A New Look at 20th Century Black-Jewish Relations, through the Microhistory of an Unsolved 1971 Crime

FAIN: FZ-287312-22

April Marisa Rosenblum
Unaffiliated independent scholar

Research and writing of a microhistory of an unsolved 1971 crime, the Philadelphia neighborhood in which it occurred, and the community of activists in Black-Jewish relations.

This microhistory looks at an unsolved 1971 crime, the Philadelphia neighborhood in which it occurred and the unusual community of activists it touched, in order to draw conclusions about twentieth-century Black-Jewish relations. Postwar tensions between Black Americans and Jews of European descent are often narrated with an emphasis on leaders and major organizations. By approaching this issue at the scale of a neighborhood and its private lives, I offer new insights about continuing intimacies between these groups after the Civil Rights period, while opening fresh discussion of the integral role Black Jewish and Judaic communities played in postwar urban space. Despite persistent public interest in stories about Black-Jewish relations, few works exist for general readers. I seek to add to this rich scholarly conversation, while opening the subject to a broad spectrum of U.S. readers.