those in his homeland.” He is an active Zionist, “makes contributions.”
Of all the letters and telegrams of approbation he has received in this case, he is most proud of one from Rabbi Alexander Lyons, of Brooklyn. “Your dignified deportment in the conduct of the Scottsboro case has furnished a timely exemplification of Jewish idealism. It is a great contribution to Jewish respectability.” He repeats that last phrase.
And another letter, from Henry W. Edgerton, dean of the Cornell Law School, of which he is a graduate, makes him very proud. Dean Edgerton praises him for his “contribution to public education and decency.”
“When you’re right you’ve got the entire world behind you!” says this ex-champion of unpopular causes.
And he is not dismayed by the hatred and strife that is found in the world. “The world is going ahead—absolutely, slowly but surely!” he affirms. “Once in a while there is an outcropping of measles, like Hitler in Germany, and the Negro question in the South, but the anti-toxins of education and action will avail. With all the wars, and the strife between nations, we’re living in a more enlightened age than the medieval era.”
Perhaps it is that warmth of optimism, that fighting optimism, that has so touched and aroused the masses for him. And that sympathy is in response to his simple, sympathetic absorption in humanity itself. “I am interested in people; what they make with hand or brain is something fascinating, but just the people themselves, their faces, what brings the lines near the corners of their eyes, fascinates me most of all.”
HAILED AS A NEW MOSES
“To hope requires imagination, and that kind of imagination requires a mental development that has been stunted in them by lack of education. But they hope, in their simple way.” That hope is passive, resigned. “If it had not been for the grueling fight waged by the League for Industrial Democracy, the bodies of those boys would now be moldering in the lime-pits behind Kilby prison. Though I am not a communist or a radical by any stretch of imagination, my heart goes out as the heart of the world must go out in thanks to the men and women who have done this work.”
His fighting, dominant hope cannot be denied. It is infecting the “resigned hope” of the Negro, inspiring him to activity. Leibowitz, proud of his racial background, has given the Negroes new pride in their own race. Their response to him is thrilling. When, on the evening of this interview, he appeared at a meeting at the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church, he said, “I promise you citizens of Harlem that I will fight with every drop of blood in my body and with the help of God that those Scottsboro boys shall be free.”
Four thousand negroes rose singing and shouting, crying out “Bless the Lord!” “Our Leader!” “Our New Moses!” He has brought them a belief in themselves.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
