"My people were brought to America in chains. Your people were driven here to escape the chains fashioned for them in Europe. Our unity is born of our common struggle for centuries, not only to rid ourselves of bondage, but to make oppression of any people by others an impossibility."

Those words, part of a speech delivered in 1958 by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the American Jewish Congress Biennial, expressed a solidarity that leaders in the Jewish and African American communities were able to parley into a mutual, active opposition to racism and anti-Semitism. By the early 1960s, Dr. King's message had inspired visionary individuals in both communities to forge historic bonds of friendship and brotherhood--bonds that helped define the history of the civil rights struggle in this country.

By the 1990s, however, cumulative tensions between the two communities have obscured the important work both groups have undertaken to promote racial healing and harmony. Some thirty years after Jewish civil rights workers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were slain alongside James Chaney in Jackson, Mississippi, some say the bedrock of common alliance has crumbled, the path to interracial tolerance and justice strewn with its rubble.

If so, a speech by Dr. King in 1965 should serve to remind us that even in 2003, we still face common enemies of intolerance and discrimination. Corrosive hatred, he pointed out then, does not differentiate between the vulnerable.

Every Negro leader is keenly aware, from direct and personal experience, that the segregationists and racists make no fine distinctions between the Negro and the Jew. The irrational hatred motivating their actions is as readily turned against Catholic, Jew, Liberal and One-Worlder, as it is against the Negro. Some have jeered at Jews with Negroes; some have bombed the homes and churches of Negroes and in recent acts of inhuman barbarity, some have bombed your synagogues... As the Nazis murdered Catholic Poles and Jews, Protestant Norwegians and Jews, the racists of America fly blindly at both of us caring not at all which of us falls. Their aim is to maintain, through crude segregation, groups whose uses as scapegoats can facilitate their political and social rule over all people. Our common fight is against these deadly enemies of democracy."

Fortunately, the lessons of the past have not been lost on many of the leaders in the African American and Jewish communities--people of conscience who understand that simple human decency requires that we join forces to enhance vigilance against intolerance. Much has been done over the last few years to repair the breach that has opened between us, and this steadfast work is bearing fruit.

In January of 1997, in order to better monitor relations between our vibrant and distinct communities The Foundation For Ethnic Understanding released the first ever annual report on Black/Jewish relations. Each year since, The Foundation continues to release the nation's only report chronicling instances of cooperation, conflict, shared experiences, and human interest between Jewish and African Americans.

Copyright © 2003 The Foundation For Ethnic Understanding
The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding was founded in 1989 by Rabbi Marc Schneier and the late Joseph Papp. We are committed to the belief that direct, face-to-face, dialogue between leaders of ethnic communities is the most effective path toward the reduction of bigotry and the promotion of reconciliation and understanding.

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