Rhetoric Race and Religion
1964 was a significant year in the relationship between Blacks and Jews in America. Black and Jewish lawyers meeting in the conference room of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism helped shape The Civil Rights Act. That Freedom Summer witnessed the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr. and leading American rabbis in St. Augustine, Florida, and days later the brutal murder of three Civil Rights coworkers outside Meridian, Mississippi — James Cheney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner — the first African-American and the others Jewish. Their martyrdom became another tragic symbol of the racism ingrained in much of America’s Deep South. But their deaths also sent a message that Blacks and Jews — two peoples with historical narratives of persecution and oppression — could make the ultimate sacrifice for one another and their shared ideals.
The last fifty years have not always been kind to our relationship. Polarizing figures occasionally grabbed the spotlight in the African-American and Jewish communities. And the Jewish community, achieving a measure of acceptance, comfort and influence, never fully committed itself to addressing Black poverty, lingering racism and exclusion. Rebuilding the relationship requires deeper sensitivity to one another’s ongoing struggles.
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