Some 95,000 Jewish refugees fled Hitler’s Germany and Austria in the late 1930s to the U.S., only to discover a different kind of persecution when many of them settled in the South: Jim Crow laws.
Having fled their homes because of increasingly brutal segregation, the German Jews became allies of the African Americans who were the targets of similarly vile, if legal, discrimination.
This little-known chapter of transnational civil rights history was the topic of an enthralling 90-minute presentation Wednesday night at the Schar School of Policy and Government’s Arlington Campu
University of Augsburg in Bavaria.s by visiting scholar Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson. The talk was called “From Swastika to Jim Crow.” Waldschmidt-Nelson is the professor of Transatlantic History and Culture at the
Waldschmidt-Nelson illustrated her discussion with three case histories of German Jewish refugees who became academics in the U.S., teaching at the South’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities where they were welcomed in ways they were not elsewhere, particularly by Ivy League schools that had quotas of how many Jews could work for them.
Once the academics saw the frequent lynchings, brazen firebombings of churches, and cruel methods of segregation—Hitler modeled some of his ideas on Jim Crow laws, the professor pointed out—they were shocked. Added to this was the fact that although abhorrent racism was rampant, “they were now in the accepted position in society,” Waldschmidt-Nelson said. “It was a strange situation for them. They were now expected to sit in the front of the bus.”
The scholars joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other organizations sympathetic to the cause of equality among races and offered support in whatever form they had available.
Waldschmidt-Nelson said she was unable to determine if any German Jewish refugees did not protest Jim Crow laws.
“Their commitment to fight racism absolutely contributed to the destabilization of the system,” she said.
The lecture was sponsored by the Schar School’s Center for the Study of Social Change, Institutions, and Policy and hosted by SCIP director, public policy professor Jack Goldstone.