Sweet Home Alabama: My experience with the National Council of Jewish Women ’60 at Selma’

Unity for the sake of unity is a means to get to a sum of zero. History tells me it is a route to abandonment and dispossession. As a Black southern Jewish Woman, I look to history to help me understand what is happening now and consider possible opportunities and pitfalls that may lay ahead. Of my identities, “southerner” is the one I’ve most recently embraced. While I was born in Tennessee, I only spent the first two years of my life there before my family moved to New Jersey through second grade, before debarking to a suburb of Chicago.

There are many reasons I’ve come to consider myself a southerner. I have indelible memories forged in the hot summer weeks and winter breaks at my grandparents’ home throughout my entire life. I also had short stints in undergraduate and graduate school in Georgia and Tennessee. Possibly more importantly, both of my parents were born and raised in the south. I think of the warm smiles of extended kin, their hugs, the smell of summer heating the red clay like soil, the smell of summer rains, and the fear tinged with excitement for the summer storms. And certainly the racism; I think of that too. The common racism of looks and subtle gestures, facial expressions, or comments of disdain. The sometimes-terrifying racism of epithets, yes that epithet, being hurled at me, my sisters, and cousins from pick-up trucks speeding down highway 31 or the terrifying encounters of those same epithets being shouted from a pick-up truck reduced to the pace of a teenager’s gait.

At the same time, there were other more pleasant community members greeting us as we walked “downtown” or browsed in stores. Many would ask after us, our parents, and grandparents, and we could often count on the well known southern hospitality. I have a later memory too of two fellow graduate students speaking out when their landlord said to them, “Girls, you didn’t tell me she was Black.” Their willingness to use their privilege and our unity in working for a sum of three allowed us to have a year of learning, growth, and joy as graduate students and as humans. The south is in my blood.

So, when Rachel Faulkner asked me if I wanted to go with NCJW to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the march on Selma, I responded with some clarifying questions. I needed to know what steps would be taken to prepare all the participants to be on a multiracial trip. I also trusted that the cohort of Jewish Women of Color would be well held and cared for. There was clearly intention and thought in making sure Women of Color and specifically Black Jewish women were present for this trip to remember and mark where our country had been and where we are now. When I was told that each night we would be staying in Birmingham– 20 miles from my mother’s childhood home, the place where my heart was born–with some trepidation and excitement I agreed to be a part of this trip. I was going home.

For a trip like this to be substantive and meaningful, it needs to be designed with great intention of heart and care. Some of my trepidation came from my family memories in the South–in its soil–which are in my DNA. My DNA holds those memories, and those of my mother’s, and  mother’s mother, and mother’s mother’s mother. We know from science that memories both told and untold shape the generations after. I have heard some of my ancestors’ stories that make mine almost trivial. Their daily fear and terror they endured are not for the faint of heart.

As a group of us stood in Kelly Ingram Park across from 16th Street Baptist Church, we took in the stories of bravery, terror, and change. The story of the murders of Addie Mae Collins,14; Denise McNair, 11; Carol Denise McNair, 11; and CeDella McCain, 14, after their church was bombed in September of 1963 and the rage and state sanctioned violence unleashed on the Black community that day. We heard from the white Jewish community through first source accounts of the attempted bombing of Temple Beth El  in 1958 and the many feelings and range of reactions and inactions by community members after the attempt and how the danger shaped the community’s response for years to come.

We also listened to the sermon given by Rabbi Milton Grafman on Rosh Hashana of 1963 just four days after the bombing of the church. He spoke passionately about the need and responsibility for White Birminghamians to rebuild the church while at the same time railing against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s use of direct action and his Letter From Birmingham Jail, which was a direct call for clergy to understand why freedom could not wait. It was difficult to hear the sermon, to hear Dr. King’s name and wishes being derided (even though intellectually I know that the majority of US citizens held similar views), difficult to hear white Jews speak of being fine and treated well and making the decision to not work toward bending the arc of justice. At the same time, it was heartening to hear the stories of the people who did, who gave up friendships and standing within their community. These were the contradictions that NCJW asked us to consider in all the discomfort.

