The Jew a Negro: Being a Study of the Jewish Ancestry from an Impartial Standpoint

The most the startling book of the year...its research is unanswerable. -Literary Digest The Jew a Negro has been analyzed by numerous modern authors studying race relations in earlier times in America.Arthur Talmage Abernethy PH. D. was a professor Methodist pastor in New York and North Carolina and a Democratic candidate for congress in North Carolina. He was a gifted speaker and author a score of historical books as well as being the youngest son of the founder of Rutherford College. He was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and became the poet laureate of North Carolina. The Jew a Negro argued that ancient Jews had thoroughly mixed with neighboring African peoples leaving little significant difference between the Jewish and Negro types. As the Jews migrated to more temperate climes their skin lightened and they became successful but their essential racial similarity to blacks remained unaltered. Black Hebrew Israelites (also called Black Hebrews African Hebrew Israelites and Hebrew Israelites) are groups of Black Americans who believe that they are descendants of the ancient Israelites. Black Hebrews adhere in varying degrees to the religious beliefs and practices of both Christianity and Judaism. They are not recognized as Jews by the greater Jewish community. Many choose to identify themselves as Hebrew Israelites or Black Hebrews rather than Jews in order to indicate their claimed historic connections. Books linking the ancestry of Jews and Blacks have become popular such as From Babylon to Timbuktu: A History of the Ancient Black Races Including the Black Hebrews. Many Black Hebrew groups were founded in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Kansas to New York by both African Americans and West Indian immigrants. In the mid-1980s the number of Black Hebrews in the United States was between 25000 and 40000. In the 1990s the Alliance of Black Jews (which is no longer operating) estimated that there were 200000 African-American Jews; this estimate was based on a 1990 survey conducted by the Council of Jewish Federations.