The Galveston Movement Tell me about...

by Bill Izard Galveston,

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Imperialist Russia, including what is today much of , was a dangerous and oppressive homeland for millions of in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hundreds of programs, organized for destruction and massacre, were conducted by Russian workers against the Jews during this time period, and the authorities Discover the did little to nothing to curb them. As a result, a tremendous wave of South with Jewish immigration flooded the cities of the eastern seaboard in the PorterBriggs.com! United States, most notably . Fear grew that U.S. anti- Your E-mail Sign up! Semitism might become prevalent because of such a massive influx into an already-overcrowded metropolis, and that at a time of economic crisis. Were that to happen, Jews fleeing a repressive Russia might lose their welcome to an American Promised Land.

In 1907 a wealthy New York Jew named Jacob Schiff spearheaded (and largely financed) a movement to divert movement to divert such a potential crisis by channeling Jewish immigrants into the United States interior, bypassing the Jewish communities of New York altogether. Ports such as Charleston, South Carolina, and were considered, but the immigrants were unwanted at Charleston, and they were too likely to stay in New Orleans rather than disperse to other locations. Finally, Schiff’s agent Morris Waldman selected the , Texas, with its strong transportation network with Midwestern and , as the best place to introduce the Jews to Middle America. Galveston was small enough that it would merely be a stopping off point for the newcomers, and it was a passenger port for Lloyds Shipping Company, which served the German port of Bremen through which Eastern European Jews normally left the continent of Europe.

The first shipload of Jewish refugees arrived in July 1907. Two days before they arrived a warehouse that had been converted into a reception center for the immigrants burned to the ground, which raised fears about their welcome. But the mayor of Galveston received them with a warm speech, and a Russian schoolteacher responded with a speech expressing the gratitude of the group. The Jewish Immigrants Information Bureau took over from there, providing connections to jobs in towns and cities from Texas to South Dakota and from the Mississippi River to the West Coast.

Also welcoming the immigrants was the energetic and compassionate Rabbi of Temple B’nai Israel. Over the course of the next seven years that the Galveston Movement was in operation, Cohen met every ship without fail, got to know the got to know the passengers, spoke in Jewish immigrants waiting at the Port of Galveston their familiar Yiddish, and helped locate food, shelter, transportation, and jobs for the displaced individuals and families. When a ship arrived in 1913 on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Jews’ holiest day of the year, Cohen boarded Popular the ship and conducted a service for the immigrants. Stories From 1907 to 1914, when the Galveston Movement was discontinued as World War I began, 10,000 Jews found their new homes in SWEET America with the help of the Galveston Movement, a small POTATOES: percentage of the two million displaced Jews worldwide. But the AIN’T NOTHIN’ dispersion of the Jews throughout the western United States through BETTER— LITERALLY the Port of Galveston not only strengthened the many small communities in which they established themselves but gave the 10 Jewish people a much stronger presence in American commerce, INTERESTING government, media, and academia than would have existed were they FACTS ABOUT to have remained concentrated in the cities of the eastern seaboard. GEORGE WASHINGTON

PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE: BONNIE AND CLYDE

SEERSUCKER AND SWEET TEA: THE MOST SS Chemnitz, one of the Lloyds ships from < ▶ > BEAUTIFUL Bremen, Germany, servicing CAMPUSES IN THE SOUTH (Visited 632 time, 1 visit today) (PART 1)  More 9 THINGS       YOU 5 7 ABSOLUTELY Bill Izard MUST DO WHILE IN Bill Izard resides in Little Rock, Arkansas, and is managing editor for LITTLE ROCK PorterBriggs.com. He's lived in the South fifty of his fifty-three years BRAXTON (he got lost in Cincinnati for three years one time) and loves early BRAGG: THE (he got lost in Cincinnati for three years one time) and loves early BRAGG: THE morning mountain climbs, river valley sunrises, and a good story to CONFEDERACY’S WORST chew on any time day or night. GENERAL NATHAN Read more stories by Bill Izard BEDFORD FORREST: HISTORY PEOPLE PLACES DEVIL, WIZARD, AND INCOMPARABLE TEXAS GENERAL FROM SIAM TO THE SOUTH: THE ORIGINAL You might also like these stories: SIAMESE TWINS THEY CALLED THEM FEIST: THE SOUTHERN BREED OF DOGS Bigfoot Wallace The Angel Of Mind-Blowin’ At 6’2″ this Texas Ranger Goliad Wind Farms Of was tall in stature but In the face of brutal Nolan County, perhaps even taller in despotism, one woman’s Texas tales. defiant compassion won For Philip Nolan the her the glory and money-making draw in gratitude of Texans then 1801 was wild-as-the- and now. wind mustangs. Two hundred years later his beneficiaries are making their millions by harnessing the wind itself.

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By Gloria Jahoda and the “Other Florida” | Faraway Inn on May 9, 2015 at 8:49 pm […] Jahoda was Jewish, well-educated with a graduate degree in anthropology, and had taught college herself early in […]

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