| Abstract: |
First published in October, 1991, the Nation of Islam's anonymously authored The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews has spawned a veritable cottage industry of scholarship addressing its central claim that Jewish merchants dominated the Atlantic slave trade.1. See, for example, David Brion Davis, Jews in the Slave Trade, Culturefront, 1 (Fall, 1992): 4245; Davis, The Slave Trade and the Jews, New York Review, 41 (December 22, 1994): 1416; Seymour Drescher, The Role of Jews in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Immigrants and Minorities, 12 (1993): 113125; Harold Brackman, Ministry of Lies: The Truth Behind The Nation of Islam's The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994); Saul S. Friedman, Jews and the American Slave Trade (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998). One can only wonder whether, someday soon, there may be an essay or book refuting the Farrakhanites' tract for every Jew who ever traded a slave. |
