Large Archive of Letters Sent to WBAI and the FCC Following the Controversy over Several Broadcasts Concerning Tensions between the Black and Jewish Communities, Including the Infamous Student Poem Read on Julius Lester's Show

Julius Lester (1939-2018) was a Black academic, author, civil rights activist, photographer and musician. He taught at the New School for several years and then at UMass Amherst from 1971 until his retirement. In his highly decorated career, he authored over forty books, including a guide to the twelve-string guitar written with Pete Seeger; released several folk-blues albums; exhibited photographs, including at the Smithsonian Institution; and won numerous teaching awards.[1] From 1968 to 1975 Lester hosted Uncle Tom's Cabin on WBAI, an independent New York City radio station. Early in the show's tenure, during the 1968 teachers' strike over the firing of a number of mostly Jewish teachers from the majority Black Ocean Hill-Brownsville school district, Lester's show aired a poem written by a young Black student at an unidentified New York City high school. The poem was dedicated to the striking United Federation of Teachers' president, Albert Shanker, and opens: "Hew jew boy with that yamaka on your head / You pale faced jew boy / I wish you were dead / I can see you jew boy /naw you cant hide / I got a scoop on you, yeah / you gonna die." Lester-who, incidentally, converted to Judaism in 1982-defended the poem and its airing, provoking backlash from listeners and from the Anti-Defamation League, which called for his resignation and picketed the station. Offered here is a large archive of listener mail responding to this broadcast and to the later broadcast of a letter from a Black Queens College graduate. This letter also concerned anti-Semitism in the Black community, albeit with a much different tone than the student poem: the writer explains that "until quite recently" they had felt significant anti-Jewish sentiment because, having grown up in a Jewish neighborhood, they used to conceive of all white people as Jewish-and that listening to WBAI "was very instrumental not only in helping me to recognize my anti-Semitism, but in tracing its roots". The original copy of this letter is contained in the archive; as a manuscript note on it remarks, it "started a second wave of complaint and precipitated the complaint from Shanker to the FCC". The letter was broadcast on Larry Josephson's In the Beginning, and much of the mail is addressed to him. A tally on a filing folder totals the "hate" letters at 728 and "love" letters at 341; however, in this collection, the response is mostly positive. Moreover, within the positive response to the broadcasts are only a handful of openly anti-Semitic ones ("Good luck in your fight against the Jewish financial interests of New York City"). Nonetheless the "hate" contingent is well-represented: besides threats ("Don't walk alone, cock-sucker and don't take this lightly - we have pledged to get you and we mean it!"; "'He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.' And you will get yours, you may be sure"), a number of writers sent in poems of their own, usually riffs on the original poem, and generally containing abundant racial slurs and stereotypes about crime, welfare, and police brutality. Occasionally a rationale is offered: the station had defended its broadcasts on the basis of free speech, and therefore should air these poems as well. In fact the better part of the supportive letters, including ones from listeners who vehemently disagreed with the broadcast content, also cite the importance of free speech as a reason for their continued support; for instance, Adele Lawrence writes: "I am a subscriber and a Jew. Negro anti-semitism has upset me too. But I support the station's policy 100%. Lets hear what black people are saying. Lets search our souls to find out why. And lets do something about it - instead of all this self-righteous over-reaction." Like Lawrence, most listeners felt the need to include some demographic information about themselves. It seems that the broadcasts had prompted listeners to introspect on their own identities, and to write in with their experiences, ofte.…