The most trying and emotional part of the trip was our day in Montgomery. We made five stops including the Equal Justice Initiative Lynching Memorial, Legacy Museum, Sculpture Garden, the synagogue and the Mother’s of Gynecology memorial. The stories of terror and subjugation are too much to hold. I did not know that Black enslaved people were moved not only “down Natchez” by boats and their own feet, but also in box cars. The box car in the sculpture garden on the shores of the Alabama River made me wonder where I was. I had a moment of confusion of stories and histories colliding before my brain could remember how the tools of oppression and subjugation are repeated.

This was also the day that I held my dear friend as she wept at the cruelty of it all. I saw the fallen face of an elder in the Black community as a person evoked dogs while showing us the names of her ancestors who were etched in an iron slab. If I had not heard her tell the story, I would not have known that those two names held three bodies, nor would I have witnessed the harm that came when someone questioned how she knew that her aunt was pregnant when she was killed.

The weight of the learning and knowing landed in my body and I needed to move. I wanted to let the screams of my ancestors settle in the pavement as feet pounded on the ground where they planted, harvested, and built roads and buildings brick by brick using the mortar where hands, blood, and sweat surely dripped. Our guide told of little handprints that can still be seen in bricks today. I’m not a runner anymore and yet I yearned to release the stories I was absorbing and the trauma of bearing witness to my sisters absorbing the pain. While traveling back to Birmingham, our Kohenet for the trip asked people to move seats so that the women of color could sit together. It was uncomfortable for me because generally in our society much is first come, first serve, and the “ask” was done after people had settled in, including elders. Having that space likely was an uncomfortable moment for some, but I was thankful that people of color surrounded me. Being treated as “less than” is a shared experience. So too is thinking and acting on how best to survive. We asked a lot of each other over those few days. I’m not sure that what we needed and required was always explicit. I am certain that people left that time holding questions and thoughts about what allyship cost in the time of slavery.

Over the 3 day trip, we were asked to consider the racial terror sanctioned and perpetuated by the US government and held up by the collective citizenry. In the space we created over the weekend, I was struck by the ways we were able to take care of one another and learn from one another. I appreciated how the staff of NCJW checked in on the Black women on the trip in particular. I was also struck by the opportunities we weren’t able to have on this trip due to time and structure along with the opportunities that are prioritized and those which are neglected within our community and country.

For Jews of Color, and the Jews of Color Initiative, this reflects the unique space we occupy as worlds and memories collide as opportunities given. Not just in the areas of racial justice, but throughout the Jewish communal ecosystem.

Faulkner’s leadership was grounding and instrumental in this experience. She reminded us that it took 3 attempts to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge in 1965 and that it might take more before we cross the civil rights’ bridges of our time. That felt prophetic. Our stories and leadership are a crucial part of telling the story, building experiences, actions and bridges.

We as a community and nation continue to have work to do to confront our history and the actions that continue to impact our lives today. The places we visited in Alabama tell part of the story. I also hope that people will look for places that tell more of the story in New York City, Bia Oga in Big River, Idaho, Newport, Rhode Island and on the continent of Africa. These places are all connected and tied to our shared history. How do we tell this story more clearly, more meaningfully, with a clear and nuanced understanding of the past?

I want to help answer this question, and I am hopeful about a multiracial trip that I am planning for Jewish leaders to Ghana, West Africa. This trip will intentionally bring together people who desire to deepen their justice liberatory work with a focus on pro-Black thought and action. At the EJI Legacy Museum we stood on sandy shores with replicas of Black people chained and submerged in the ocean. We were on the shores of Africa before crossing the Atlantic to the shores of Rhode Island and South Carolina and points between and further. On this trip, we will continue to fill in the pictures using Jewish values, text study and immersive experiences. I am sure this will be an experience that will live differently in each body. I am sure that there will be moments of uncertainty and pain. I am also sure that there will be beauty in the communal work of reflection and transformation, and that we will have the opportunity to hold and heal one another. It will be another opportunity to harness relationships and experiences for us to force the arc towards justice.