The new documentary series, Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History, hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., explores the complex relationship between black and Jewish Americans.
The four-part series is now streaming on PBS and on YouTube. The documentary examines the long, sometimes cooperative and sometimes tense relationship between Black and Jewish communities in the United States.
In the trailer, historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. reflects on his understanding of race growing up. “When I was growing up, I only thought of race in terms of Black and White,” Gates says. “It wasn’t until much later, when I learned about antisemitism, that I realized Blacks and Jews face common enemies. But when we stand together, we are a formidable force.”
Narrated by Gates, the series spans more than 500 years, tracing the lives of Black and Jewish people in America from 1492 to the present. It combines archival footage with interviews featuring scholars and cultural critics, including Cornel West and Derek Penslar.
The opening episode explores questions of identity, emphasizing that Black and Jewish identities are not mutually exclusive. In one scene, Gates sits around a seder table with white and Black Jews, including chef Michael Twitty and Orthodox writer Shais Rishon, known as Ma Nishtana.
A central theme of the series is what historians have called the “grand alliance,” the cooperation between Black and Jewish Americans during the civil rights movement, and how that relationship evolved and came under increasing pressure over the 20th century.
The documentary also highlights that the relationship was not one-sided. In the early 20th century, Black newspapers editorialized against pogroms in Europe and warned about the rise of Nazism.
The series includes Billie Holiday’s recording of the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit. It identifies the song’s Jewish writer, Abel Meeropol, who wrote under the pen name Lewis Allan, as a schoolteacher. Meeropol later adopted the sons of Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg and also wrote lyrics for Paul Robeson.
The series also examines the tensions within Black–Jewish relationships. While artists like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong achieved major success working with Jewish managers, the documentary notes that some of those business relationships were exploitative, with managers profiting disproportionately from the artists’ work.
The grand alliance reached its peak during the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. Young Jews from the north were working with black organizers to register voters in the south. And the special relationship between Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. The influential American Rabbi who marched with King in Selma, and famously said, “It felt like my legs were praying.”
It was during the second half of the 20th century that many of the tensions between Black and Jewish communities in America came further into focus. As Jews who were increasingly seen as white were able to take part in opportunities like housing and education, black Americans were barred from.
The documentary also explores tensions that arose between black and Jewish Americans over Israel. Some of those divisions began to show with the emergence of the Black Power movement. And have only deepened since Oct. 7th and the following Israel-Hamas war.
Across four episodes, Gates and other commentators examine both the promise and the strain in the relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, and consider what rebuilding that partnership could look like today.
At a time when racism and antisemitism have risen sharply in the United States, the series argues that the historic alliance between the two communities remains not just relevant, but necessary.
All four episodes of Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History are available to stream on PBS and on YouTube.
