in the twentieth century.

Cithara: Essays in the Judeo-Christian Tradition