“From the Synagogue to the Streets”: Outsider Rabbis, Mississippi, and the Civil Rights Movement

The historiography of Jews in the Civil Rights Movement is extensive, and recent scholarship has reevaluated the relationships between Jews and civil rights organizations. The role of southern Jews in critical states, such as Mississippi, is often amalgamated into one category: supportive but scared. The focus on two rabbis known for their outspokenness regarding racial equality, Charles Mantinband of Hattiesburg and Perry Nussbaum of Jackson, is central to most southern Jewish studies. However, it neglects aspects of their background. Neither rabbi was a native Mississippian nor accepted as truly Southern due to the stances they took regarding racial equality. Charles Mantinband was from Virginia and originally held segregationist views until attending City College of New York. Born and raised in Canada, Perry Nussbaum developed a different understanding of race and inequality. Although each rabbi attempted to make Mississippi home, they faced backlash regarding their stances on equality due to being deemed outsiders by Mississippi’s closed society. This thesis argues that Mantiband’s and Nussbaum’s relationships with each other, their congregations, and the wider community are crucial in understanding the Mississippi Jewish experience during the Civil Rights Movement. The study of these rabbis has three objectives: understanding how their congregations reacted to the rabbis’ activism, why they were seen as outsiders and “othered” by their own communities because of their views on racial equality, and the broader Mississippi Jewish community’s relationship with ideas of racial superiority and being seen as white. Reasserting these issues in the historiography complicates the relationship between Mississippi Jews and the Civil Rights Movement by refocusing Rabbis Nussbaum and Mantinband as important activists in their communities and congregations.