Blacklisted Jews Like Us: Gerda and Carl Lerner, Intersectionality, Experience as Deviants, and the Film BLACK LIKE ME (1964)

• In Event: Intersectionality, Performance, and American Jewishness

Abstract

I address three themes currently being revisited in Jewish historiography: Black-Jewish relations, especially for Jewish intellectuals in the civil rights movement, the impact of Jewish radicals on twentieth-century American culture, and the adaptation of intersectionality for Jewish studies. As an intersectional case study, I analyze BLACK LIKE ME (1964) by Carl and Gerda Lerner, a film adaptation of John Griffin’s (1961) book of the same name.
Scholars have extensively discussed Griffin’s work, the autobiographical novel of a white reporter who darkened his skin to pass for Black in the late-1950s South in order to investigate racism. In contrast, the film adaptation was mostly subsumed under the original, not discussed separately. The specific medium of film, with its cinematographic–audiovisual language, was largely ignored, as was the leftist, Jewish background of its director Carl Lerner and screenwriter Gerda Lerner. I first look at the film as agent (re-)producing and staging knowledge of race, gender, sexuality, Americanness, and power. Second, I relate the making of the film to the Lerners’ experience of “deviance” as blacklisted Jewish communist artists during McCarthyism and to Gerda’s experience as a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied Europe.
I compare the film’s content and plot to Griffin’s original, then analyze how Blackness, whiteness, masculinity, and (non-)Americanness are constituted, how these difference categories overlap and are gendered, and what other difference categories (e.g., education, Southernness, and class) are significant. Thus, I explore how audiovisual media interact with the narrative and add further levels of content. Next, I outline what led the Lerners to this film. Experiences of exclusion and persecution from 1947–49 (for Gerda, a retraumatization of her experiences with Nazism), engagement in the interracial struggles of their community, and their experiences with the documentary PRAYER PILGRIMAGE FOR FREEDOM (1957) all played roles. Finally, I ask how much this detailed film analysis and the inclusion of the Lerners’ experiences nuance and/or reinforce the interpretations and critiques of Griffin’s narrative.

Author

• Vera Kallenberg