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.

The Great Depression hit Americans hard, but none harder than African Americans and the working poor. To Ask for an Equal Chance explores black experiences during this period and the intertwined challenges posed by race and class. "Last hired, first fired," black workers lost their jobs at twice the rate of whites, and faced greater obstacles in their search for economic security. Black workers, who were generally urban newcomers, impoverished and lacking industrial skills, were already at a disadvantage. These difficulties were intensified by an overt, and in the South legally entrenched, system of racial segregation and discrimination. New federal programs offered hope as they redefined government's responsibility for its citizens, but local implementation often proved racially discriminatory. As Cheryl Lynn Greenberg makes clear, African Americans were not passive victims of economic catastrophe or white racism; they responded to such challenges in a variety of political, social, and communal ways. The book explores both the external realities facing African Americans and individual and communal responses to them. While experiences varied depending on many factors including class, location, gender and community size, there are also unifying and overarching realities that applied universally. To Ask for an Equal Chance straddles the particular, with examinations of specific communities and experiences, and the general, with explorations of the broader effects of racism, discrimination, family, class, and political organizing.

"Just as SNCC's courage and commitment shaped the civil rights movement in the 1960s, so this critical reflection by SNCC activists deepens our understanding of what happened then, and what it means today. A Circle of Trust is essential reading for all interested in struggles for a more inclusive democracy." Patricia Sullivan, Harvard University "The reminiscences and reflections voiced at the SNCC reunion remind us of the remarkable vision and courageous dedication of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Framed by Cheryl Greenberg's eloquent and probing introduction, the SNCC veterans' comments about the triumphs and limitations of their movement represent a major contribution to the historical literature on race and power in modern America." --Raymond Arsenault, University of South Florida On the occasion of SNCC's twenty-fifth anniversary, more than five hundred people gathered at Trinity College in Connecticut to both celebrate and critique its accomplishments. In A Circle of Trust, forty SNCC members tell their stories and reflect on the contributions, limits, and legacies of the movement. Engaging in spirited debates with each other, with historians of the movement, and with contemporary political culture more broadly, these former and perpetual activists speak of their vision of a just society and what still remains to be done. Given racial tensions and the resurgence of the debate over integration and separatism in America in the 1990s, the content of this conference is more relevant than ever. Cheryl Greeenberg begins with an overview of SNCC and introduces each of the chapters of oral history. Participants explore the origins of SNCC, its early adoption of nonviolent protest, its ultimate renuciation of liberal integration and embrace of militant black radicalism, its refusal to repudiate far-left organizations, and controversies over the roles of women in SNCC and society at large. The result is a thoughtful, moving, if sometimes acrimonious account of one of the nation's most significant civil rights organizations and its successes and failures. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg is associate professor of history at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, and author of "Or Does It Explode?" Black Harlem in the Great Depression.

The Black people of Marks, Mississippi, and other rural southern towns were the backbone of the civil rights movement, yet their stories have too rarely been celebrated and are, for the most part, forgotten. Part memoir, part oral history, and part historical study, A Day I Ain't Never Seen Before tells the story of the struggle for equality and dignity through the words of these largely unknown men and women and the civil rights workers who joined them. Deeply rooted in documentary and archival sources, this book also offers extensive suggestions for further readings on both Marks and the civil rights movement. Set carefully within its broader historical context, the narrative begins with the founding of the town and the oppressive conditions under which Black people lived and traces their persistent efforts to win the rights and justice they deserved. In their own words, Marks residents describe their lives before, during, and after the activist years of the civil rights movement, bolstered by the voices of those like Joe Bateman who arrived in the mid-1960s to help. Voter registration projects, white violence, sit-ins, arrests, school desegregation cases, community-organizing meetings, protest marches, Freedom Schools, door-to-door organizing-all of these played out in Marks. The broader civil rights movement intersects many of these local efforts, from Freedom Summer to the War on Poverty, from the death of a Marks man on the March against Fear (Martin Luther King Jr. preached at his funeral) to the Poor People's Movement, whose Mule Train began in Marks. At each point Bateman and local activists detail how they understood what they were doing and how each protest action played out. The final chapters examine Marks in the aftermath of the movement, with residents reflecting on the changes (or lack thereof ) they have seen. Here are triumphs and beatings, courage and infighting, surveillance and-sometimes- lasting progress, in the words of those who lived it.

The Black people of Marks, Mississippi, and other rural southern towns were the backbone of the civil rights movement, yet their stories have too rarely been celebrated and are, for the most part, forgotten. Part memoir, part oral history, and part historical study, A Day I Ain't Never Seen Before tells the story of the struggle for equality and dignity through the words of these largely unknown men and women and the civil rights workers who joined them. Deeply rooted in documentary and archival sources, this book also offers extensive suggestions for further readings on both Marks and the civil rights movement. Set carefully within its broader historical context, the narrative begins with the founding of the town and the oppressive conditions under which Black people lived and traces their persistent efforts to win the rights and justice they deserved. In their own words, Marks residents describe their lives before, during, and after the activist years of the civil rights movement, bolstered by the voices of those like Joe Bateman who arrived in the mid-1960s to help. Voter registration projects, white violence, sit-ins, arrests, school desegregation cases, community-organizing meetings, protest marches, Freedom Schools, door-to-door organizing-all of these played out in Marks. The broader civil rights movement intersects many of these local efforts, from Freedom Summer to the War on Poverty, from the death of a Marks man on the March against Fear (Martin Luther King Jr. preached at his funeral) to the Poor People's Movement, whose Mule Train began in Marks. At each point Bateman and local activists detail how they understood what they were doing and how each protest action played out. The final chapters examine Marks in the aftermath of the movement, with residents reflecting on the changes (or lack thereof ) they have seen. Here are triumphs and beatings, courage and infighting, surveillance and-sometimes- lasting progress, in the words of those who lived it.

The Great Depression hit Americans hard, but none harder than African Americans and the working poor. To Ask for an Equal Chance explores black experiences during this period and the intertwined challenges posed by race and class. "Last hired, first fired," black workers lost their jobs at twice the rate of whites, and faced greater obstacles in their search for economic security. Black workers, who were generally urban newcomers, impoverished and lacking industrial skills, were already at a disadvantage. These difficulties were intensified by an overt, and in the South legally entrenched, system of racial segregation and discrimination. New federal programs offered hope as they redefined government's responsibility for its citizens, but local implementation often proved racially discriminatory. As Cheryl Lynn Greenberg makes clear, African Americans were not passive victims of economic catastrophe or white racism; they responded to such challenges in a variety of political, social, and communal ways. The book explores both the external realities facing African Americans and individual and communal responses to them. While experiences varied depending on many factors including class, location, gender and community size, there are also unifying and overarching realities that applied universally. To Ask for an Equal Chance straddles the particular, with examinations of specific communities and experiences, and the general, with explorations of the broader effects of racism, discrimination, family, class, and political organizing.

A community study of Depression era Harlem, examining broader themes in social and racial history by looking at the issues of economics, segregation and discrimination that confronted Harlem residents during the 1930s and 1940s.