Choose Wisdom [...] Genealogy of Noah's Descendants by [AFRICAN AMERICANA] [JUDAISM] Congregation of Ethiopian Hebrews

[Chicago: Congregation of Ethiopian Hebrews; n.d.]. Ephemera. Recitation of Old Testament genealogy from an African-American perspective, asserting that "The People of the Desert were from the earliest time a black people called Semites..." and concluding: "The so called American Negroes are the descendants of the Egyptian Jews of Goshen...commonly known as the Seed of Abraham in the Bible." The Congregation of Ethiopian Hebrews was established in Chicago in 1951 by Rabbi Abihu Reuben (born Henry Brown in Jackson, Tennessee); the congregation merged with Beth Shalom Hebrew Congregation to form the Beth Shalom Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in 1984. The Black Israelite movement became an important catalyst for African-American solidarity in Chicago, especially in the turbulent decade of the Sixties, when Black Israelite congregations gained significant numbers of followers. In the late Sixties, some four hundred Black Israelites from the South Side of Chicago relocated to Israel, to form the now-thriving community of African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, which numbers more than two thousand members. This broadsheet, possibly used as a recruiting tool in Black communities, is probably a unique survival from this important but still obscure phase of African-American religious activism. Mimeographed broadsheet, 14" x 8-1/2"; printed two sides of a single sheet of yellow bond. Horizontal fold; small chips to extremities; Very Good. Signed in print at end of text, "Welmer Yisrael" (i.e., Israel Welmer?). Undated, but likely ca. 1960s. Address given for the congregation is 4653 South State Street [Chicago].