Editor’s Note: Shayna Solomon, daughter of Nancy and Jonathan Solomon and a first-year student at Dickinson College, was an invited participant in the Faith and Politics Institute’s Civil Rights Pilgrimage in February. What follows are excerpts of her Shabbat morning presentation to the congregation about her experience.
by Shayna Solomon
“Exactly a week ago at about this time, I was in a Baptist church in Alabama. I was next to another Jewish girl and a Jewish man. That man was Rep. Eric Cantor, the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. He looks at us and, knowing we’re Jewish, says, “How odd! We’re three Jews in a church on Shabbos!”
That church was the 16th Street Baptist Church where four little girls were murdered during the Civil Rights movement by white supremacists, who bombed the church. These were the types of experiences I had. …
“We visited many important civil rights sites, often with the people who were involved in the events at each site during the Civil Rights Movement. We traveled with 32 members of Congress, civil rights leaders and dignitaries. I often looked out the window of our bus and noticed the police escorts behind us and in front of us and just kept asking myself, “How on earth did I get here?
“… [I]n high school, I began an interfaith social action youth group called Social Action For Everyone with help from the Fund for the Future of our Children. The director of this group, Avideh Shashaani, contacted a small group of her former grantees to go on this pilgrimage. …
“I found it particularly apt to this time of year in the Jewish calendar. In fact, last Sunday morning, we were in another Baptist church in Selma Ala., Brown’s Chapel, the launching ground for the walk across the Edmund Puttuss Bridge, which we would reenact later that day. The preacher, the Rev. James Forbes, mentioned the relationship between the liberation of the civil rights movement to the liberation of the Jews in the Exodus story of Passover!
“Rep. Terry Sewell, whose district in Alabama we were visiting, offered three R’s that encompassed the nature of the trip and reminded me of the connection with Passover: remember, reflect and recommit.
“Remember, Rep. Sewell’s first R, seems particularly well suited to the Jewish Passover experience. The goal of the Passover seder is to remember the history of our ancestors. We remember the Exodus story in detail throughout the year. Certainly, today we recounted an aspect of the Exodus, the tabernacle, in detail, and have learned about many more aspects in the past weeks. …
“There is also the connection of oppression, although Jim Crow laws were not slavery by the same standards of the pre-Civil War period in the United States, the situation in the South had an enslaving control on the African-American population through a control by fear and by humiliation. By fear in that we heard stories from Judge Hellen Shores Lee about how, when she was young, her house was often bombed. She told us how Birmingham was so bad that it was often called Bombingham. …
“Another aspect of our Passover tradition is emphasizing remembrance by the children, passing on the story to the next generation. The same was true for these civil rights heroes. Even on this trip with so many members of Congress and dignitaries, we, the students, were treated with special consideration. The small youth program heard privately from Ruby Bridges, one of the first African-American children to be integrated into a white school when she was only 6. We, the youth, heard privately from Barnard Lafayette, another major civil rights leader. These powerful moments showed the importance of remembering in the future, even when those who experienced the movement first hand are no longer able to tell their stories. Remembering is important but we also had to take time to realize its importance.
“Rep. Sewell’s second R was to Reflect. … We found some time to reflect in the churches. … We were often reminded that music was a hallmark of the civil rights movement. In the churches, we had an opportunity to sing and reflect in prayer. Certainly, this is a main part of the Jewish experience and the seder especially. We take the time to reflect on the significance of our history, even if that means that it takes a little longer to get to the dinner part of the seder.
Still, remembering and reflecting do not carry the same meaning when we don’t take action. We must remember Rep. Sewell’s third R: Recommit. Throughout our trip the strongest message was one of action. On our first day, Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero who led the march on Bloody Sunday, … urged us to take action. He told us how the civil rights movement grew out of study groups at churches and at universities, but quickly moved into action. …
“Many of these actions were symbolic but powerful. You may be familiar with a photograph of Gov. George Wallace standing in the door of the University of Alabama auditorium, preventing James Hood and Vivian Malone, two African-American students, from entering to register for class. Sitting in that very same auditorium, the daughter of Gov. Wallace and the sister of Vivian Malone spoke together. Peggy Wallace Kennedy, Gov. Wallace’s daughter, said that she was now standing in the schoolhouse door for justice. Gov. Wallace was one of the strongest symbols of discrimination and segregation in Alabama, but perhaps an even greater symbol of oppression was the Montgomery, Ala., Police Department. One particularly powerful moment was when the Montgomery Police Chief, Kevin Murphy, apologized to Rep. Lewis. Chief Murphy gave Rep. Lewis his badge off of his own uniform as a symbolic apology. These were powerful moments.
We remembered the atrocities committed by the police department. We reflected on what those actions meant to us then and also now. We recommitted to the principles of justice and freedom as represented by Chief Murphy’s action. During Passover, we remember the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. We reflect on its meaning to our people then and now. But, do we really recommit? Do we recommit to the values of justice and freedom. There is plenty of inspiration to be taken from the Passover story. …
“Similar situations still are prevalent around the world today. And we must recommit to freedom to stop these atrocities. We must recommit to the justice and freedom that we learn about around the seder table.
“That is the strongest message that I took from the trip and that is the message that I am honored to share with you.”
