Arkansas

Of the approximately 200 Southern rabbis, a total of 9 were active participants in the Civil Rights Movement. Of the 9 rabbis who were civil rights activists, 3 were born outside the United States, 3 were born in the South, and 3 were transplants.

While the vast majority of Southern rabbis privately supported the Civil Rights Movement, their congregations were afraid that White Christians would assume the Civil Rights Movement was a Jewish conspiracy and would stir up anti-Semitism, so they restrained the actions of their leaders.

Rabbi Ira Sanders of Little Rock was the loudest rabbi who supported integration in the entire South. In spite of this, the Arkansas state legislature passed four bills designed to circumvent the Brown decision by a vote of 88 to 1.

In 1957, President Eisenhower used the 101st Airborne Division to integrate Central High School in Little Rock after Governor Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block integration. It was an early illustration that the existence of the Union, not Jewish influence, was the primary cause of the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement.

Jewish merchants in Arkansas were cowed and enforced the segregation laws. Jewish rabbis had no power over Governor Faubus or the Arkansas state legislature. As for the Jewish media, the Arkansas Gazette was by far the loudest champion of integration in the state, and its editor was Harry Ashmore, a notorious DWL whose biographical novel was called An Epitaph for Dixie.