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April 14, 2006
A shared history of oppression
Blacks viewed Jews as brethren in the fight for civil liberties
in the American South.
PAT JOHNSON
Passover, which commemorates the freeing of the Hebrew people from
bondage in Egypt, is a celebration of freedom and redemption. It
is, for many Jews, an annual rededication to tikkun olam.
The spirit of Pesach and the ideal of repairing the world are behind
much of the social action in which Jews have been engaged for centuries.
Not only agitating for their own civil rights, Jews have been at
the forefront of many social justice movements – few as prominently
as in the African-American civil rights movement in the United States
in the last century.
On a recent trip through the American South, I was able to visit
many of the sites of that epoch in history and was struck by the
number of times the role of Jewish activists in the civil rights
movement emerged in the various exhibits. Among the destinations
in the increasingly popular phenomenon of "civil rights tourism"
is the King Centre in Atlanta, which encompasses the childhood home
and stomping ground of Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as his final
resting place and a museum and archives dedicated to his work. Alabama's
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute provides an overview of the history
of the movement, while the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Ala.,
depicts the monumental impact that small acts of defiance can have.
The National Voting Rights Museum, in Selma, Ala., is steps from
the Edmund Pettus Bridge where, in 1965, police violently crushed
a march headed to the state capital to press for an end to the barriers
that kept African-Americans from exercising their franchise. Little
Rock (Ark.) Central High School, which was forcibly integrated in
1957 with the help of federal troopers, is still a functioning school.
An interpretive centre operates across the street, in a reclaimed
service station.
Jewish support for African-American emancipation predated the modern
civil rights movement. Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), who was an
owner of Sears, Roebuck, donated millions of dollars through a family
trust to build, between 1910 and 1940, more than 2,000 public schools
and 20 black universities. At one point, it was estimated that 40
per cent of Southern African-Americans had been educated at a "Rosenwald
school."
But when the civil rights movement coalesced into a powerful social
force in the 1950s and '60s, the influence of Jewish Americans (and
a few Canadians) on the movement grew. This participation did not
go unnoticed by King himself.
"It would be impossible to record the contribution that the
Jewish people have made toward the Negro's struggle for freedom,"
said King in 1965, "it has been so great." The leader
of the civil rights movement cited the rabbis and other Jews
who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with African-Americans during violent
battles at St. Augustine, Fla., and mentions Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld,
an Ohio Jewish leader who was badly beaten during the Freedom Summer
of 1964 in Mississippi. The great theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel stood arm-in-arm with King during the 1965 Selma to Montgomery
march.
But most of the Jewish names associated with the civil rights movement
were not as famous as Heschel. Kivie Kaplan, a Jewish businessman
and philanthropist from Boston, was president of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1966 to 1975.
Many Jews played key roles in the leadership organizations of the
movement: the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights,
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent
Co-ordination Committee. Hundreds of others played important, but
largely anonymous, roles. However, the tragic circumstances of 1964
Mississippi permanently etched in the historical record the contributions
made by some Jews in the cause of freedom.
Jews made up half of the volunteers in Mississippi Freedom Summer,
the 1964 campaign in which activists, many from the North, joined
Southern African-Americans in a drive to register black voters.
Though the constitution ostensibly guaranteed the right to vote,
African-Americans had been kept off the voter rolls for most of
the 20th century by corrupt local officials who demanded answers
to ludicrous "skill-testing questions" before allowing
African-Americans to vote. In 1964, when the volunteers began their
work, only 6.7 per cent of Mississippi blacks of voting age were
registered. By 1969, that number was 66.5 per cent – higher
than the national average. The overall and lasting impact of the
voter drive was history-altering. But so were the sacrifices.
On June 21, 1964, a black volunteer, James Chaney, and two Jewish
co-workers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were assigned
to investigate a bombing at a church near Philadelphia, Miss. They
were arrested that afternoon on allegations of traffic offences,
and were never seen alive again. Their bodies were found six weeks
after their disappearance. Goodman and Schwerner had died from gunshot
wounds to the chest. Chaney had been beaten to death.
"The murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner
in Mississippi in 1964 strengthened the presumption that the fates
of blacks and Jews were intertwined," wrote Edward S. Shapiro
in the journal First Things.
One of the young Jews inspired by the vision of King was a young
Philip Bregman. Now rabbi at Vancouver's Temple Sholom Reform congregation,
Bregman was moved by King's vision to join the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference and to bring the message of the civil rights
movement to his Toronto high school and synagogue youth groups.
The preponderance of Jews in the movement was a confluence of the
Jewish social justice tradition and the humanitarian impulses of
the 1960s, Bregman said.
"Liberal Judaism had always stressed the ideals of the prophets,"
he explained. "It was almost like a prophetic type of Judaism
in the sense of social justice, when we listen to Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, who are talking about taking care of the poor, the widow,
the homeless.
"Also, we're not too many years away from the Shoah,
the Holocaust, and there was a reawakening in Jewish consciousness,
in the sense that we were now [in the 1960s] beginning to talk about
it. And as we were beginning to talk about it, if we're talking
about being enslaved in Auschwitz, well, we should be talking being
enslaved in Selma, Ala., or Montgomery or Little Rock, Ark., and
so on."
While African-American spirituals like "Go Down Moses"
relied on Old Testament stories of redemption – "We started
incorporating those songs into our Passover seders in the early
'60s," Bregman said – the People of the Book saw mirrors
of themselves in the African-American experience.
"We saw also a huge connection between that and the whole story
of Pesach and the slaves in Egypt," he added.
On the wall of his study, Bregman has a letter from King thanking
him for his efforts.
"It became a very major issue within the Reform movement and
to an extent within the Conservative movement," said Bregman.
"We were constantly being told from the pulpits of how we had
to be involved in social action."
While the welfare of children in Africa and Asia were central issues
for the Reform movement's social agenda, Bregman said, "we
also needed to be worried about individuals who are much closer
to home."
Pat Johnson is editor of MVOX Multicultural Digest, www.mvox.ca.
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