The Burden of Blackness: Comparing the Mizrahi Israeli and African-American Experience in the Civil Rights Era (original) (raw)

Abstract

This article explores why some leaders of the African-American Civil Rights Movement viewed Israeli society favorably in comparison to the U.S. during the 1960s. I argue that African-American support for Israel was based on the impression that Jews from Africa and Asia (or Mizrahim) were integrated into Israeli society. Because of this, African-American leaders saw Israel as a society that could provide insights into how America could integrate the Black masses, particularly those migrating from the South to Northern States. Through ‘Holy Land Pilgrimage Tours’ civil rights leaders like Whitney Young Jr., James Farmer, and Martin Luther King Jr., Israeli and American Jewish institutions helped to forge the idea that the Mizrahim in Israel were parallel to the Black community in America. The supposed successful integration of Mizrahim in Israel were used to show that, despite all odds, Blacks could lift themselves up as a race from backwardness.

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