The Hitlers in the United States

Martin Luther King delivered his celebrated ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on 28 August 1963 at the March on Washington. Less well known is that one of the other speakers that day was Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a political émigré who had fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. His presence at the march demonstrated political solidarity between African Americans and Jews that had been strengthened by the horrors of the Holocaust.

African Americans were not initially unanimous in their condemnation of Nazi persecution of Jews. Some black newspapers acknowledged that the Nazis posed a danger to Jews but still saw the situation as paling in comparison with the daily abuses African Americans suffered. As the Afro-American and Richmond Planet argued, ‘Our biggest problem at the moment is to watch the Hitlers right here in our own country.’