It is the summer of 1964 and my mother is pregnant with my older sister. My future family lives in the Jewish section of Squirrel Hill and have their pick of Kosher delicatessens and bakeries. They will continue to talk about Rosenbloom's Bakery and Polonsky's Delicatessen into the 21st century.
My father is focusing on his career and thinking about what it will be like to raise his own family. His dream is to give his wife and children a comfortable home and life free of anti Semitism and the freedom to live as Jewishly as he chooses. He supports the Civil Rights Movement and Reverend King but is not actively looking to participate in the protests. At some time in the future, he will feel that he missed out on something important by not being more politically active.
For now though, he's not aware that the Civil Rights Act and the soon to come 1965 Voting Rights Act are being drafted by civil rights leaders in the conference room of the Religious Action Center (RAC), the hub of Jewish social justice advocacy in Washington DC, or that Reverend King would call upon Rabbi friends to fight Jim Crowe laws and segregation in St. Augustine, FL.
Fifty years ago, seventeen Rabbis were jailed with other civil rights activists after protesting at a segregated motel. The Rabbis prayed outside the Monson Motor Lodge and Restaurant while protestors jumped into the segregated pool. Photographs of the angry motel owner pouring muriatic acid in the pool, and of police officers forcefully removing the protestors were plastered in newspapers the next day - the same day the Senate voted to approve the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
A focal point for the protests was the 400th anniversary celebrations of the city’s founding by the Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez. Blacks had been excluded from the committee that planned the federally funded commemorations.
Media coverage of the ongoing St. Augustine protests and the violent resistance to them by segregationists had put pressure on Congress when the Civil Rights Act was facing a filibuster.
A week before the rabbis’ protest, King himself had been arrested outside the Monson Motor Lodge. King penned a letter from jail to his friend and supporter Rabbi Israel Dresner of New Jersey asking for help.
“We need you down here with as many Rabbis as you can bring with you!” he wrote.
King would later call St. Augustine one of the most violent places he had ever visited.
Fifty years later, I'm emailing my dad this article I found on Facebook about the jailed Rabbis who protested and stood in solidarity with Martin Luther King. Of the seventeen Rabbis, eight are still alive and six have traveled back to St. Augustine to commemorate the 50th anniversary at an event called, "Justice, Justice 1964," organized by the St. Augustine Jewish Historical Society. My dad calls to talk to me about the letter that Rabbi Borowitz wrote on the back of a KKK flier while they were in jail.
“Here in St. Augustine we have seen the depths of anger, resentment and fury; we have seen faces that expressed a deep implacable hatred,” the rabbis wrote. “What disturbs us more deeply is the large number of decent citizens who have stood aside, unable to bring themselves to act, yet knowing in their hearts that this cause is right and that it must inevitably triumph.”
He reminds me he is 77 years old now, and that 50 years later, our country is still consumed with hatred, bigotry, and racism. The words the Rabbi wrote then are just as relevant and true today. We've not finished the job, he says, not as long as anyone has to show ID to vote or is prevented from registering because their skin is black or brown.
My dad then shares a story from his early childhood that he hasn't thought of in years. He was four or five years old living in the Hill District, a poor, mixed raced community. Someone is knocking on the door and his mother opens it. There stands a black couple, they have been beaten up and are asking for help. His mother brings them inside and offers them first aid. As he grows up, he becomes aware of his mother's prejudice toward blacks.
We are back in the summer of 1964 and my father is reading the newspaper every day. He becomes aware of the violence taking place in the south, but until then, had never connected the violence that brought the couple to his door and that of his mother's bigotry, to the violence he was reading about, known as Freedom Summer.
My father has largely succeeded in raising us comfortably and protecting us from Anti Semitism. I know no other as loving and loyal as he, and I know the love I now have for my family is but an offshoot that is traced back to the loving childhood, further removed from bigotry, my parents gave me.
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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