(Jewish Group) Were southern Jews in the civil rights era 'inside agitators?'

T. K. Thorne’s book, “Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days,” challenges the accepted view that all Southern Jews stayed aloof from the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement.

In her introduction, Thorne quotes Larry Brooks, editor and publisher of Southern Jewish Life magazine, who observed in 2015 that, despite “shorthand notions that ‘Jews marched with Blacks in the South’ on one hand, or ‘Jews in the South didn’t do anything to help’ on the other, the reality is much more of a gray area.”

Thorne, 69, who is Jewish and a retired Birmingham police captain, focuses on that gray area. Coming when it does in the Black Lives Matter era, it is a timely reminder of the long history of Jews and Blacks struggling together for racial justice.

Mark Pinsky: As the civil rights movement erupted, the trope of conservative white Southerners was that everything was fine between the races until the established order was upset by the arrival of “outside agitators.” Many of these were Jews who came down from the North. But your book suggests that many Southern Jews were in fact “inside agitators” for racial equality. Is that a stretch?

more...