They don't know. Or they don't want to know. Or they do know and they deny it.
"there was even a Jewish kid lynched in Georgia"
Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi come to mind as well.
My father's uncle Nat was a union plumber in southern Florida, back when air conditioning built Miami Beach and southern Florida writ large. He was told though, and in no uncertain terms, that he could be in the union, but there was only so far he was going to go as far as leadership went.
My father would go to visit, but he understood if he was going to drive to Florida, he would be sleeping in his car along the way. You weren't going to register in a hotel with a Jewish name.
To this day I know people who refer to the Catskills as the Jewish Alps. Jewish people built resorts up there, because they weren't allowed to stay in the white people's resorts. Clubs wouldn't have them. Law firms didn't want the best and brightest of them. Sure, we look white.. right up until someone needs a signature.
At the upper reaches (where fortunately or unfortunately I don't rub elbows) it's a thing to this day. It's always a thing.
“Democrat Senator and Mrs. Claiborne Pell, actually took New York Republican Sen. And Mrs. Jacob Javits to ‘The Reading Room,’ a distinguished, old, men’s club, open to ladies only twice a year and ’never open to Jews and Blacks.'”
“The Pells were asked by Washingtonians Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Clagett to please have the Javitses leave and though they did not, they did seek a different table,“ according to the Post.
AI
