Brown v Board of Education, 1954: desegregation
Journalistic interviews with direct quotations; investigative journalism. Different viewpoints. Personal storytelling mixed with historical accounts. Personal and historical mingle. Personal experience as evidence of factual storytelling. Coming-of-age tropes. Memoir. Outsider/insider role alternates/mingles. Chronological. Leaves out POV of women, African Americans. (What was it like as an African American going to UNC in the fall of 1955?) Baby boomer representation of the 1950s: saturation/overrepresentation. ch 11: Mister Jew "My father stressed leadership by example, that Jews had to be twice as good to achieve half as much." (141) "The problem started with the fact that Georgia Tech and Emory brought hundreds of Jewish boys to Atlanta, where there were too few college-age Jewish girls' thus the college boys began dating high school girls, which forced the high school Jewish boys to drop down into junior high..." (157) ch 12: Intermarriage Southern Style "...It was the society girl's form of protest to go out with Jewish boys; I mean, we couldn't date Negroes, right?" (161) "At some point in their freshman year, the fundamentalist girls used to like to date a Jewish guy, because he was sure to ask a lot of questions she couldn't handle. She was usually at the point where she wanted to rebel anyway, and he was her liberator. And since there was a premium on converting a Hebrew, she could rationalize is as a missionary opportunity." (162) ch 13: Big Wheel on Campus "We Southerners were still attached to the world of high school and parental approval; they were cut loose and flying on a four year lark, and could lose themselves in the sure knowledge that no one would know and care." (171) student project artifacts: recipes, memoirs, songs that have changed over time (lyrics and music and audio) ch 7: Kosher Grits
"The sounds were crucial. We wanted it to sound less Jewish-an organ, no Hebrew, rewritten music to sound like hymns, and an orderly service. And the sights-stained glass windows, no skull caps or prayer shawls, families sitting together." "They are respected, are called 'doctor,' and many of them stay for long periods of time." ch 8: Zionism in the South "His deepest worry at the time was the implication that loyalty to Israel might call into question his loyalty to America." ch 9: "Miz Evans" and Mister Mayor "They cared about fighting anti-semitism but I felt the best way to do that was by working for Israel." (113). "The clashes were not always between the generations. Sometimes jealousy and prestige motivated the debates among the middle-aged men who ran small loan companies or were accountants, those for whom the synagogue was the only power arena, the only activity outside the home to acquire whatever recognition life held in store for them." (116) ch. 10: "Jesus Loves Me" "Converting a Jew is a special blessing for them." pg 121 chapter 3: "To Be an American" pp 37-47
Growing up Southerners, they would absorb the regional defiance and unrestrained pride, the memories of rising to sing "Dixie" in grammar school assembly and, in history class, the surging poignance on reading Lee's farewell to his troops (41) chapter 4: "Tobias: Nine Generations in Charleston" He didn't understand the question because it was a question of a new arrival, conditioned to think of Jewish blood as inferior in the noble line of first families of Charleston, a Jewish relative as a skeleton in their closet. pg 52 chapter 5: "The Jewish Confederates Face Reconstruction" "Other accounts, claiming Wolf is incomplete, have placed the number as high as ten thousand. There were so many that General Lee could not afford an exception to allow high holy days furloughs to 'soldiers of the Jewish persuasion in the Confederate States army" (60) How did antisemitism affect Jews serving in the confederacy? Did being in the confederacy stray Jewish men from their faith? chapter 6: "The Lonely Days Were Sundays" "The word 'America,' an idea more than a place" (74) personal history of his family American Dream stories of Ellis Island, process of immigration How is this "a journalist's memoir"?
What are the qualities of the writing? Can we identify conventions from the discipline/profession (journalism) or genre (memoir)? What is your affective response to it? (glossary terms) (what do we need to chronicle today) How is it different from Suberman's memoir so far? Quotes from groups: "We were postwar adolescents who learned to doubt the idea that making money was the poetry of life-- uncertain because our parents gave us the luxury of uncertainty."(pg. 31) "...no different in the Jewish South, for every immigrant wanted his son to live a better life than he had lived. In the North, however, Jewish tailors sweated over the steam press to get their sons out; in the south, the small store owners worked to build a place to keep their sons home." (pg. 29) "We were the only large store that would cash a Negro's paycheck...even if he didn't buy anything; the first store in town to carry black bride dolls; the first to do away with 'white' and 'colored' signs on the water fountains..." (pg. 27-28) "My parents were one generation away from the immigrant experience but the values of the immigrant experience were forged deep within them" (pg. 29) "yet the story of Jews in the south is the story of fathers who built businesses to give to their sons who didn't want them..." "He had received overwhelming support from the black precincts, and ads began to appear in the paper asking, "Who will choose your city servants? The Political Bosses, the Negro Bloc?or...You!" and "What has Evans promised the Negro Bloc?" (pg. 7) "Ironically, Buck Duke, who once drove the Jews away from Durham, built a university that brought them back--this time as doctors and interns at Duke Hospital and as professors and graduate students on campus." (pg. 19) Group 1
A How did being Jewish shape Jews acceptance of slaveholding? B Jews were more accepted in the South than in the North because they were open to Southern ideals and customs. Group 3 A Do you think the contested subject of secession caused rifts in the Jewish communities as some Jews supported and some Jews did not support the cause? B What were the different reasons that Jewish populations supported secession and how do you think that relates to their experiences as minorities in the South? Group 4 1. How did Jews participate in the Reconstruction of the South? 2. What were Jewish motivations for participating in the Confederacy? Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4 A Did blacks ever house Jewish peddlers when they traveled and sold goods B How were the peddlers able to compete with the merchants who were already established in the United States? Passing, visibility of Jews, Eric Goldstein's " Southern Jews, Whiteness and Jim Crow" and Clive Webb's "Black-Jewish Relations"2/2/2017 Group 1
A Do you think the racism of white Jews in the early 1900s would have been different if they were aware of the future implications of anti-semitism in the Holocaust just a few decades later? Looking not to be a minority or to group selves with majority. For survival. Did not want to be oppressed like african americans. Post holocaust Blacks and Jews found a way to connect, shared experiences or parallel, Hard to answer. Every family or community ws so different and so differently affected. Difference in group experiences B How did the white Jews who openly discriminated against African Americans justify their actions when they often were at the hand of discrimination themselves? Perspective of survival. Preserve identity and Jewish selfhood even if it wasn’t the right thing to do. Group 2 A How did the fact that Jews held slaves influence their views on the civil rights movement? Jews held slaves, thereby grouped into White category. B What are some examples of southern jews speaking out against segregation and racism? Rabbis (see Goldstein). Northern Jewish activists -- and they were easy targets for white supremacists terror. Visibility American Jewish Committee spoke out. Other Jewish Federations in the South denounced the northern orgs because they feared for their safety. Group 3 A How did race relations changed between Jews and Blacks after Blacks were given rights in the south? (post civil rights movement?) B How has the relationship changed between the two minority groups in the South? Group 4 A Where do you draw the line between self preservation of the Jewish identity and attempting to relate to other minorities in the South? Hard to understand how Jews had slaves when they had a history of being enslaved. Difference between northern and southern Jews and how much effort they were going to put into ending discrimination. Northerners less fearful, more prominent. B were the African Americans and Jews in the south at the time fully aware of the persecution that occurred to both groups separately and how did this affect their treatment of one another? Things we learned: Jews were given all civic priv of whiteness but excluded from social events where their status might effect white racial integrity and purity |
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April 2017
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