MLK Monument Recalls When Blacks, Jews Marched Together
Washington, D.C.—
When you first walk through the Mountain of Despair that marks the entrance of the new memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. on the National Mall, the vision of two massive walls of water about to collapse is inescapable. As visitors pass through and see King’s likeness etched into the part of the monument known as the Stone of Hope, it is almost as if King is getting ready to part the Tidal Basin for his people’s long-awaited escape to freedom.
“It’s gorgeous,” Rachel Silvert, a senior at American University, said. “It’s a beautiful monument.”
King was a modern Moses for the African-American community. Today, both Moses and King are symbols of freedom, of the ideal that people deserve to live their lives as human beings and should not be subjected to horrors based solely on their background.
“Just being a Jewish person living in America, there’s definitely ways of seeing the parallels in our histories,” Silvert said.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, until the late 1960s, blacks and Jews walked hand-in-hand to bring civil rights to the African-American community. Jews helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League. Jews, including the famed Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, marched in greater numbers than any other White group in United States during the civil rights movement. Jews and Blacks shared not only a history of strife, but also certain values.
“Even without words, our march was worship,” Heschel famously wrote. “I felt my legs were praying.”
King saw the inexplicable connection between Blacks and Jews. Both faced incredible loss under centuries of bigotry and racism. Both sought a connection to their homeland. Both wanted their rights and honor restored.
“That came from our own experience as a minority, a sense of fair play,” former American University Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Kenneth Cohen said. “We had suffered and been discriminated against, and people identified with it.”
King made a point of including Jews in his discussions of social justice, recognizing that they were a necessary part of the future of the Civil Rights movement, according to Clarence Lusane, a professor of comparative race relations at American University.
The new memorial to King is a reminder that Black-Jewish relations are weaker today than they were then. As anti-Semitism declined and Jews gained greater economic prosperity during the 1960s, Blacks, particularly Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, believed that the Jews were as privileged as any Whites and were no longer an ally. The growing financial influence of the Jewish community and use of affirmative action that aided Jews more than Blacks also increased tensions. Many in the African-American community were also pro-Palestinian. Disagreement over Israel, on top of a growing economic rift between the groups, added to the conflict, Lusane said. Without a King to temper the negative sentiments of the Black nationalist movement, there was nothing stopping Black nationalists from cutting all ties with the Jewish community, Lusane said.
“Some of the anti-Semitism was incredible,” Cohen said. “It was really very bad.”
But Jews weren’t blameless. There were plenty of racist Jews, Cohen said. So the connections that bound the two communities began to disintegrate, and in August of 1991, 20 years ago last month, violence between Jews and Blacks consumed the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Though there were a multitude of factors that lead to the riots, race did play a role, according to Sabiyha Prince, a cultural anthropologist at American University.
King, had he been alive in 1991, would have looked at the Crown Heights Riots, and the current state of the African-American community as a shame. Racism still abounds and war is rampant, Lusane said. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Blacks also now face an unemployment rate almost double the national average.
“His main dream of justice raining down across the nation, and to a great degree across the world, absolutely has not happened,” Lusane said.
Many, including Lusane, feel that there is room for renewed cooperation between Jews and Blacks, though not without its difficulties.
“[Black-Jewish relations are] relevant in the sense that the broader politics of the Black community and the broader politics of the Jewish community are similar,” Lusane said. “There’s still an overlap of agendas.”
Zach C. Cohen is a sophomore at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the student life editor of The Eagle at AU, the new media coordinator of Scholarships for Burma and the business manager of Dime a Dozen, AU’s premiere co-ed a cappella group. Previously, Zach has contributed writing and reporting to TIME Magazine, AWOL and AmWord. He is a New Voices National Correspondent and this is his first piece for New Voices Magazine.
