Blacks & Jews in America

Four films exploring the complex relationship
between African Americans and Jews in the U.S.

Film series shown in conjunction with the class,
"History of Black/Jewish Relations in the U.S."


Strange Fruit
October 27, 2005

“Strange Fruit” traces the history of lynchings and racism which gave rise to the Civil Rights Movement, through the song made famous by blues singer Billie Holiday. Although generally associated with Holiday, the song's lyrics were originally written by a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx, in the form of a poem expressing his horror after seeing a photograph of a lynching—the “strange fruit” of a dead man hanging from a tree.


Fires in the Mirror
November 3, 2005

Anna Deveare Smith’s one-woman play explores the racial tensions that exploded between Black and Jewish residents of Crown Heights, Brooklyn after a seven-year-old black child was struck by a Hasidic leader’s car and a Hasidic student was stabbed to death, apparently in retaliation. The actual words of eyewitnesses are woven into a series of vignettes portraying the many sides of this wrenching conflict.


The Pawnbroker
November 10, 2005

A film classic, starring Rod Steiger as Harlem pawnbroker Sol Nazerman, an embittered man who can’t escape his past as a survivor of a Nazi death camp. Only after his assistant, Ortiz, risks his own life for Sol does the pawnbroker begin to rediscover his own, and his assistant’s, humanity.


Hollywood: An Empire of Their Own
November 17, 2005

Originally released under the title "Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies, and the American Dream," this film tells the story of how a group of Eastern European Jewish immigrants created Hollywood. Paramount’s Adolph Zucker, MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, and Universal’s Carl Laemmle, all immigrants from Eastern Europe, reinvented themselves and the American Dream in the movies, and in so doing created a profoundly American cultural institution while giving rise to a stereotype, based in reality, which has often been used against Jews.


Although shown in conjunction with the class, "History of Black/Jewish Relations in the U.S." (taught by Prof. John Bracey), the films were free and open to all members of the University community.

Visiting assistant professor Jyl Lynn Felman introduced each film and led a discussion afterward.

Sponsored by the Office of Jewish Affairs and the W.E.B. DuBois Dept of Afro-American Studies


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