MLK Jr. aide backs Jewish-Individuals’ push to confront antisemitism, lauds civil rights contributions

An aide to Martin Luther King, Jr. stated Jewish Individuals had been very important to the civil rights motion within the US — and he understands their mentality to stomp out rampant antisemitism as we speak.

Clarence Jones, who was King’s private lawyer, strategic advisor and speech author, received emotional whereas discussing the younger Jews who marched alongside black activists within the south in the course of the Nineteen Sixties.

“I received to inform you. After I speak now it makes me cry. I simply burst into tears,” Jones, 93, stated throughout a videotaped interview in January for Queens School’s documentary collection on the sixtieth anniversary of the “Freedom Summer season” for civil rights in Mississippi.

He stated he understands the anger and anguish of Jews after Hamas’ sneak assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and the Jewish State’s aggressive retaliation in opposition to their attackers in Gaza amid the continued battle amid rising hatred in opposition to Jews, he stated.

“They actually imagine, `By no means Once more’ …They’re not going to take that threat,” Jones stated. 

Jones recalled asking the younger white New Yorkers and others who self-identified as Jewish why they had been marching for the reason for equal rights for black people within the segregated south.

“`Nicely, lawyer Jones. You return and inform your Dr. King, we respect him….. however we’re not actually doing it for him,”Jones stated one of many Jewish civil rights activists advised him.

“I might be perplexed and stated, `I don’t perceive,’” he responded.

“`It is best to perceive. Return and inform your Dr. King that my grandpa and grandma, they died in a Holocaust and I do know that is what they’d need me to do,’” stated Jones.

He and King talked in regards to the significance of strengthening the alliance of Jews and black Christians.

“There’s a bunch of white individuals out right here who self determine themselves as Jews. They’re very particular and we now have to get to know them,” he remembers telling King.

King established sturdy ties with Jewish leaders — amongst them Abraham Joshua Heschel and Rabbi Joachim Prinz — who supported black Individuals who suffered from discrimination and home terrorism from the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and different white supremacists. Prinz was pictured showing with King on the White Home with then-President John F. Kennedy and different civil rights leaders.

Jones additionally mentioned the three males who had been brutally killed by the KKK in Mississippi in 1964 — James Chaney, who was black, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who had been Jewish New Yorkers. He talked about the unspeakable grief expressed by Goodman’s mother when he met the household at their Higher West Aspect dwelling following the slaying.

He tied the function of the civil rights motion to what’s taking place as we speak, with rising hatred in opposition to Jews and the Israel-Hamas battle.

“I don’t agree with every little thing my Jewish brothers and sisters are doing in Israel. However that’s not the difficulty whether or not I 100% agree with them. I’ll not agree with every little thing they’re doing however I perceive the anger from whence it comes,” Jones stated.

“They actually imagine, ‘By no means Once more.’ I say to my mates, `You may disagree or not disagree. That’s not the difficulty.’”

For Jews — particularly these whose households had been touched by the genocide of the Holocaust in the course of the Nazi reign — it’s about survival, he stated.

“There’s no particular person I do know of the era of Jews that I’ve give you which are going to take that threat. They’re not going to take that threat,” stated Jones, who received choked up.

Mayor Eric Adams praised Jones when he met with him in January.

“Dr. Clarence Jones wrote the lyrics and Dr. King sang the music. An lawyer and speechwriter for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he’s a dwelling legend, a connection to our essential civil rights historical past whose knowledge continues to be related as we speak,” Adams stated.

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, government vp of the New York Board of Rabbis, stated it ought to come as no shock that Jews — lengthy persecuted by means of historical past — would sympathize with and march in help of black women and men who had been enslaved and later terrorized and handled like second class residents in America.

“What occurred to us ought to by no means occur to anybody,” Potasnik stated..

“We all know what it’s like to face alone. Martin Luther King Jr. supported the Jewish individuals and the state of Israel,” he stated.