To combat racism and antisemitism, John Eaves empowers college students

Years before Hamas fighters stormed Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing hundreds of civilians, John Eaves saw a rise in antisemitism in the United States. He saw racism against American Black people, too. As a member of both the Black and Jewish communities, he couldn’t turn his eyes and ears away from what affected him most and troubled his spirit.

So the former chairman of the Fulton County commission in Georgia, and current senior instructor at Spelman College in Atlanta, thought of a way to fix the problem.

In 2021, he started Black and Jewish Leaders of Tomorrow because the once-strong relationship between the two groups, particularly solid during the Civil Rights Movement era, was eroding. College students across the country who identify either as he does, as members of both groups, or as one or the other come together to learn, ask questions, and consider ideas to combat the tide or racism and antisemitism. 

“It checked a lot of boxes of what I believe in as a Jewish student but also someone who’s done a lot of political organizing and someone who’s interested in policy work,” says Emma Friese, a student at Emory University, who joined two years ago. She says she jumped at the chance to participate because she thought it was a cool way to meet new people.

The group’s Unity Dinner at a synagogue in Atlanta in late March was attended by 70 people, about 40 of them students. That initiative will expand in the fall, as students from predominantly white institutions visit 20 historically Black colleges and universities across the U.S. In early April, student leaders and activists from colleges in Georgia gathered for a three-day leadership conference and worked on action plans for combating racism and antisemitism on their respective campuses. 

“Both of us fight the same -isms. Blacks deal with anti-Black racism and Jews deal with antisemitism, and the antisemitic person and the racist are usually the same person or they’re cousins of each other,” says Dr. Eaves.

He recently spoke with the Monitor by phone. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Why did you start Black and Jewish Leaders of Tomorrow?

I’m a former politician here in Atlanta, but also Black and Jewish, and have noted, based on my local work, activism, leadership, that Black and Jewish audiences often are concerned about very similar things from a social justice standpoint. But these audiences don’t necessarily work hand in glove with each other.

I was asked to submit a grant by the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta to support some new initiative, so I came up with the idea of Black and Jewish Leaders of Tomorrow. We’ve been working for the past two years in Atlanta, in terms of bringing college students who are Black and Jewish, or Black or Jewish, together, and to address issues of antisemitism and racism on the college campuses. We’ve been kind of doing this under the radar screen for the past two years and all of a sudden, especially after Oct. 7, the dots began to be connected.

How has the current crisis in the world influenced conversations or gatherings? 

Oct. 7 has ramped up the sense of urgency, and this urgency is, there’s a rise of antisemitism. So it’s urgent that there are deliberate attempts like this to bring people together as opposed to this divisive climate that’s out there. It really has just made this initiative more dire in terms of, we just need to do it. ... [A] lot of Jews are not happy about the war, and unfortunately, there sort of is this feeling that all Jews are supportive of the war and insensitive towards the casualties that are occurring. And that’s not true. 

How do you bridge the gap between Blacks and Jews?

There’s a history of alliances between Blacks and Jews. So we’re trying to rekindle that now. It may not necessarily be in the same form as in the past, but [it’s] something, and that’s really the focus. The war between Israel and Hamas has become just sort of this uninvited challenge that we’ve got to deal with, but it really has very little to do with what we’re trying to deal with. The relationship has not been a “Kumbaya” type of thing. It’s had challenges. The motivation is rekindling the historical relationship – and to do it between HBCUs and Jewish students who attend predominantly white institutions.

Why was it important to engage college students in this initiative?

College campuses are the training grounds for the future leaders of our society. Relationships that are established in college, whether it’s social or political, whatever kind of relationship, many times those relationships are maintained later on in life. The positive thing is, these are emerging leaders of society. You catch them at this point in their life and you educate them, you sensitize them and you train them. They can do some good things later on as leaders in our society. That’s the first thing. ... At the same time, many of these college campuses also are the incubators of antisemitism, and you just have to both educate and inspire people to want to do something good.

What’s your biggest hope for the people who participate?

There are several hopes. Number one, Black and Jewish college students realize that we’re more alike than different. Yeah, we may have a different skin color in some cases, because there are Blacks that are also Jews. We probably have different religious practices and beliefs. Yes there are some cultural things that may differ between us, but we also discover that we’ve got a lot in common. 

Number two, we have to identify the -isms out there. How can we train students to deal with it themselves on college campuses? Not in a confrontational way, but in a resolution-based way – how to recognize and deal with anti-Black racism. How do you recognize antisemitism and once you recognize it, see it, what do you do about it? How do you resolve it? How do you address it? So we provide leadership development on how to address issues of -isms on college campuses.

And, then, number three, life beyond or after college. What can you do, whether it’s getting involved in the political process and you know, supporting legislation that deals with hate, or antisemitism or racism? What can you do as an advocate or an activist? What can you do maybe as a future elected official to really effect change?