From Patronage to Pluralism: Jews in the Circulation of African American Culture

In making the talent and vitality of African Americans central to the nation's artistic legacy, Jews played an integral—and indeed indispensable—role. Although black Americans were historically denied the most basic rights that the Constitution promised, they managed in the twentieth century to demonstrate a creativity that accelerated the drive for democratic inclusion and racial justice. How they did so cannot be analytically separated from the agencies and institutions at the disposal of black artists and performers. They needed the apparatus of mass communication to deliver their dreams, and in that effort Jews were deeply entwined. Thus they not only made the popular arts of the U.S. nearly inescapable in human history, but also helped make conspicuous the full claims to humanity that black Americans demanded.

To make black culture visible and audible, talent was not enough. What was needed were whites who could see past the phobias of color to the creativity that a despised minority exhibited. What was needed was a willingness to offer support for the innovativeness and excellence that the black community could generate. Black culture needed to be transmitted, disseminated, and promoted. Its creators needed to survive in the marketplace, to have their gifts nurtured and rewarded, and to have such an artistic legacy conserved. The musicians and painters and writers needed to be funded and paid, and to have their work packaged and presented to appreciative audiences. For roughly the first half of the last century, until the civil rights movement wrought a rough and approximate equalization, black artists and entertainers needed intermediaries between the community that was so cruelly excluded and the mainstream of American society that might offer recognition, fame, and some measure of security and relief from the pressures of discrimination. Those middlemen were commonly and characteristically (if not exclusively) Jews. Even if they did not act consciously or deliberately as members of a distinctive ethnic group, even if they distanced themselves from the traditions and practices of Judaism, such numbers cannot be merely random. When the occupational pattern is so peculiar, accident can be discounted; and the explanation lies not in the vagaries of individual happenstance but in sociology. Because a close association with black entertainers and artists was not a reputable way to earn a living, this business imposed few if any obstacles to entry; and Jews faced little competition. They were drawn, like a magnetic needle, to the projection of black artistry. That the quest for racial justice dominated the motivations of such Jews is highly unlikely. But neither were they dedicated to the preservation of white supremacy. Inadvertently but importantly they not only enriched the imaginative realm of their fellow Americans but also helped facilitate a more egalitarian society.

An early exemplar of cultural management was David Mannes (1866-1959), the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe. In the thoroughness of his secularism, Mannes was typical of the Jews who were attracted to black culture. Indeed he rejected Judaism by insisting that "music is my faith." His wife was Clara Damrosch, of the family of remarkable German Gentiles who made so conspicuous a contribution to the performance of classical music, beginning in the last third of the nineteenth century. Mannes served as concertmaster to Clara's brother, Walter Damrosch. But Mannes got his first serious musical instruction from John Douglas, a violinist whose race deprived him of a public career. That indebtedness helps explain why Mannes remained a devotee of black culture. A trustee of Fisk University in Nashville, the institution that produced W. E. B. Du Bois and John Hope Franklin, Mannes helped found a "Music School Settlement for Colored People" in Harlem in 1912. To help direct the Music School, he had the shrewd judgment to hire the composer J. Rosamond Johnson, who was also the brother of James Weldon Johnson, the novelist, lyricist, attorney, and diplomat who would serve for sixteen years as the executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1900 the brothers had collaborated in writing "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," also...