Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ended his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, with these words:

“Let freedom ring . . . When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.’”

That was not accidental language.

King did not simply say Black men and white men. He also said Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics. He was naming the fractures. He understood racism. He understood religious division. He understood antisemitism.

King knew the Jewish community had been standing with African Americans for generations before that speech, from the early organizing years of the NAACP through the Civil Rights Movement itself. Jewish lawyers, rabbis, students, organizers, and activists came south because they understood that civil rights was not only a Black issue. Blacks and Jews both had to be free for either community to be truly secure.

Blacks, Jews, and whites lost their lives in the struggle for civil rights. They did not wake up that morning expecting to die. They woke up believing they were part of........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)