JTA – As the National Book Awards prepare for their annual literature awards ceremony – which takes place on Wednesday – the foundation defended its decision to honor a figure who recently reissued an infamous anti-Semitic pamphlet dating from the 1990s.
Paul Coates, founder of the Black Classic Press publishing house dedicated to publishing Afrocentric works and who is also the father of journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, will receive this year’s literary prize. An award that, according to the National Book Foundation, “is traditionally given to an individual for lifetime achievement in expanding the reading public and access to reading.”
Previous honorees include Jewish librarian and activist Nancy Pearl and Oren Teicher, the retired president and CEO of the American Booksellers Association.
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But Coates’ choice sparked controversy after a recent article in Jewish Insider which revealed that Black Classic Press had quietly reissued “The Jewish Onslaught,” a 1993 essay that focused on black-Jewish relations. The book was written by Tony Martin, who was then a professor at Wellesley College, and was notable for its coverage of a range of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
In this book, subtitled “Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront,” Tony Martin recounted his public conflict with his Jewish colleague Mary Lefkowitz after the latter discovered that Martin, who was a professor of studies, African women, had his students read an infamous book, “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.” The work, which was written by the Nation of Islam organization, notably exaggerated the role played by Jews in the slave trade.
“The long arm of Jewish intolerance has reached my classrooms,” Martin wrote in his book, attacking the campus Hillel group, the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations that had launched a public campaign against him. He then asserted that Jews “largely own or control the major media outlets,” declaring that “one of the most effective Jewish tactics has been their ability to find ambitious or alienated blacks to do their jobs.”
The book caused a scandal – so much so that, at the time, Wellesley openly distanced himself from Martin over his work. Kristen Clarke, President Joe Biden’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, has since publicly apologized for hosting Martin while she was a student at Harvard. (Martin died in 2013.)
“While the quality of his books in no way disqualifies Coates from the National Book Awards, one might have expected anti-Semitism to do so,” Jewish author and journalist Mark Oppenheimer recently wrote.
Black Classic Press did not respond to the request for comment submitted by the JTA. Coates’ son, Ta-Nehisi Coates, made waves this fall with the publication of his latest book, “The Message,” in which he compared Israel’s military control of the West Bank to the Jim Crow South.
Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation, told the JTA that Paul Coates was being honored “not for the publication of any particular author or title,” but in recognition of his work publishing black and African diaspora authors.
“The National Book Foundation condemns anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and hatred in all their forms,” Dickey said in a statement. “The National Book Foundation also supports freedom of expression and the right of every publisher to decide for themselves what they choose to publish or not publish. Those who examine the work of any editor, over the course of nearly five decades, will always find individual works or points of view with which they disagree, or which they find offensive.
Since the publication of the article Jewish Insider“The Jewish Onslaught” has been removed from the Black Classic Press online catalog. Yet another book proposed by the publishing house, “We the Black Jews”, a work written by Yosef Ben-Jochannan, focuses on Jews of African origin and claims to dismantle “the myth of the ‘white Jewish race’ . ” In this book, Ben-Jochannan draws a distinction between the lost Jewish tribes of Africa and “Talmudic Judaism” which he says has “co-opted the theosophical and philosophical works of the Africans of the Nile Valley.”
The Coates controversy came a year after a Jewish sponsor withdrew from the National Book Awards because it objected to a statement the nominated authors intended to make, during the event, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Among this year’s National Book Award finalists are two collections of poetry about the Palestinian experience.
The sponsor who withdrew from the event last year, Zibby Owens, has since published her own book on anti-Semitism, “On Being Jewish Now,” in partnership with Artists Against Anti-Semitism, a new group non-profit defense organization whose activities are dedicated to the fight against anti-Semitism in the fields of art and publishing.
Artists Against Antisemitism declined to comment on Coates’ award from the JTA.
The National Book Awards won’t be the only literary awards ceremony closely followed by Jews this week. The Giller Prize, a prestigious Canadian literary award, will host its own party on Monday, following months of protests over the event’s sponsors’ ties to Israel.
The Jewish winner of last year’s prize is among the figures who have spoken out against the Giller Prize.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this article.
