We Were Slaves

Sue Fishkoff catches up with rabbis who participated in the civil rights movement:

One night in Georgia in the summer of 1962, [Rabbi Israel] Dresner and [Martin Luther] King were trapped with other activists in a house surrounded by hundreds of members of the local White Citizens Council.

While they were waiting for help, King told Dresner about the Passover seder he’d attended that spring at a Reform synagogue in Atlanta. He particularly recalled reading the Haggadah and hearing the phrase “We were slaves in Egypt.”

“Dr. King said to me, ‘I was enormously impressed that 3,000 years later, these people remember their ancestors were slaves, and they’re not ashamed,” Dresner said. “He told me, ‘We Negroes have to learn that, not to be ashamed of our slave heritage.’”

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan