It was a different time. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing, and the common cause of racial equality bonded Blacks and Jews. The documentary Shared Legacies takes us back to when Black-Jewish co-operation was a given, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel walked arm in arm.
Archival footage and recent interviews remind us of two communities, each of whom encountered prejudice, violence, and segregation, that came together with the founding of the NAACP in 1909 and blossomed in the 1960s due in large measure to the relationship between Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel. With narration and interviews with Holocaust survivors, the late Congressman John Lewis, Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr., Rabbi Peter S. Berg, Julian Bond, and members of the King and Heschel families, among others, it is a story of two people whose support of the other made each stronger.
The screening is a backdrop to “Standing Together Against Racism: Building on Our Common Heritage” which is a conversation with Dr. Bernice A. King (daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and Dr. Susannah Heschel (daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel), moderated by African American Rabbi Capers Funnye Jr. The conversationt will be streamed nationally at 4 PM MST on Sunday, January 24.
Co-presented by Jewish Federation NM