Mishmaat:
Jones ys"v sr"y did not write that poem. Anybody remember the Ocean Hill-Brownsville teachers strike?
Here's an excerpt from Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle For Integration:
Radicalized students were also at the center of the renewed controversy that flared between blacks and Jews after the strike. Sia Berhan and Karima Jordan were two of Leslie Campbell's most devoted protégées at J.H.S. 271. Both had immersed themselves in Black Studies, changing their names, joining the African-American Student's Association, hanging around Campbell and doing his bidding. Berhan's notorious poem, "Anti-Semitism," was written in his office and inspired by his teachings. Campbell decided to read it, along with several other student efforts, when he appeared on a radio call-in show in late December. The show's host, Julius Lester, was a writer and a militant nationalist; his regular Thursday night program, aired on WBAI, was known as a forum for activists, and Campbell was eager to participate. The two men agreed that the important thing now, in the wake of the settlement, was to prove that the spirit of community control had caught on among youth in the ghetto.]
On the night of the broadcast, Campbell brought a pocket of poems, and it was Lester who chose Berhan's: short, punchy and dedicated to Albert Shanker. "Hey, Jew boy," the infamous opening declared, "with that yarmulke on your head,/you paled-faced Jew boy―I wish you were dead." (218-219)
Topic: Imamu Baraka (Read 1150 times)