Early on, Jews had found that superstition and belief in magic among the less educated classes of both Black and White Americans was a source of great untapped financial potential that they could single-handedly capitalize on. For years, Jewish stage magicians had earned considerable fortunes entertaining audiences in America as far back as the 1700s when Jacob Philadelphia (born Jacob Meyer), captivated spectators by performing illusions by slight of hand.

The Vaudeville circuits of the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw numerous Jewish entertainers performing stage magic acts across America, while Jewish booking agents often made careers of managing the acts of other entertainers such as the African American stage magician known as "Black Herman" (born Benjamin Rucker), whose performance tours were organized by his agent, a Mr. Young.

Young also operated an occult supply business known as Oracle Products Company, which sold various types of incense, herbs, oils and other products such as "Young's Chinese Wash." Along with this he published several books, such as the ghost-written biography of Black Herman, entitled Secrets of Magic, Mystery, and Legerdemain, which was intended for sale at Black Herman's stage shows. Other titles written by Mr. Young under the pseudonym "Lewis De Claremont", such as 7 Keys to Power, 7 Steps to Success, The Ancient's Book of Magic, The Ancient Book of Formulas, and Legends of Incense, Herb, and Oil Magic (which encouraged readers to purchase the various incense, herbs, oils, and washes marketed by Young's Oracle Products Company during the 1930s) were also sold.

By 1938, Mr. Young had fallen on hard times and, as payment for a debt that he owed, he transferred the publication rights of all of his books over to Joseph W. Kay (born Joseph Spitalnick), a Jewish-American jazz musician who began publishing occult books as the founder of Dorene Publishing Company while operating an occult supply company called Fulton Religious Supply. He also published various other saddle-stitched booklets under the Empire Publishing and Raymond Publishing imprints. For nearly 30 years, Joe Kay continued to print and sell Young's Lewis De Claremont's numerous titles through Dorene Publishing, a business that was inherited by his son, Ed Kay, who continued to market occult books to the largely African-American hoo-doo community through the end of the twentieth century.

The Lucky Heart Company of Memphis, Tennessee is one of the oldest surviving manufacturers of beauty products for the African-American market. Like many other such companies it was founded during the years immediately after World War One by Jewish American chemists and pharmacists -- in this case members of the Joseph Menke and Morris Shapiro families. LeRue Marx was the company's chief chemist and, for a number of years, Marcus Menke, a relative of Joseph Menke who later went on to found the Clover Horn Company in Baltimore, Maryland, was employed as a salesman. The Shapiro family still owns the company. During the 1920s and 1930s Lucky Heart added a line of supplies for hoodoo root workers, including dressing oils, self-lighting incense, and scented sachet powders.

According to Lucky Heart's former chemist and warehouse manager, LeRue Marx, the Lucky Heart line of dressing oils, self-lighting incense powders, and scented sachets was made on the premises in Memphis, but many of the curios sold by Lucky Heart, especially the herbs, roots, and minerals, were repackaged from bulk shipments purchased from Morton Neumann's Chicago-based Famous Products Distribution.

Famous Products was the wholesale operation that lay behind both Neumann's hoodoo-oriented King Novelty Company and his cosmetics manufactory, Valmor Beauty Products, which sold perfumes, skin bleaches, and hair straighteners for African-Americans under the brand names Sweet Georgia Brown, Madame Jones, and Lucky Brown. During the 1930s and early 1940s, The Shapiro Family's Lucky Heart products, like Neumann's King Novelty and Valmor brands, were marketed through a system of agents within the Jewish-American retail community.

LeRue Marx was born in 1913 and had lived his entire life in Memphis. His parents, Lee and Julia Marx, were Jewish, and his father was a cousin of the famous Marx Brothers comedians of vaudeville and film fame. According to LeRue, his father, Lee Marx, was a pharmacist whose dry goods and drug store served primarily African-American customers. In addition to medicines and cosmetics, the elder Mr. Marx also stocked a small line of curios, mostly the raw makings for root work formulas such as Goofer Dust and the like.

One of the products that crossed the thin line between conventional cosmetics, so-called "lucky" cosmetics and a lucky hoodoo curio, was Hoyt's Cologne. It was a cheap perfume that sold for ten cents per bottle. Faith in Hoyt's Cologne extended well beyond Memphis. All across the South, East, and West, one learns that this humble brand of perfume was widely believed to be efficacious in "feeding" mojo hands, to bring luck in love spells and, above all, to be an effective lucky hand rub and body wash for card players, crap shooters, and those who bet on policy.

The Lucky Mon-Gol Company was a short-lived company that arose after the break-up of the partnership between the families of Morris Shapiro and Joseph Menke of the Lucky Heart Cosmetics Company, and eventually led to the founding of the Clover Horn Company by Marcus Menke in Baltimore, Maryland.

