In the Almost Promised Land

Hasia Diner is professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Erin's Daughters in America and A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820-1880 (Volume II in the series The Jewish People in America), both available from Johns Hopkins.

Based upon thorough research and documentation, In the Almost Promised Land vividly illustrates the well-known but little-understood phenomenon of Jewish support for a better life for American blacks. Diner has produced a significant contribution to the examination of ethnic studies and an insightful analysis of certain aspects of the early years of the civil rights movement in the twentieth century. Cithara: Essays in the Judeo-Christian Tradition Helps explain why a special relationship between Jews and blacks developed within the context of a particular historical period and why that relationship ultimately ended. Historical Review Diner has neither idolized nor debunked the Jewish leaders who sought to help blacks achieve a better life. What she has done, and this should be a model for others writing ethnic history, is to examine the complexities that motivated one group of individuals to help another. Labor History No one has equaled the American historian Hasia Diner in richly documenting the strong support given to African-American legal, economic, and educational rights, between 1880 and 1935, by Jewish newspapers, religious leaders, lawyers, labor leaders, social workers, and philanthropists. -- David Brion Davis New York Review of Books 1999

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1. Jews and Blacks in American SocietyChapter 2. "The Souls of Two Nations": Images of Blacks in the Yiddish PressChapter 3. "To Fight Their Battles": English-Language Jewish Magazines and Images of BlacksChapter 4. "A Covenant Kept": Jews in the Black Civil Rights MovementChapter 5. "To Serve at the Common Alter": Jews and Black PhilanthropyChapter 6. "Our Exploited Negro Brothers": Jewish Labor and the Organization of Black WorkersConclusion. Blacks and the Jewish Quest for IdentityBibliographyIndex