Negro Leaders Say Anti-semitism Among Negroes is Declining

Anti-Semitism among Negroes is believed to be on the decline, according to a survey of Negro leaders conducted by the New York World Telegram and Sun and made public here. The consensus of the Negro leaders, the paper said, is that there is a rising tide of resentment in Harlem and in other New York Negro areas, but it is more anti-white than anti-Jewish.

Conceding that there has been a strong feeling of anti-Semitism among some Negroes who deal regularly with Jewish landlords and merchants, the leaders felt that the Jew is no longer the target of Negro frustration and that most Negroes even view the Jews as allies in their struggle for civil rights.

Without exception, the Negro spokesmen interviewed by the paper took issue with a statement issued recently by Shad Polier, chairman of the national governing council of the American Jewish Congress, who predicted that “we are in for a period of increasing anti-Semitism among Negroes.”

James Farmer, national director of the Congress of Racial Equality, said that the Jews “have made the fight of the American Negro their fight” and added that the civil rights movement and the liberal Jewish community are natural allies.

Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, professor of psychology at City College and head of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, said that he did not think that anti-Semitism was “a salient part of the contemporary Negro protest.” He said the contemporary scapegoat of the Negro ghetto was the police and that there was “much less anti-Semitism today than 20 years ago.”

Whitney M. Young, Jr., executive director of the National Urban League, said that although “the Jewish person bears the brunt of the resentment against the whites,” he is not seen as a Jew but as a white. He said he felt there was less anti-Semitism today “because the forces at work hostile to the Negro are hostile to the Jew too.”

James Lawson, head of the United African Nationalist Movement, said that it was not anti-Semitism that motivated the Negro. “It just happens black people deal with Jews most.”