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1. The discrimination in the majority of the large downtown stores owned
and controlled by Jews against Negroes. . . . The Negroes understand that
the Jewish merchants downtown in order to help the poorer Jewish
merchants have agreed to restrict the Negroes from the larger stores thus
forcing them to buy from the smaller stores. . . .

2. During war time [1914-18] the Jewish real estate people ran up properties
in colored neighborhoods so that if a Negro bought a home he had to pay an
exorbitant rent; or if the Jews bought it they charged extortionate rents and
then put in undesirable tenants to get high rents, ruining the morale of
colored neighborhoods ....

3. As to house work . . . many Jewish people work Negroes very hard then
won't pay them an honest wage. . . .

4. ... Several years ago the Jews came into colored political meetings and
sought the support of Negroes, claiming they were urging their people to
support the Negroes re-election: the morning after election day, all Jews
were "in" and all Negroes

Felt grievances like these simmered within the Black freedom movement in
Baltimore in the 1930s, occasionally expressing themselves in the context of a
particular struggle, as in the Pennsylvania Avenue phase of the Buy Where You
Can Work campaign, or in the department store fight. Occasionally these
grievances broke to the surface in open debate, as they did at the City- Wide Young
People's Forum in early 1936 after a program that included a presentation by
Baltimore social-liberal activist, Rabbi Edward Israel. Rabbi Israel reacted sharply
to the discussion at the Forum meeting, and he published a commentary of this
discussion in Tlie Crisis. His article, in turn, elicited a series of letters in response,
among them the letter from LJllie Jackson quoted above. The ensuing letter debate
in The Crisis was hardly accidental, for the magazine openly solicited responses to
Israel. This whole controversy is quite revealing and should be reviewed briefly/*"

The occasion for Rabbi Israel's original presentation was a Forum Friday
night meeting devoted to the question "Germany's Treatment of the Jews: Is It
Justified?" The motive behind this meeting was the Forum leadership's desire to
educate the Black community to the dangers of Hitlerism. The form the meeting