Power, Protest, and the Public Schools: Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City

1. New York City’s Racial and Educational Terrain

11 New York City’s Racial and Educational Terrain 1 Many sociologists and historians would have us believe that Jews’ and African Americans’ experiences in America, and in American public schools in particular, could not have been more different. The usual tales depict Jews as hardworking, intellectually gifted immigrants who used innate abilities to rise through the ranks of America’s racial and class hierarchies. On the other hand, African Americans are often looked at with contempt by the public and politicians, or with pity by sociologists, as a group that, unlike Jews, did little to improve their social, political, and economic situation or as agency-less individuals trapped in a racist system.1 These beliefs and stories obscure similarities in both groups’ social, political, and economic standings and their experiences in America, particularly in New York City. Their narratives—particularly their racial identities—diverge most clearly after World War II, at a point in American history when society offered Jews the opportunity to join mainstream America but did not extend the same offer to African Americans. The story of racial diversity in New York City (NYC) begins many centuries earlier, in the early 1600s when racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse peoples arrived seeking social, political, and economic freedoms. In 1621, when the Dutch West India Company appropriated Manhattan for twenty-four dollars in beads and trinkets, slaves, indentured servants, middle-class merchants, elite explorers, and foreign royalty mixed in the streets. But they did not do so equally. Racial privilege, reinforced by wealth and land-owning and voting rights, maintained this hierarchy for centuries.2 Race in NYC, where Jews and African Americans have coexisted since Jews arrived in 1654, has always been contentious. Whites have always treated both groups as racial outsiders. But their processes of racialization differed considerably . Throughout their history in NYC, these groups jostled for position on an ever-changing racial terrain. While similarities between Jews and African POWER, PROTEST, AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 12 Americans resulted in similar experiences at many points in their histories, African Americans’ history as an enslaved population in America proved the most important factor in their continued educational inequality. Before the Great Migrations In colonial NYC, with Native Americans considered the group with the lowest racial status, whites endowed free African Americans with more rights than Jews, who were unwelcome in Manhattan. The Dutch West India Company only allowed Jews to settle on the island if they promised not to become a burden to the colony (this became known as the Stuyvesant Compact). Free African Americans could vote, bear arms, and own property. Jews “were prohibited from owning land, exercising the vote, holding public office, worshiping in public and possessing firearms” (Foote 2004: 43). Nor could Jews live inside city walls. But life for African Americans was far from ideal. Slavery existed in NYC at the highest rates north of the Mason-Dixon line until 1827. Whites subjected African American slaves and freemen to residential segregation, financially based voting restrictions, exploitation, and fear of being stolen South under the Fugitive Slave Law. National debates about slavery, rather than enhancing African Americans’ freedoms, found New Yorkers institutionalizing their inferior status.3 The Civil War affected Jews and African Americans in important ways. The war that freed the slaves heightened white supremacy and racist ideologies in NYC. On the grounds of their “whiteness,” European immigrants demanded jobs, high-quality housing, schools, and full citizenship rights. By the war’s end, immigrants, most of whom were Irish, had violently pushed African Americans out of the city during the infamous Draft Riots and exposed largely hidden racist ideologies. On the other hand, recent German Jewish arrivals used skills brought from Europe to become upwardly mobile merchants catering to the expanding Midwestern frontier (Cohen 1984; Goren 1970; Grinstein 1947; Sarna 1997). They began distribution, wholesale, clothing and manufacturing companies, many of which, such as Macy’s, Sears, and Saks Fifth Avenue, still exist. German Jews maintained their social exclusivity, but their relatively small numbers and accommodation to American styles, values, and ideologies allowed them a measure of security.4 Following the Civil War, African Americans increased their presence in the city’s business and industrial sectors but remained politically disenfranchised until the 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Though not considered white, Jews never faced this restriction in NYC. In the post–Civil War era, with whiteness established as the prerequisite for full citizenship, society’s treatment of African Americans became the...