Not all felt that way, though. Rabbi Kurt Flascher, for example, remembers people condemning the 'the Jew landlords' during housing demonstrations, as opposed to just 'the landlord'. There were small incidents that occurred but these instances seem to have been few and far between.

The Letters of Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen, a district leader in Manhattan and member of both the Harlem and 7 Arts CORE chapters wrote a number of letters to various leaders in CORE.

In 1964, he wrote to Harlem CORE chairman Marshall England demanding either an apology from another chapter member or his expulsion "for his remark about 'Jewish money'". Cohen did not say what the remark was but categorized it as anti-semitic and 'vicious racism'. He noted Jews were donating large amounts of money to CORE and complained he was 'tired of being made a damn fool after 25 years in the civil rights movement'. A follow up letter two months later, noting nothing had been done about the remark, equated it with the disappearance of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. He also described the chapter's sending of an all black delegation to the 1964 annual convention as racist noting that meetings at Harlem CORE were half white. The delegation included members like Gladys Harrington who had essentially been holding back the tide of the future Black Power group.

His next letter a month later was to Roy Innis, who even then was a leader of the nationalists in the chapter. Cohen complemented Innis (and England) as doing good work in the chapter. Referring to his original complaint, Cohen railed against the anti-semitism that he felt existed in the chapter along with anti-Catholicism and the 'anti-white nationalists'.

The last letter in mid-1967 to Lincoln Lynch requests for 'a letter from (Floyd) McKissick praising the civil rights record' of two members of Cohen's political club. It was to be used as an endorsement for their political campaign.

The letters suggest his complaints of anti-semitism were not a major issue in Harlem CORE.

The Malcolm X Experience
Malcolm X spoke at a 1962 New York CORE meeting. Joanne Shane remembers him as being 'extremely vicious' to her. At the time she was dating the Freedom Rider Travis Bratt (Black). After getting up and confronting Malcolm X about his negative remarks concerning interracial relationships, she remembers he replied, 'You Jewish girl, what are you doing here, you don't belong here anyway.'(13)

Shane also noted that she like the rest of the chapter had a mostly favorable opinion of Malcolm X. This points to the fact that many of Jewish members were able to both appreciate and be critical of Malcolm X. Rabbi Flascher fondly remembers speaking with him while on the podium at one of his Harlem rallies with other members of Brooklyn CORE. NYU chairman Joel Freedman proudly remembers having a conversation with Malcolm X while sitting next to him on an airplane flight. SCORE's Tom Hurwitz also takes pride in the fact he attended a Malcolm X rally in Harlem but not that he got chased out by some Black members in the audience.

Sheila Michaels also remembers being at a rally in Harlem to hear Malcolm X with her friends, a group that included Stokely Carmichael. Carmichael knew several CORE members from such demonstrations like Brooklyn CORE's Arnie Goldwag.

Before he was the head of SNCC and a Freedom Rider, Carmichael as a high school student walked with friends on the Woolworth's picket lines.

Black Power Boobala
Even though the American Jewish Congress stated it found no anti-semitism in national CORE in 1964, as CORE moved closer to becoming a Black Power organization, there were incidents at the local level that caused problems for the national body such as what happened with Mount Vernon CORE.(14)

Anti-semitism became seen as one of the negative aspects of CORE's Black power phase, especially the NYC chapters' war against the Board of Education (BOE) and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). Various leaders of Brooklyn CORE from Ollie Leeds to Sonny Carson were labeled as anti-semitic during these battles particularly in the Ocean Hill Brownsville school district. In the case of Ollie Leeds at least, his Jewish wife, Marjorie Leeds, one of the two founders of the chapter, would disagree. Carson and Jitu Weusi, however, especially after Weusi's reading of the poem which came to be known as, 'Hey Jew Boy' on WBAI, became the image of the 'militant NYC Blacks who hate Jews'.

These incidents would lead to many a skirmish between CORE members and the Jewish Defense League, a group whose founder Meier Kahane claimed came about partly as a response to Sonny Carson's term in Brooklyn CORE. More significantly, these were among the many incidents that would eventually lead to the Crown Heights riots, arguably the zenith of the Black-Jewish crisis during 1980's and early 1990's in NYC.