Books in Brief

What Went Wrong: The Creation and Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance, by Murray Friedman (Free Press, 407 pp., $24.95)

THE black-Jewish alliance is dead, declares the author, a historian. His well-researched, balanced, and objective account shows that as far back as the mid nineteenth century, blacks regarded Jews with a mixture of admiration, hostility, and distrust. Likewise, some Jews held racist attitudes toward blacks, although they treated blacks better than other whites did. The blacks’ complaint about Jews’ alleged influence on the government and the media is old. The Age, a black newspaper, alleged in 1891 that “Jews through their instrument, the New York Times, influenced foreign policy, but hurt Negroes in America.” The Age also accused the Times of “sowing seeds of race prejudice against Negroes” by publishing letters to the editor that emphasized black crime rather than black accomplishment. Still, as long as blacks and Jews battled shared obstacles, their alliance endured. It began to falter when black nationalists turned the civil-rights movement into a race revolution. Mr. Friedman refutes the revisionist historians who claim there never was a real black-Jewish alliance. “Once upon a time, Jews and blacks wrote some of the finest pages” in America’s story, he remarks, “shedding their blood to redeem the promise of American life.” As for the present, he sensibly advises blacks and Jews to keep out of each other’s way.

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Minoo Southgate

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What Went Wrong: The Creation and Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance, by Murray Friedman (Free Press, 407 pp., $24.95)

THE black-Jewish alliance is dead, declares the author, a historian. His well-researched, balanced, and objective account shows that as far back as the mid nineteenth century, blacks regarded Jews with a mixture of admiration, hostility, and distrust. Likewise, some Jews held racist attitudes toward blacks, although they treated blacks better than other whites did. The blacks’ complaint about Jews’ alleged influence on the government and the media is old. The Age, a black newspaper, alleged in 1891 that “Jews through their instrument, the New York Times, influenced foreign policy, but hurt Negroes in America.” The Age also accused the Times of “sowing seeds of race prejudice against Negroes” by publishing letters to the editor that emphasized black crime rather than black accomplishment. Still, as long as blacks and Jews battled shared obstacles, their alliance endured. It began to falter when black nationalists turned the civil-rights movement into a race revolution. Mr. Friedman refutes the revisionist historians who claim there never was a real black-Jewish alliance. “Once upon a time, Jews and blacks wrote some of the finest pages” in America’s story, he remarks, “shedding their blood to redeem the promise of American life.” As for the present, he sensibly advises blacks and Jews to keep out of each other’s way.