ABOUT THIS BOOK

Winner, 2019 Booker Worthen Prize from the Central Arkansas Library System.

A dedicated advocate for social justice long before the term entered everyday usage, Rabbi Ira Sanders began striving against the Jim Crow system soon after he arrived in Little Rock from New York in 1926. Sanders, who led Little Rock’s Temple B’nai Israel for nearly forty years, was a trained social worker as well as a rabbi and his career as a dynamic religious and community leader in Little Rock spanned the traumas of the Great Depression, World War II and the Holocaust, and the social and racial struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

Just and Righteous Causes—a full biographical study of this bold social-activist rabbi—examines how Sanders expertly navigated the intersections of race, religion, and gender to advocate for a more just society. It joins a growing body of literature about the lives and histories of Southern rabbis, deftly balancing scholarly and narrative tones to provide a personal look into the complicated position of the Southern rabbi and the Jewish community throughout the political struggles of the twentieth-century South.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

James L. Mosesis professor of history at Arkansas Tech University.

REVIEWS

“In this highly readable and well-researched biography of Ira Sanders, James L. Moses depicts the major contributions made by a hitherto unsung hero of the long civil rights movement. Starting as a young man, but spiraling after witnessing a horrific lynching in 1926, Sanders launched a crusade against segregation highlighted by his stand before the Arkansas legislature against four segregationist laws, his outspoken position during the Little Rock High School crisis, and his commitment to integrated housing. Although his experiences with numerous other social justice reforms established him in his community, as with other Reform rabbis in the South who spoke out, his experience began earlier than most, and the Little Rock environment proved to be generally more moderate than in numerous other southern cities. This book places Sanders in context within his community and relation to the activities—or lack thereof—of other rabbis. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Little Rock, Arkansas, and southern history, the civil rights movement, and southern and American Jewish history.“
—Mark K. Bauman, editor, Southern Jewish History

“An important new biography by James L. Moses, Just and Righteous Causes: Rabbi Ira Sanders and the Fight for Social Justice in Arkansas, meticulously chronicles Sanders’ significant, if largely till now unheralded, role in Southern Jewish history.”
—Tablet Magazine, January 2019

“Historians of Arkansas, civil rights and American Judaism will find Just and Righteous Causes an indispensable addition to the literature.”
—Melanie K. Welch, Arkansas Review, August 2019

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Before Little Rock (1894–1926)

2. Rabbi Sanders Goes to Arkansas (1926–1934)

3. Race and Poverty in the Great Depression (1929–1937)

4. Birth Control, Eugenics, and “Human Betterment” (1931–1958)

5. World War II, Zionism, Cold War (1933–1954)

6. The Southern Rabbi Meets the Civil Rights Movement (1950–1957)

7. The Central High Crisis and Beyond (1957–1963)

8. Honors, Laurels, and Plaudits (1963–1985)

Appendixes

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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