Dr. King leads a voter protest march in Selma, Ala., March 9, 1965. Rev. Abernathy is in the row behind King. Rabbi Dresner is one row further behind.
“On March 9, 1965, at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. chose two of the hundreds of men of faith present that day to deliver the prayer that began the march to Montgomery: the Rev. Dr. Ralph David Abernathy Sr., his dear friend and closest associate during the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, and Rabbi Israel Dresner, one of Dr. King’s most trusted allies in the Jewish community. Those men were our fathers. ‘You may rest assured our lives are richer because of your visit. May God hasten the day when we will live as brothers in this great land and will know no prejudice because of race, creed, color or previous conditions of servitude,’ Abernathy wrote in 1965, praising Dresner who had just delivered a sermon from his church’s pulpit. Abernathy died in 1990, and Dresner in 2022. In the years since their passing, we have often been asked what they would say on issues and events. We believe they would be appalled, as are we, by the explosion of racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia we have seen in our time. We know they would march against the rolling back of civil rights and voting rights. Equally painful would be their dismay over the continued erosion of the Black-Jewish Alliance. We have never needed their counsel more than in these past awful months, since Oct. 7. Our hearts are broken by the hatred, violence and loss of life in Israel and Gaza. We believe the lessons of our fathers’ life and work — and, most importantly, the ways in which they bridged the divides between their communities — offer us a path toward navigating our own divisive era. When Abernathy and Dresner met in August of 1962, it was through the bars of a segregated jail cell in Albany, Ga. During their years together in the movement, our dads became soul mates. Jail was not new to either man, and between them, they would go on to be arrested dozens more times. Both received multiple death threats. Abernathy’s home and church were bombed. Dresner found a bullet hole through the rear window of his car in the driveway of his home. Despite the pain of all they went through, our fathers fervently believed that it is always the right time to engage in dialogue in the pursuit of understanding and peace. Our fathers saw much in common. King, Abernathy and their fellow Black activists found inspiration in the Exodus story. King once told Dresner how much he admired Jews for celebrating the narrative of their slave ancestors in Egypt. The rabbi reminded him that Jews had also been slaves less than 20 years prior in the concentration and death camps of Europe. Most of Dresner’s father’s family was killed in the Holocaust, and he and many Jewish activists saw the world’s silence in the face of the Holocaust as a cautionary tale. They refused to remain silent in the subjugation of their African American brothers and sisters. …”
NY Times: Opinion
1960s: Days of Rage
1960s: Days of Rage 