In an emotional mass reunion, Jews and blacks who together waged America’s civil rights battles recorded their memories for posterity here this week and reaffirmed their commitment to brotherhood.
Nearly 100 of the graying activists and their spouses, as well as relatives of the “fallen heroes” of the rights movement, took part in a two-day colloquium at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center. The gathering was videotaped to form the basis for a planned archive of black-Jewish history.
In a dinner speech Monday that drew the participants to their feet applauding, Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young declared that while there have been and are differences between Jews and blacks, “There is much more that unites us than divides us.”
Young and others compared the sometimes volatile relationship between Jews and blacks over the years to a marriage that has had its ups and downs, but has endured nonetheless. He called the relationship “a model for the kind of diversity the world has to learn to live with.”
“We have done so much together,” said Young, adding that the country is “a better place for it.”
Historian Hasia Diner of the University of Maryland stressed that a supportive relationship between blacks and Jews is not one of recent decades only. It dates back to the early years of this century, when philanthropist Julius Rosenwald financed schools for blacks and Jews, and helped organize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909.
MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR KING
One black colloquium participant, Lolis Elie of New Orleans, asserted that he did not think Jews as a group had been more helpful to blacks than other whites had been. But other black participants quickly and vociferously disputed this, citing their own experiences.
The participants paid tribute to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at his crypt here Monday night. A memorial service for all of the “fallen heroes” of the civil rights movement took place Tuesday.
Co-sponsoring the unprecedented gathering, called “The Black-Jewish Alliance: Reunion and Renewal,” were the newly formed Majorie Kovler Institute at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta.
Jewish attorney Joseph Rauh Jr. was cochairman, along with Dr. Kenneth Clark, an eminent psychologist whose studies on the impact of segregation on children influenced the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 to require school desegregation.
Among the participants was Dr. Carolyn Goodman of New York, mother of Andrew Goodman, who was murdered in Mississippi along with two other civil rights demonstrators, one black and the other Jewish, 25 years ago this coming spring.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
