by Dennis Augustine
Jews marched beside Black leaders in the South. Rabbis like Abraham Joshua Heschel were among the Freedom Riders. Jewish leaders helped found and fund the NAACP and stood with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., including arrests in St. Augustine, Florida, while challenging segregation. Why? Because Jewish history knows vulnerability — and refuses a world where dignity is conditional. Justice, freedom, and responsibility were never meant to stop at the borders of one community.
That responsibility felt especially real to us in 2018, when Cecile and I, along with our friends Nelson and Susan Bye, visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Standing at the Lorraine Motel, outside Room 306, during the 50th anniversary year of Dr. King’s assassination was sobering and unforgettable — a reminder that this history isn’t distant, it’s personal, and it still calls us forward.
I’m not Jewish, but I am deeply connected. My wife Cecile descends from ancestors who escaped the pogroms (violent riots) of Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. I married into a Jewish family, celebrate Jewish holidays, our children are Jewish — Bar and Bat Mitzvahs — and we’ve shared synagogue life, interfaith work, travel to Israel, and support for Jewish causes.
History doesn’t just ask us to remember — it asks us to act. As we honor Dr. King on MLK Day, may we do more than quote him — may we live what he stood for.
