When westward expansion began in the early nineteenth century, the Jewish population of the United States was only 2,500. As Jewish immigration surged over the century between 1820 and 1920, Jews began to find homes in the Ohio River Valley. In Jewish Communities on the Ohio River, Amy Hill Shevitz chronicles the settlement and evolution of Jewish communities in small towns on both banks of the river—towns such as East Liverpool and Portsmouth, Ohio, Wheeling, West Virginia, and Madison, Indiana. Though not large, these communities influenced American culture and history by helping to develop the Ohio River Valley while transforming Judaism into an American way of life. The Jewish experience and the regional experience reflected and reinforced each other. Jews shared regional consciousness and pride with their Gentile neighbors. The antebellum Ohio River Valley's identity as a cradle of bourgeois America fit very well with the middle-class aspirations and achievements of German Jewish immigrants in particular. In these small towns, Jewish citizens created networks of businesses and families that were part of a distinctive middle-class culture. As a minority group with a vital role in each community, Ohio Valley Jews fostered religious pluralism as their contributions to local culture, economy, and civic life countered the antisemitic sentiments of the period. Jewish Communities on the Ohio River offers enlightening case studies of the associations between Jewish communities in the big cities of the region, especially Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, and the smaller river towns that shared an optimism about the Jewish future in America. Jews in these communities participated enthusiastically in ongoing dialogues concerning religious reform and unity, playing a crucial role in the development of American Judaism. The history of the Ohio River Valley includes the stories of German and East European Jewish immigrants in America, of the emergence of American Reform Judaism and the adaptation of tradition, and of small-town American Jewish culture. While relating specifically to the diversity of the Ohio River Valley, the stories of these towns illustrate themes that are central to the larger experience of Jews in America.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest recovers the agrarian village world Indian women created in the lush lands of the Ohio Valley. Algonquian-speaking Indians living in a crescent of towns along the Wabash tributary of the Ohio were able to evade and survive the Iroquois onslaught of the seventeenth century, to absorb French traders and Indigenous refugees, to export peltry, and to harvest riparian, wetland, and terrestrial resources of every description and breathtaking richness. These prosperous Native communities frustrated French and British imperial designs, controlled the Ohio Valley, and confederated when faced with the challenge of American invasion. By the late eighteenth century, Montreal silversmiths were sending their best work to Wabash Indian villages, Ohio Indian women were setting the fashions for Indigenous clothing, and European visitors were marveling at the sturdy homes and generous hospitality of trading entrepots such as Miamitown. Confederacy, agrarian abundance, and nascent urbanity were, however, both too much and not enough. Kentucky settlers and American leaders—like George Washington and Henry Knox—coveted Indian lands and targeted the Indian women who worked them. Americans took women and children hostage to coerce male warriors to come to the treaty table to cede their homelands. Appalachian squatters, aspiring land barons, and ambitious generals invaded this settled agrarian world, burned crops, looted towns, and erased evidence of Ohio Indian achievement. This book restores the Ohio River valley as Native space.

Excerpt from History of the Settlement of Jews in Paducah and the Lower Ohio Valley My Dear Mr. Benedict: The History of the Settlement of Jews in Paducah and in the Lower Ohio Valley has received its finishing touches and is being forwarded by mail to your address. Kindly present it, with my best wishes, to the Jewish Congregation, whose president I had the honor to be many, many years ago. The old town and its kindly people have ever occupied a soft spot in my memory, and if the little sketch - unvarnished and truthful - pleases them and fills a useful place in the local history, I shall feel not only gratified, but amply compensated for the many hours of my leisure time in compiling it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Jewish history and culture is rich in the State of Nebraska. By the early 20th century there was a Jewish presence in over 30 Nebraska towns, some dating back to the 1850s. Today, the great majority of Jews live in Omaha, with a smaller community in the capital city of Lincoln. Synagogues, temples, community centers, and cemeteries mark the landscape. In the pages of Jewish Life in Omaha and Lincoln: A Photographic History, peoples' lives, events, neighborhoods, and institutions that helped shape and transform today's Jewish community are brought to life. This vibrant tapestry is captured in images ranging from a mid-19th century stereopticon to a recent aerial photograph. The over 230 images, culled from the collection of the Nebraska Jewish Historical Society, focus on immigration patterns that brought Jews into the region, from the opening of the West, to the Holocaust, to the arrival of Soviet Jews. Other images look at the changing face of synagogues and religious practices in the Midlands. Jewish-founded businesses that are mentioned in this book are landmarks in Omaha and throughout the Midwest, from the Nebraska Furniture Mart to Omaha Steaks International.

White southerners recognized that the perpetuation of segregation required whites of all ages to uphold a strict social order -- especially the young members of the next generation. White children rested at the core of the system of segregation between 1890 and 1939 because their participation was crucial to ensuring the future of white supremacy. Their socialization in the segregated South offers an examination of white supremacy from the inside, showcasing the culture's efforts to preserve itself by teaching its beliefs to the next generation. In Raising Racists: The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South, author Kristina DuRocher reveals how white adults in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continually reinforced race and gender roles to maintain white supremacy. DuRocher examines the practices, mores, and traditions that trained white children to fear, dehumanize, and disdain their black neighbors. Raising Racists combines an analysis of the remembered experiences of a racist society, how that society influenced children, and, most important, how racial violence and brutality shaped growing up in the early-twentieth-century South.

In the mid-1800s, many Jewish families joined the western expansion and emigrated from Germany to Akron, a canal town that also had an inviting countryside. They sought economic security and religious freedoma new start in a new town. But it was not an easy life. They organized their Jewish community into cultural and religious groups, and by the 20th century, their efforts attracted Central and Eastern European Jews with differing lifestyles. In 1929, the Akron Jewish Center opened and provided a place for all of the diverse Jewish groups in Akron to gather. It also played an enormous role in raising awareness of the richness of Jewish life in the Akron community. Jewish Life in Akron celebrates 150 years of Jewish culture, family, business, and organizational life through vintage images, many never before published, and supporting history.