These Vintage Photos Of Jewish-Black Unity Prove The Power Of Interfaith Activism

[rug]

"The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence."



Baptist Church priest Martin Luther King Jr. marched with leaders including Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, second from right, in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. (ASSOCIATED PRESS

01/16/2016 04:13 pm ET

Carol Kuruvilla
Religion Associate Editor, The Huffington Post

On August 28, 1963, a few minutes before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the most important speeches in American history, a white man in a crisp suit took to the podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Looking out over the National Mall, Rabbi Joachim Prinz told the quarter of a million people gathered there that he came to them "as an American Jew."

He then spoke about his past as a rabbi in the German capital Berlin under the regime of Adolf Hitler.

I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence ... America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/these-vintage-photos-of-jewish-black-unity-show-how-powerful-interfaith-activism-can-be_us_5698131ee4b0778f46f8c175?ir=Religion§ion=religion

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. My mother, whose parents were killed in Auschwitz for being Jews

Strongly supported the civil rights movement, with words, money and actions. She knew what the corrosive effects of bigotry could lead to, and vowed to fight it.

One thing she told me was that she had been brought up in Vienna to be racially prejudiced, and said she had never been completely able to shake it off. She described it as "a stain on my soul" and felt it gave her an added reason to support racial justice.