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www.noirg.org
The Secret Relationship Between
Alabama’s Blacks and Jews
By the mid-20th century Alabama had become the home of syphilis “studies” and
midnight riders of the KKK, of segregation enforcer Eugene “Bull” Connor with his
fire hoses and attack dogs, of church bombings and unspeakable racial terrorism—and
since the beginning of the SLAVE TRADE, Jews were a part of it all! Here are some
interesting facts about Alabama that most Blacks and Jews do not know:
• In Mobile, Jewish auctioneer George
Davis was the city’s first to have “a
monopoly on the sale of animals and
slaves.”
• Jews established the first cotton gin in
the state, which, by processing cotton many
times faster than before, increased the
demand for African slaves manifold.
• Rabbi Israel I. Jones, who was called
“a man of mental and moral superiority” and
an “outstanding philanthropist,” served as
mayor of Mobile and sold Blacks in his spare
time (see his advertisement, right, and
hundreds more like it in the Nation of Islam
book Jews Selling Blacks).
• When the nation broke apart over the
question of slavery, Alabama’s Jews served
in the pro-slavery Confederate Army.
• Jews had no peers in the Alabama slavery economy. Wm. Frohlichstein and
B. Moog were city aldermen and directors of National Commercial Bank, while
Isaac Goldsmith was president of Commercial Savings Co., L. Brisk was a
The Secret Relationship Between Alabama’s Blacks and Jews
2
director of the Deposit Savings Bank, and William H. Leinkauf and M.
Forchheimer were directors of Mobile Savings Bank.
Read Jews Selling Blacks:
Slave Sale Advertising by American Jews
The Largest Collection of Jewish Slave-­‐Sale Ads Ever Published. 144 pages reproduced from American newspapers. Jews bought and sold whole plantations—slaves and all—and they marketed enslaved human beings ranging from infants to the elderly. There were Jewish merchants selling Black slaves ON LAYAWAY! This book puts an end to the mythology that Jews succeeded by “hard work” & had no role in the slave trade. •Adolph Proskauer was a director of the Mobile Cotton Exchange, which was
established in 1871 “to keep the profits from Alabama’s lucrative cotton crop under local control.” In
1855—amidst the harshest conditions of Black slavery— Jews had more than 50 places of
business just in Mobile. In 1831, one Jew sold 1359 acres of land—to his own brother! In
1828, Isaac Lazarus had 640 acres.
• Before the close of the 1800s, the Moseses of Montgomery developed the largest
real estate insurance and retail banking institution in the state. They built the tallest
building in the state, and founded the city of Sheffield to boot. To get some idea
about the rate of growth after the Civil War, one must look to Tuscumbia, Alabama, on
May 8, 1884, when 75 acres of land were bought at auction for $50,000 by Mordecai
Moses. Three days later the lot was sold for $350,000. • Meanwhile, W.E.B. Du Bois
wrote in 1906 that “[A] few days ago I stood on the land of a white Alabama land-owner
who held 50 square miles and would not sell a single acre to a black man.”
•The Lehman Brothers, the founders of one of
the most respected investment banking businesses in
the world (now defunct), were slave owners who got
their start selling slave-picked cotton not a stone’s
throw from Montgomery’s slave auction block.
• The Rothschild family interest in Alabama is
particularly intriguing because in 1863 the Examiner
newspaper alleged that “Jews had bought up 2/3rds
of Alabama’s cotton and monopolized the
The Secret Relationship Between Alabama’s Blacks and Jews
3
mercantile business throughout the South.” Coincidentally in 1864, Alabama’s governor
appointed Jewish merchant Mayer Lehman as cotton agent for the state and
appropriated $500,000 for the purchase of cotton. This put Lehman in charge
of managing the state’s chief asset—a million-bale annual cotton crop
cultivated by most of the state’s 435,000 enslaved Africans.
• The local Birmingham rabbi, Morris Newfield, set up and
financed the first juvenile court in the city to administer Southern Jim
Crow “justice” to Black youth.
• In the heat of Jim Crow hatred, a Jew named William P. Engel
headed “one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the South,”
developing two major hotels in downtown Birmingham, neither of
which hired Blacks or permitted them as patrons.
• According to Harvard research, Birmingham’s Rabbi Milton
Grafman (right) said in 1963 in the midst of the Rev. Martin Luther
King’s demonstrations: “The lives of one thousand Negroes are
not worth a hair on the head of a single Jew.”
• Rev. King criticized Rabbi Grafman in his famous Letter From a Birmingham
Jail. He was in jail because he was protesting the segregationist practices of the major
downtown retailers, including Parisian’s, Pizitz’s, Blach’s, and Loveman’s—all
Jewish, and ALL with apartheid fountains, lunch counters, bathrooms, and all-white sales
clerks.
• According to a Jewish scholar, “Harmony was the hallmark of relations
between the Ku Klux Klan and Birmingham’s Jews. Members of both groups
stood alongside each other in the local wing of the American Legion, which organized a
series of public sporting events in the city every year….There was open communication
between the representatives of the Klan and the Jewish Community, primarily through
Mr. Joe Denaburg who…supplied Klansmen with pistols and sheets…”
The Secret Relationship Between Alabama’s Blacks and Jews
4
• When the Jewish-owned Moses Brothers Bank of Montgomery, Alabama,
failed, the savings of “hundreds of negro depositors” amounting to as much as half a
million dollars were simply “swept away.” Blacks were left “gazing wistfully” at the
locked doors, with no legal recourse.
• “Shortly after the Supreme Court rendered the 1954 Brown decision, a member of
Birmingham’s Temple Beth-El Board of Directors moved that the Board endorse the
desegregation ruling. The motion was voted down by a margin of nineteen to
one…”
An important synagogue trustee was a high official in the Montgomery White Citizens
Council. When Rabbi Goldstein of the local synagogue Agudath Israel gave a sermon
condemning the conviction of the Scottsboro Boys, he was given 24 hours to get out of
town—by his own congregation! When he would not leave, they threatened him, saying he can
remain in Montgomery as long as he joins the
White Citizens Council. They told him, “We
want you to disassociate yourself from the
Negroes completely while you are the
rabbi here.”
Of the 27 trustees, the rabbi had only one
supporter. According to a scholar, “they literally
turned their backs as he passed them in the
synagogue or on the street. No one visited his
home; he felt himself completely alone. Four years
earlier he had brought a refugee from Poland and
installed him as the shochet [a person specially trained to slaughter animals and birds in
accordance with Jewish laws], and now even the refugee severed all personal relations; he,
too, thought that the trustees were right.”
“Montgomery Jews want to bury their heads,”
asserted the Rev. Martin Luther King, “and repeat
that it is not a Jewish problem. I want to go on
record, and agree that it is not a Jewish
problem, but it is a fight between the forces of
justice and injustice. I want them to join with
us on the side of justice.” King wrote to one Jewish
activist: “I think we all have to admit, that there are Jews in the
South who have gone out of their way to consort with the
perpetrators of the status quo. I saw this in both Montgomery,
Alabama and Albany, Georgia.”
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., conferring with
The Hon. Elijah Muhammad
The Secret Relationship Between Alabama’s Blacks and Jews
5
Jewish Segregationists in Alabama
In staunchly segregationist Alabama, Jews were close with such
legendary race haters as Governor George Wallace. The Jewish
Rubin Hanan was on his staff and shared Wallace’s anti-Black
views. Hanan visited Israel on behalf of the governor and announced
that Wallace “had done much for the African American population,
and that there was a certain social order that had existed and could
not be changed so easily.” It was Wallace’s attorney John P. Kohn
who wrote Wallace’s infamous line “Segregation Now,
Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever. ”
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Ku Klux Klansman Eugene “Bull” Connor (right) was a Hitler to Black people. He
became Birmingham’s public safety commissioner and, according to a Harvard study,
“Jews felt safe [under his] care.” He turned fire hoses on Black women and children, an
act he was proud to have memorialized on film. Nonetheless, “much
of Connor’s support [came] from the business community
which included Mervyn Sterne, William Engel, and the
Jewish retailers. Connor had personal relationships with a
number of his Jewish backers…”
In reality, the Harvard study concludes, Jews were in no rush to end
Jim Crow hatred: “...Jim Crow had provided a relatively
hospitable environment for Jewish life. Jews feared that if
segregation was dismantled, their religious differences from
mainstream society might become more significant than their racial commonality.”
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