Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 29, 2020

"We want to create an institution that allows people to experience directly what this history means, what it does," Stevenson says in a trailer on the museum's website. "In South Africa, you cant go there without learning the history of apartheid; In Rwanda, you cannot spend time there without being told of the legacy of the genocide. If you go to Germany today, in Berlin, there are monuments, memorials and stones that mark the spaces where Jewish families were abducted.

"But in America, we dont talk about slavery, we dont talk about lynching, we dont talk about segregation," he continues in the video. "So now its time to talk about it."

The out-of-towners who came to Alabama in the 1960s often referred to themselves as "24-hour heroes," Steinhauser said. It was a reflection on their temporary presence, as opposed to the people who were involved in the struggle on a daily basis. People like JoAnne Bland. She grew up in Selma amid the turbulent times and told the ADL group that by the time she was 11 she had been arrested 13 times.

Back then, her idea of freedom was based on a vision and a fantasy. And ice cream.

"Carters Drug Store had a lunch counter and I wanted to sit at that lunch counter, but my grandmother said I couldnt. She said Colored children, thats what we were called then, Colored. Colored children cant sit at the counter," Bland said. "It didnt stop me from wanting to sit at that counter; every time I passed by there, seeing those white kids licking those ice cream cones, spinning around on those stools. It looked like so much fun."

On one particular day, her grandmother noticed, leaned over Bland's shoulder to point to the window and the counter beyond and told her, "When we get our freedom, you can do that too."

But freedom enacted a heavy toll. On Bloody Sunday, Bland found herself at the crest of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, looking at the first wave of marchers who tried to advance past the troopers.

"Suddenly, I hear gunshots and screams. I think theyre killing the people down there," she said. "Before we could turn to run it was too late. They came from both sides, the front and the back, and they were just beating people. Old, young, Black, White male, female, it didnt matter. People were laying everywhere, bleeding, not moving, as if they were dead and you couldnt stop to help them or youd be beaten too.

"The last thing I remember seeing on that bridge that day was this horse and this lady. And I dont know what happened. Did the man on the horse hit her and shefell or did the horse just run over her? I dont know. But I do know almost 55 years later, I can still hear the sound her head made when she hit that pavement... I didnt want any more freedom. Whatever the cost of what this freedom was was just too much for this 11-year-old."

Even as Bloody Sunday discouraged her, Bland stayed in the fight.

She never sat at the counter at Carter's Drug Store, but she did join King and the marchers on the final leg of their journey to Montgomery.

At the end of her discussion with the Anti-Defamation League group, Bland shared a moment with Steinhauser and another participant on the trip, Steven Foster, the rabbi emeritus at Temple Emanuel in Denver. Foster also marched in Montgomery in 1965.

"You guys were really in danger," Bland told them. "Me, I could blend in then, but you couldnt stay at hotels. You were outside agitators, your life was in danger every minute you were here.

"And yet you came. And we thank you."

Perhaps the warmth was enough for Steinhauser. It was the end of a long day, a physically and emotionally wrenching one that certainly would have taxed the resolve of a much younger person.

Then again, in the face of shared experiences and deep-seated respect, who wouldn't be ready, eager and willing to wade once again into the fight?

So Sheldon Steinhauser walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

"Im very proud of today," he said. "Im very proud of the Anti-Defamation League; Im very honored they asked me to serve as their scholar-in-residence and I was able to share some of my personal experiences, because, you know, thats how we tell our history, through stories."

Here is the original post:
Marching With King: After 50 Years, A Coloradan Makes An Emotional Return To Selma - Colorado Public Radio

Category: Anti-Defamation League
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