Lucky Brown cosmetics were distributed by Famous Products, owned by Morton Neumann. a Jewish American chemist in Chicago, Illinois, whose Valmor company also manufactured and packaged hoodoo curios and spiritual supplies such as Genuine Mo-Jo Brand lodestones under the King Novelty Company name, and produced cosmetics under the Sweet Georgia Brown and Madame Jones names. Neumann's chief competition came from the Memphis based Lucky Heart Company owned by the Shapiro family, which marketed a similar assortment of African-American cosmetics and Lucky Heart hoodoo curios.

Both companies sold through a system of agents who lived in the South, as well as by direct mail order through ads in the black-owned and nationally-distributed Chicago Defender newspaper. As King Novelty/Famous Products, the Jewish American chemist Morton Neumann was a major manufacturer and distributor of hoodoo curios and cosmetics to urban and rural African-American communities by mail order, and through agents from the early 1930s until well into the late 1950s. He maintained two separate lines of goods -- cosmetics and curios.

Neumann was born in Chicago, spent some time in New York City as a young man working as a jewelry setter, and returned to Chicago to found his own cosmetics and chemical company. An accomplished inventor, he patented a wonderful type of incense which, when burned, left the faint trace of lucky numbers in the ashes, and was sold through King Novelty, his hoodoo and conjure supply company.

Under two other company names, Valmor Products and the Madam Jones Co., he manufactured and sold cosmetics for the African-American retail market, by mail order, and through agents. He also set up Famous Products Distribution to handle distribution of the Valmor, Madam Jones, and King Novelty lines to other wholesalers, and to large retailers.

Other areas where blacks suffered from exploitation by Jews were in the entertainment and media industries, which have been heavily dominated by Jewish actors, comedians, entertainers, directors, producers, and cartoonists for decades, going back to Vaudeville and the very beginnings of the motion picture industry.

Among the most famous of the blackface minstrel performers was Al Jolson, born as Asa Yoelson in Lithuania, to Jewish parents in 1886. Jolson immigrated to New York in 1894, and by 1904 he was performing in blackface makeup as a minstrel in Vaudeville theaters. In 1927 Jolson was cast to star in the first feature-length motion picture with sound, The Jazz Singer, based on the play The Day of Atonement by Jewish playwright Samson Raphaelson, and produced by the Jewish-owned film studios of the Warner Brothers.

Brothers Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner, sons of Benjamin and Pearl Wonsal, Jewish immigrants from Poland who arrived in the United States in the late 1880s, grew up in America at a time of rapid technological and industrial development which offered opportunities in new careers that had not previous existed. After working as a silent movie projectionist in Youngstown, Ohio, Sam Warner became convinced of the new medium's potential as a profitable enterprise.

In 1903 he and his brother, Albert Warner, purchased a used Model B Edison Kinetoscope projector for $1,000 from a projectionist who was "down on his luck," and began to hold showings of Thomas Edison's motion picture The Great Train Robbery at traveling carnivals throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania. They were soon joined by their brother Harry, who sold his bicycle shop in 1905 and used the money to purchase a vacant building in New Castle, Pennsylvania, which became The Cascade, their first theater.

Over the course of the next decade, the Warners became increasingly involved in the movie business, progressing from owners of a chain of theaters, to executives in film distribution, to partners in the production of motion pictures. In 1918 they opened their first film production studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California and, after producing a number of successful films, Warner Brothers Pictures officially incorporated in 1923 with Albert as treasurer, and Jack and Sam as heads of production. As the studio prospered, it gained backing from Wall Street, and in 1924 Goldman Sachs arranged a major loan. The following year Warner Brothers signed a contract with the sound engineer company Western Electric and established Vitaphone, and began making films with music and sound effects tracks in 1926. In 1927 they released The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, which featured sound segments of Jolson singing, ushering in the era of "talking pictures."

Due to the success of these early talkies, Warner Brothers was able to purchase a larger studio in Burbank, California, and expand their business by acquiring theater chains, and buying out competing studios. Throughout the 20th century, Warner Brothers produced hundreds of motion pictures, catapulting dozens of actors to stardom and building a multi-billion dollar empire in the process. Warner Brothers was among the first Hollywood motion picture studios to realize that movies not only had the ability to generate vast wealth by entertaining audiences, but it also had the power to influence them, and served as an instrument to promote political propaganda and progressivism.

Warner Brothers was able to use this ability to shape the American public's opinion and bolster support for Franklin D. Roosevelt in his campaign for the presidency, as well as for his New Deal, and became a key proponent for American intervention in Europe during Hitler's rise to power, producing a number of anti-Nazi films vilifying Germany prior to World War II. At the same time Warner Brothers produced many racist cartoons depicting blacks with highly offensive stereotypes.

Hope of Israel Ministries -- Courage for the Sake of Truth is Far Better Than Silence for the Sake of Unity!

Hope of Israel Ministries P.O. Box 853 Azusa, CA 91702, U.S.A. www.hope-of-israel.org

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