Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century - Paperback

by Cheryl Lynn Greenberg (Author)

Was there ever really a black-Jewish alliance in twentieth-century America? And if there was, what happened to it? In Troubling the Waters, Cheryl Greenberg answers these questions more definitively than they have ever been answered before, drawing the richest portrait yet of what was less an alliance than a tumultuous political engagement--but one that energized the civil rights revolution, shaped the agenda of liberalism, and affected the course of American politics as a whole.

Drawing on extensive new research in the archives of organizations such as the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, Greenberg shows that a special black-Jewish political relationship did indeed exist, especially from the 1940s to the mid-1960s--its so-called "golden era"--and that this engagement galvanized and broadened the civil rights movement. But even during this heyday, she demonstrates, the black-Jewish relationship was anything but inevitable or untroubled. Rather, cooperation and conflict coexisted throughout, with tensions caused by economic clashes, ideological disagreements, Jewish racism, and black anti-Semitism, as well as differences in class and the intensity of discrimination faced by each group. These tensions make the rise of the relationship all the more surprising--and its decline easier to understand.

Tracing the growth, peak, and deterioration of black-Jewish engagement over the course of the twentieth century, Greenberg shows that the history of this relationship is very much the history of American liberalism--neither as golden in its best years nor as absolute in its collapse as commonly thought.

Back Jacket

"The best-researched and most comprehensive account yet of Black-Jewish relations in the twentieth century. The messy complexities of the relationship, the insensitivities displayed on all sides, are here revealed for all to see. Sobering, realistic, and definitive."--Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University

"For readers who puzzle about what happened to the fabled alliance between Blacks and Jews, Troubling the Waters provides the authoritative answer. It is testament to Cheryl Lynn Greenberg's discipline as a historian, as well as her personal acumen and devotion to justice, that she is able to take up so fraught a subject and to give us such an illuminating account."--Stephen Steinberg, author of Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy

"A masterful assessment of the relationships between African Americans and Jews in the twentieth century. Greenberg's deeply researched and well-written analysis provides new materials, fresh insights, and a keen understanding of the plight of both groups. Her book is bias-free while sympathetically presenting the perspectives of African Americans and Jews. Vastly superior to everything else that has previously been written on the topic, Troubling the Waters will become the standard by which all other works on the subject are measured."--Leonard Dinnerstein, Professor Emeritus, University of Arizona

"Cheryl Lynn Greenberg's Troubling the Waters is engaging and well researched, and the author insightful and thorough. The book fills a void in the historiography and will make a much-needed addition to courses in African American Studies, American history, and sociology. It is an invitation to explore some of the most compelling issues in race politics today."--Barbara Ransby, University of Illinois at Chicago, author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement

Author Biography

Cheryl Lynn Greenberg is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of History at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is the author of "Or Does it Explode?" and To Ask for an Equal Chance, and the editor of A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC.