When Two Jews Were Murdered With Black Civil Right Advocate

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Two Jewish young men who were activists in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s were murdered because they were helping their Black friends in the cause of the Blacks.  "The murders of  Goodman,  Schwerner and Chaney,, also known as the Freedom Summer murders, the Mississippi civil rights workers' murders or the Mississippi Burning murders, refers to three activists who were abducted and murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in June 1964 during the Civil Rights Movement.

 The victims were Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York City, and James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi . All three were associated with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) and its member organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). They had been working with the Freedom Summer campaign by attempting to register African Americans in Mississippi to vote.  They were but  only a few of the many Jews who were helping Blacks during this period. 

                                            

   born November 1943, killed June 21, 1964 at age 20 by KKK

In 1964, Andrew Goodman, recruited by John Lewis, volunteered along with fellow activists Michael Schwerner, his wife Rita Schwerner Bender, and James Chaney to work on the "Freedom Summer" project of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to register black people to vote in Mississippi.  Goodman left New York to train and develop civil rights strategies at Western College for Women (now part of Miami University) in Oxford, Ohio. In mid-June, Goodman joined Schwerner in Meridian, Mississippi, where the latter was designated head of the field office. They worked in rural areas on registering blacks to vote.

Andrew Goodman's family and community were steeped in intellectual and socially progressive activism and were devoted to social justice. An activist at an early age, Goodman graduated from the progressive Walden School, which was said to have had a strongly formative influence on his outlook

Civil rights activists were resented and held under suspicion by white Mississippians. Spies paid by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a taxpayer-funded agency, kept track of all northerners and suspected activists. The Commission conducted economic boycotts and intimidation against activists. In 1998 its records were opened by court order, revealing the state's deep complicity in the 1964 murders of three civil right workers because its investigator, A. L. Hopkins, passed on information about the workers, including their car license number, to the Commission. Records showed the Commission passed the information on to the Sheriff of Neshoba County, who was implicated in the murders.

                                           

      Born November 1939, killed in Mississippi by KKK at age 25

In the early 1960s, Michael Schwerner became active in working for civil rights for African Americans; he led a local Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) group on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, called "Downtown CORE." He participated in a 1963 effort to desegregate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Maryland. The Ku Klux Klan targeted Schwerner after he and his wife, Rita, had taken over the Meridian CORE field office, where they established a community center for blacks as part of grassroots organizing. Schwerner tried to establish contact with white working-class citizens of Meridian and went door-to-door to speak with them. He also organized a black boycott of a popular variety store until it hired its first African American, under the principle of "don't shop where you can't work".

Born  May 1943, James Cheney was 21 when killed 

In 1964, James Cheney, a Black Catholic,  met with leaders of the Mt. Nebo Baptist Church to gain their support for letting Michael Schwerner, CORE's local leader, come to address the church members, to encourage them to use the church for voter education and registration. Chaney also acted as a liaison with other CORE members.  In 1962, Chaney participated in a Freedom Ride from Tennessee to Greenville, Mississippi, and in another from Greenville to Meridian. He and his younger brother participated in other non-violent demonstrations, as well. James Chaney started volunteering in late 1963, and joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Meridian. He organized voter education classes, introduced CORE workers to local church leaders, and helped CORE workers get around the counties.

                                                 

              1930s picture of Klu Klux Klan

The Klu Klux Klan is the main group against Black freedom.  It's still active.  The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the oldest and most infamous of American hate groups. Although Black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, it also has attacked Jews, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community and, until recently, Catholics.In the past few years, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a drop in the number of active chapters. Unlike years past, however, this downward trajectory was partially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 Since 1890 and through the turn of the century, southern states had systematically disenfranchised most black voters by discrimination in voter registration and voting."

The 1960's was the era of an awakened Civil Rights Movement that had been denied the Blacks of the United States.  The Civil War had been fought from April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865, 4 bloody years where brother found he was fighting his brother in the idea of freeing Blacks from slavery. It took 100 years for Americans to actually become aware of the plight of Blacks, and for the Blacks to find people to aid and abet them in this cause.                         

 The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States fought between the Union and the Confederacy, or the North against the South. The central cause of the war was the status of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery into territories acquired as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican–American War.  The end result of this war was the :

(1)  Dissolution of the Confederate States, (2)  U.S. territorial integrity preserved, (3) Slavery abolished, (4) Beginning of the Reconstruction era, (5) Passage and ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and (6) awareness of the wrongs of slavery and discriminating people for their differences.  

                                             

           1859 poster  for speaker speaking against slavery-Reverend William King (Clayton) in Harriet Beecher Stowe's "DRED." He turns out to be similar in character to Martin Luther King's ggrandfather.  

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s maternal great-grandfather, Willis Williams, who was born in 1810, was described as “an old slavery time preacher” and an “exhorter” (Papers 1:1). In 1846, when Willis joined Shiloh Baptist Church in Greene County, Georgia, its congregation numbered 50 white and 28 black members, with African Americans actively participating in church affairs and serving on church committees. In 1855 nearly a hundred blacks joined the congregation, including 15-year-old Lucrecia (or Creecy) Daniel. She and Willis were married in the late 1850s or early 1860s, and she bore him five children, including Adam Daniel (A. D.) Williams, King, Jr.’s grandfather. The family left Shiloh Baptist Church when it, like other southern congregations, divided along racial lines at the end of the Civil War.                                      

One cannot forget the Underground Railroad, however, as the 1st act in aiding Blacks in their grief as being last in the world of being freed from slavery since Great Britain had acted earlier without having to have a Civil War to do it. In 1806-07, with the abolition campaign gaining further momentum,  legislation was finally passed in both the Commons and the Lords which brought an end to Britain's involvement in the trade. The bill received royal assent in March and the trade was made illegal from 1 May 1807. 

The Underground Railroad was a secret network of abolitionists (people who wanted to abolish slavery). They helped African Americans escape from enslavement in the American South to free Northern states or to Canada. The Underground Railroad was the largest anti-slavery freedom movement in North America. It brought between 30,000 and 40,000 fugitives to British North America (now Canada).        

August and Henrietta Bondi’s Jewish home was a stop for slaves fleeing North.  One important stop on the Underground Railroad was the home of a Jewish couple, August and Henrietta Bondi, in Greeley, Kansas. Their home became a refuge for an unknown number of slaves, and the Bondis worked tirelessly, as Jews, to oppose the horror of slavery.  As pro-slavery zealots attacked anti-slavery activists, August joined with other anti-slavery activists in the Battle of Black Jack, on June 2, 1856. Anti-slavery forces captured 48 “Border Ruffians” who’d been menacing and attacking anti-slavery Kansans. (August fought alongside the notorious anti-slavery figure John Brown. John Brown was later shot for treason.  
         

Our 3 Civil Rights advocates had traveled from Meridian to the community of Longdale to talk with congregation members at a black church that had been burned; the church had been a center of community organization.           

The trio was arrested following a traffic stop for speeding outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, escorted to the local jail, and held for a number of hours. As the three left town in their car, they were followed by law enforcement and others.                  

                       Execution as in previous days of Civil War

Before leaving Neshoba County, their car was pulled over. The three were abducted, driven to another location, and shot to death at close range. The three men's bodies were taken to an earthen dam where they were buried.

The disappearance of the three men was initially investigated as a missing persons case. The civil rights workers' burnt-out car was found near a swamp three days after their disappearance. An extensive search of the area was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), local and state authorities, and four hundred United States Navy sailors.

                                           

 The three men's bodies were not discovered until two months later, when the team received a tip. During the investigation it emerged that members of the local White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department were involved in the incident.           

     

The murder of the activists sparked national outrage and an extensive federal investigation, filed as Mississippi Burning  (MIBURN), which later became the title of a 1988 film loosely based on the events starring Gene Hackman. In 1967, after the state government refused to prosecute, the United States federal government charged eighteen individuals with civil rights violations. Seven were convicted and received relatively minor sentences for their actions. Outrage over the activists' disappearances helped gain passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

                                                  

Edgar Ray Killen (January 17, 1925 – January 11, 2018) was a Ku Klux Klan organizer who planned and directed the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights activists participating in the Freedom Summer of 1964. He was found guilty in state court of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He appealed the verdict, but the sentence was upheld on April 12, 2007, by the Supreme Court of Mississippi. He died in prison on January 11, 2018, six days before his 93rd birthday.   

"Forty-one years after the murders took place, one perpetrator, Edgar Ray Killen, was charged by the state of Mississippi for his part in the crimes.  On June 20, 2016, federal and state authorities officially closed the case, ending the possibility of further prosecution. Killen died in prison in January 2018."  Since he was tried 41 years after the fact, he only had to serve the last 13 years of his life in prison.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Goodman_(activist)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Schwerner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Chaney

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Jewish-Conductor-on-the-Underground-Railroad.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/underground-railroad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Ray_Killen

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Chaney

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred:_A_Tale_of_the_Great_Dismal_Swamp

Jews Who Died While Helping Blacks in Civil Rights Movement in the South

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Michael Schwerner                          James Chaney                               Andrew Goodman

During the 1960s, there were many young Jewish people who supported the Civil Rights Movement.  Statistically, Jews were one of the most actively involved non-black groups at that time.  Jewish students worked in connection with African Americans for CORE, SCLC, and SNCC as full-time organizers and summer volunteers during the Civil Rights era.  About half of the white northern volunteers in volved in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project were Jews.  Also, about half of the civil rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s were Jews.  In fact, many in the Jewish community supported the Civil Rights Movement.  Jews felt they had much in common with the Black position in the USA and had been suffering from anti-Semitism, and Blacks suffered from a similar thing-anti-Black.  

In June 1964, Jewish leaders were arrested in St. Augustine, Florida where the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place at the Monson Motor Lodge.  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a writer and professor of theology at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, was outspoken on the subject of civil rights.  This was at the period of Jews listening to the call from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was there as well.  Abraham marched with Dr. King in the Selma to Montgomery march.  

In the Mississippi civil rights workers' murders of 1964,  2 white activists  were killed, murdered;  Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both Jewish.  Their work included   promoting voting registration among African Americans, most of whom had been disenfranchised in the state since 1890. James Chaney, Black activist, was also killed along with the 2 Jewish men.                                                                    

Andrew  Goodman, born November 23, 1943,   was one of three Civil Rights Movement activists murdered during Freedom Summer in 1964 by members of the Ku Klux Klan.  He is known for his quotes:  Whoever moves into a community has a vested interest in it;   A people must have dignity and identity, The road to freedom must be uphill, even if it is arduous and frustrating. He was 21 years old. 

 In 1964, Goodman, recruited by John Lewis, volunteered along with fellow activists Michael Schwerner, his wife Rita Schwerner Bender, and James Chaney to work on the "Freedom Summer" project of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to register black people to vote in Mississippi. Having protested U.S. President Lyndon Johnson's presence at the opening of that year's World's Fair, Goodman left New York to train and develop civil rights strategies at Western College for Women (now part of Miami University) in Oxford, Ohio. In mid-June, Goodman joined Schwerner in Meridian, Mississippi, where the latter was designated head of the field office. They worked in rural areas on registering blacks to vote. 

 

 Michael Henry "Mickey" Schwerner, born November 6, 1939, was one of three Congress of Racial Equality field workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.  He was 25 years old.  The Ku Klux Klan targeted Schwerner after he and his wife, Rita, had taken over the Meridian CORE field office, where they established a community center for blacks as part of grassroots organizing. Schwerner tried to establish contact with white working-class citizens of Meridian and went door-to-door to speak with them. He also organized a black boycott of a popular variety store until it hired its first African American, under the principle of "don't shop where you can't work".  Schwerner had been working closely with an assistant James Chaney, also a civil rights activist in Meridian. On the morning of June 21, 1964, the three men set out for Philadelphia, Neshoba County, where they were to investigate the recent burning of Mount Zion Methodist Church, a black church that had agreed to be a site for a religious school for education and voter registration.

                                                           

                                   

James Chaney of Mississippi, born May 30, 1943, was only 21 when he was killed, being a few months older than Andrew.  He was also one of three Congress of Racial Equality field workers killed in his own home state.  At the age of 15 as a high school student, he and some of his classmates began wearing paper badges reading "NAACP", to mark their support for the national civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1910. They were suspended for a week from the segregated high school, because the principal feared the reaction of the all-white school board. He organized voter education classes, introduced CORE workers to local church leaders, and helped CORE workers get around the counties.

In 1964, he met with leaders of the Mt. Nebo Baptist Church to gain their support for letting Michael Schwerner, CORE's local leader, come to address the church members, to encourage them to use the church for voter education and registration. Chaney also acted as a liaison with other CORE members.

The American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) actively promoted civil rights.

Brandeis University, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college university in the world, created the Transitional Year Program (TYP) in 1968, in part response to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. The faculty created it to renew the university's commitment to social justice. Recognizing Brandeis as a university with a commitment to academic excellence, these faculty members created a chance to disadvantaged students to participate in an empowering educational experience.

The program began by admitting 20 African-Americans. As it developed, two groups have been given chances. 

1. The first group consists of students whose secondary schooling experiences and/or home communities may have lacked the resources to foster adequate preparation for success at elite colleges like Brandeis. For example, their high schools do not offer AP or honors courses nor high quality laboratory experiences.  Students selected had to have excelled in the curricula offered by their schools.

 2. The second group of students includes those whose life circumstances have created formidable challenges that required focus, energy, and skills that otherwise would have been devoted to academic pursuits. Some have served as heads of their households, others have worked full-time while attending high school full-time, and others have shown leadership in other ways.

While Jews were very active in the civil rights movement in the South, in the North, many had experienced a more strained relationship with African Americans. In communities experiencing white flight, racial rioting, and urban decay, Jewish Americans were more often the last remaining whites in the communities most affected. 

With Black militancy and the movements on the rise, Black Anti-Semitism increased leading to strained relations between Blacks and Jews in Northern communities. In New York City, most notably, there was a major socio-economic class difference in the perception of African Americans by Jews. Jews from better educated Upper Middle Class backgrounds were often very supportive of African American civil rights activities while the Jews in poorer urban communities that became increasingly minority were often less supportive largely in part due to more negative and violent interactions between the two groups.

Despite large Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress and the ADL being actively involved in the Movement, many Jewish individuals in the Southern states who supported civil rights for African-Americans tended to keep a low profile on "the race issue", in order to avoid attracting the attention of the anti-Black and antisemitic Ku Klux Klan. 

However, Klan groups exploited the issue of African-American integration and Jewish involvement in the struggle to launch acts of violent antisemitism. As an example of this hatred, in one year alone, from November 1957 to October 1958, temples and other Jewish communal gatherings were bombed and desecrated in Atlanta, Nashville, Jacksonville, and Miami, and dynamite was found under synagogues in Birmingham, Charlotte, and Gastonia, South Carolina. Some rabbis received death threats, but there were no injuries following these outbursts of violence.

"The deaths of affluent northern white students and threats to non-Southerners attracted the full attention of the media spotlight to the state. Many black activists became embittered, believing the media valued lives of whites and blacks differently. Perhaps the most significant effect of Freedom Summer was on the volunteers, almost all of whom—black and white—still consider it to have been one of the defining periods of their lives".

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement#American_Jewish_community_and_the_Civil_Rights_Movement

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/american-jews-and-the-civil-rights-movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Goodman_(activist)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Chaney

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Schwerner

The Old and the New Ku Klux Klan

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

       
The Ku Klux Klan's name is one to make Blacks and Jews shudder.  It's a nasty name for a nasty group who feel that only people like themselves deserve to live.  They cannot tolerate differences.  You don't have to be in a debate with them;  you don't have to harm them or steal from them, just being different is enough to find yourself in harm's way with them.  In its own phrase, it is the only Gentile White Protestant American-born Organization in the world. 

The Ku Klux Klan commonly called the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist hate group whose primary targets are African Americans as well as Jews, immigrants, leftists, members of the LGBT community and, until recently, Catholics.                             

Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family

The first group of the KKK started in 1865, right after the Civil War ended, and they continued with their nastiness until 1871.   "Six Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, shortly after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction of the South."  Andrew Johnson, a Democratic Unionist,  was our 17th president then.  The KKK acted out their hatred in the Southern states of the USA.  
                                                      

Three Ku Klux Klan members at a 1922 parade

The KKK rose their ugly head again in a 2nd wave in Georgia in 1915 and raised havoc spreading out into the Midwest and Western USA, acting out until WWII in 1944.  Blacks had also spread out, finding jobs as far as in Portland, Oregon in the shipyards working on building ships for our Navy.  This KKK movement included about 3,000,000 to 6,000,000 and was at its height of popularity from 1924 to 1925.  I note that 1924 is the year the door was closed to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.  John Calvin Coolidge, Republican, was the USA's 30th president then from 1923 to 1929, when the stock market crash happened.  
                                                     

A Jew, Leo Frank, was lynched by the KKK in 1915 when 31 years old.  This set off their activities against Jews.  "Leo Max Frank was an American factory superintendent who was convicted in 1913 of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in Atlanta, Georgia. His trial, conviction, and appeals attracted national attention."
He was proved innocent but a mob grabbed him and lynched him anyway because he was a Jew.  By the mid 1920s, the KKK bragged that they had more members than there were Jews in the USA; 4 million members.  

It was a time when Henry Ford blamed Jews for everything that happened he didn't like.   In 1916, Louis D. Brandeis was nominated to serve on the Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson, the first Jew.  He had to suffer bitter taunts from fellow judge James C. McReynolds.  Jews were America's scapegoats.  

It opposed Catholic and Jewish immigration in this 2nd stage.  By 1925, when its followers staged a huge Washington, D.C. march, the Klan had as many as 4 million members and, in some states, considerable political power. But a series of sex scandals, internal battles over power and newspaper exposés quickly reduced its influence.

In Germany, a KKK-related group, Ritter des Feurigen Kreuzes ("Knights of the Fiery Cross"), was established in the 1920s. After the Nazis took over Germany, the group disbanded and its members joined the Nazis. 

                                                      

Showing a Crusader in Jerusalem against Arabs and Jews as well
"Movie poster for The Birth of a Nation, which has been widely credited with inspiring the 20th-century revival of the Ku Klux Klan".The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman)^] is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish.

A 3rd wave of the KKK began in 1946 after WWII ended who were now fighting against the Civil Rights Movement. They haven't been stopped, but operate with a much smaller group consisting of about 5,000 to 8,000 Klanners.    They used their favorite violence and murder techniques against these people.
                                                       

Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were three civil rights workers abducted and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan.The 1964 murders of James Chaney of Meridian, Mississippi, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, both New York City Jews, three civil rights workers, in Mississippi. In June 2005, Klan member Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter.   Jews helped Blacks a great deal throughout the Civil Rights Movement days.  They were discovered on August 4, 1964, 44 days after their murder, underneath an earthen dam on Burrage's farm. Schwerner and Goodman had each been shot once in the heart; Chaney, a black man, had been severely beaten, castrated and shot three times. 

"The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to America's "Anglo-Saxon" blood, hearkening back to 19th-century nativism.  Although members of the KKK swear to uphold Christian morality, the group is widely denounced by Christian denominations."  

Hatred for Jews is equally as bad as their hatred for Blacks.  "In 1995, Don Black and Chloê Hardin, the ex-wife of the KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, began a small bulletin board system (BBS) called Stormfront, which has become a prominent online forum for white nationalism, Neo-Nazism, hate speech, racism, and antisemitism in the early 21st century,.

Duke has an account on Stormfront which he uses to post articles from his own website. He also polls forum members for opinions and questions, in particular during his internet broadcasts. Duke has worked with Don Black on numerous projects including Operation Red Dog in 1980.

Many KKK groups have formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups, such as neo-Nazis. Some KKK groups have become increasingly "nazified", adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads.  In Germany, "Another German KKK-related group, the European White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has organized and it gained notoriety in 2012 when the German media reported that two police officers who held membership in the organization would be allowed to keep their jobs."

"A list is maintained by the Jewish group of Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of 7 KKK groups

• Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, prevalent in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and other areas of the Southern U.S.
• Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
• Imperial Klans of America
• Knights of the White Camelia
• Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by national director and self-claimed pastor Thomas Robb, and based in Harrison, Arkansas. It claims to be the largest Klan organization in America today.
• Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a North Carolina-based group headed by Will Quigg,is currently thought to be the largest KKK chapter.
• White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan"

According to the laws of the United States, Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews had always been regarded as white, but many non-Jews around them questioned their whiteness. By mocking African-Americans through applying blackface, Jews more quickly assimilated into America’s colour-coded racial hierarchy.  

                                                      

The story line is that Young Jakie Rabinowitz (Bobby Gordon) loves jazz and ragtime, and wants to be a performer. But his father (Warner Oland) is a cantor, and he orders his son to carry on the family tradition. Jakie tries his hand anyway, only to be discovered by neighbor Moisha Yudelson (Otto Lederer) and kicked out of the house. A decade later, an older Jakie (Al Jolson) has followed his dream, changed his name and found love with performer Mary (May McAvoy), but he still wants to win his father over.
A Jew blackened his face for the movie, The Jazz Singer in 1927 when Al Jolson sang in blackface.  Scholars are divided about the blackface scenes in The Jazz Singer. Some say by darkening Jolson, it showed sympathy and solidarity with African-Americans, implying that Jews too remained outsiders. Most, however, saw Jews donning blackface as a form of whitening themselves. I say, "Scholars, Shmalers, they did it because they thought it went along with his singing quality and liked it.  The movie was exceedingly popular.  

On Sep. 1, 1926, in Arlington, Va., a Jewish baseball squad, The Hebrew All Stars, played a game against the local chapter of the Klan. The All Stars met at the local Jewish community centre before the game, with a roster including players like Nate Sauber, Abe Povich (uncle of talk show host Maury), “Ikey” Dreyfus, and a ringer named Flaherty, almost certainly Irish Catholic. This was not the only baseball game between Jews and the KKK. Povich recalled another contest where the defeated KKK team chased the victorious Hebrews across the field with bats. Nonetheless, the fact that they could play at all suggests the liminality of American Jewish racial identity in the 1920s: worthy of the Klan’s hatred, but not as loathed as African-Americans.  

                                                              

It also turns out that the September, 1926 game between the Hebrews and the Klan wasn't the only time Abe Povich played against an anti-Semitic group.  Larry Povich, one of Abe's sons, reports that he was often told about a game against a group of racists that the Hebrews actually won.

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Chaney,_Goodman,_and_Schwerner#:~:text=They%20were%20discovered%20on%20August,The%20identity%20of%20%22Mr.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan
https://www.pbs.org/jewishamericans/jewish_life/anti-semitism.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Frank
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/07/more-on-the-kkk-vs-hebrew-all-stars-baseball-game/21653/