Black-Jewish Relations, Part 1
On July 14, 1944, the guns fell silent. North America was finally at peace. The Confederate States, led by the dictatorial and genocidal Jake Featherston, was no more. But out of the ashes of the ruined South, the burned out husks of cities and towns, came the horror of what Featherston and Freedom wrought - death camps. The millions upon millions of slaughtered Confederate Negroes. Whole families, whole communities were wiped out. The bodies of the dead - men, women, children, lay stark on the ground as American forces led Southern town after Southern town to see what had been done in their name. To the survivors of the Population Reduction, how could they bear the unbearable? How could they compare slow passage of time to the barbaric slaughter of the innocent, cut off before their time?
The surviving remnant, under the dual protection of American guns and occupation, struggled to survive. They had known only a life of persecution, hatred, and intolerance. Brought to the New World in chains, and made slaves. And when freed, even then they were still in bondage. And then this… That hellish man in Richmond who had so convincingly told the Confederate people they were responsible for the loss in the Great War. They were herded to camps, they were gassed and burned and slaughtered. Out of almost 11 million Black Confederates enumerated in 1940, only 2.4 million survived. The shattered remnants welcomed their American liberators as a tired, broken, and solemn people.
The names of their persecutors were etched into history. Men who were damned to the lowest pits of hell for their dictatorial, genocidal regime. For the unimaginable horrors they brought to Confederate Blacks.
Jake Featherston. Ferdinand Koenig. Jefferson Pinkard. Mercer Scott. Vern Green. Saul Goldman.
When news of the death camps - like Dependable, Determination, and Humble - were spread to every corner of the U.S. and former CSA, the reaction was one of pure, unadulterated horror. W.E.B. Du Bois, a well-known and widely respected African-American civil rights activist, is elected to the House of Representatives in 1944. There is a story that Oscar de Priest, who was visiting Du Bois in Boston, upon hearing the news of the extent of the Destruction, just broke down in tears and sobbed in each other's arms. Du Bois swore that he would do everything he could for the surviving Negroes of North America, and de Priest threw his weight behind the man. Du Bois won the election in handily, and would serve as a Socialist Representative until his resignation in 1949.
The African-American minority, which for the most part centered in Boston, rallied behind Representative Du Bois and his shout heard 'round the nation of "never again!". It was this outpouring of pure grief that spurred Northern action.
Representative Flora Blackford (known for years as the Conscience of Congress) and Representative Du Bois worked to cosponsor the Civil Rights Act of 1945, intended to protect North America's few remaining Negroes. The ceremony of it being signed into law was attended by Representatives Du Bois and Blackford, former Rep. Oscar de Priest, Cassius Madison, William Dawson, Henry Winston, Fred Robinson, and David Linden [1], the first and the latter six became known as the official unofficial representatives of the Negro people in North America.
Among the signing of the Civil Rights Act were the few surviving members of the Red Rebellion - Fred Robinson of the People's Republic of the Piedmont, and William Dawson and Henry Winston of the Black Belt Socialist Republic.
And it was the combined efforts of both Representative Blackford and Du Bois that the 23rd Amendment was adopted in 1945 - providing for equal rights under the law for all American citizens, regardless of state, race, ethnicity, or religion.
Representative Du Bois would resign his seat in 1949, saying only that his people needed him. Arriving in Port-au-Prince, the former Representative would become the leading figure of the Black community there, and was even elected president of the reformed Republic of Haiti in the first election in 1951. His two terms (1951-59) saw the overhaul and reconstruction of Haiti as a new, viable, and proudly Black nation. The large amount of U.S. aid to the devastated nation is seen as incalculably necessary to restore the nation. Over time, most of the Southern Destruction survivors will make the journey to Haiti, and Haitian citizenship remains open to all African-Americans; while Liberia also received a fair-sized portion of Destruction survivors (and, between the Second Mexican War and Great War, hundreds of African-Americans).
Liberia, another American-descended Black republic, entered into a free-trade agreement with Haiti in June 1951, formalized close ties, and continually worked for the betterment of North America's few surviving Blacks. Liberia instated in 1957 a policy called right of return, allowing any African-American (Northern or Southern) or Haitian citizen who so wishes to receive Liberian citizenship, can receive it the second their foot touches Liberian soil.
Haiti also worked closely with the Republic of Quebec, to preserve the French language there. French will become one the two official languages of the new Haitian republic, though nearly all French and Creole speakers of Haiti were killed in the Destruction. Haiti was so largely depopulated by the Destruction, and the surviving Haitians held a deep-seated hatred of the Dominicans who so willingly worked with the Freedom Party (and, in the midst of the war, turned over their own Black population to be killed in the Confederacy's death camps).
Kevin West [2], the son of Destruction survivors, is widely praised as an American playwright, author, and civil rights activist. Despite lingering tensions between Blacks and Jews, the result of Goldman's broadcasts and black antisemitism, West has been at the forefront of pushing reconciliation between them. His plays have long included Jewish characters, and he has even expressed admiration of Jews on many occasions. His play, Homecoming, explored Black-Jewish relations in the lens of suffering mutual persecution around the world. He saw little difference between the horrors Blacks suffered in the camps to the pogroms Jews endured at the hands of the Black Hundreds.
His multiple Tony Award winning play, Jesus Walks, addressed the matters of faith and lack thereof in the African-American community after the Second Great War and in the wake of the revelation of the Destruction. In the aftermath of the Destruction, religion became something on the wayside. Many became agnostic, or just renounced religion altogether, saying that "God is dead" for the lack of divine intervention on behalf of the Confederate Negroes. For West, he wanted to explore why people renounced it. Received to universal acclaim, Jesus Walks was seen as voice of a generation - with well-crafted scenes, powerful imagery, and heartbreaking lines. The main character, who is largely seen as an expy of West himself, sees the figure of Jesus, turns away to face the audience and says, as the last line of the play, "I want to talk to God, but I'm afraid because we haven't spoke in so long…"
[1] OTL Ralph Abernathy. b. March 11, 1926 in Linden, AL
[2] OTL Kanye West. b. June 8, 1977 in Atlanta, GA
I wanted to make sure that it didn't feel out of place in the thread. I always saw Goldman as a man who, in the end, made a deal with the Devil. He still continued in his role, and damned himself and remains a horrible man, but the reasons why he became involved with the Freedom Party was out of an intense desire to protect Southern Jews (he remembered with perfect clarity the Leo Frank lynching). 