By Reverend Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr.
President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA)
Chair of Spill the Honey and the Black Jewish Action Alliance (BJAA)
Knowing and understanding history is important. Learning from history ensures that it repeating the past is not inevitable. Discerning lessons from history enables reflective and proactive work to shape a better future for all of humanity. Given the current divisiveness in America, I believe it is time overdue to remember and to reaffirm the shared legacies between Blacks and Jews.
Recently, I participated in a training forum, The Shared Legacies Professional-Development Workshop, for educators in Los Angeles at The Jewish Federation. The event was hosted by Spill the Honey, a national nonprofit that I chair with the mission of using the transformative power of the arts to change hearts and minds and seek to move people to act for social change.
The goal is to amplify the voices of the historic African American-Jewish American civil rights coalition to reinforce shared legacies that today can still foster empathy, nurture mutual care and compassion, transformation, and build partnerships that transcend divisions of race, class, gender, religion, and ethnicity.
The convening interdisciplinary program involved educators, administrators, and community leaders from across Los Angeles to explore how the historic Black–Jewish alliance can inform classroom learning today. Educators gained practical tools to recognize, challenge, and respond to the rise of antisemitism and racism across the nation. Over 100 people attended the training.
In my view, our communities not only share a past legacy of solidarity, but we should also share today’s opportunity and the responsibility to work together for the cause of freedom, justice, and equality.
When I was a young 14-year-old statewide youth coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in North Carolina in the early 1960s, I witnessed firsthand the effective, transformative brotherhood and shared national leadership between Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. The Chair Emeritus of Spill the Honey is the famed civil rights icon, Attorney Clarence B. Jones, who was Dr. King’s close associate and attorney.
Lest we forget, Blacks and Jews stood together against racism and antisemitism. Blacks and Jews marched together and went to jail together for voting rights. Blacks and Jews shared blood at the hate-filled, bloodthirsty hands of white supremacist racists and anti-Semites.
We should not be silent or indifferent while some are determined to deny and to erase American history. We cannot afford to raise an ahistorical new generation of young students who are searching through the fog of miseducation for the truth.
We live in the social media and digital age. Audio-visual images are impacting the worldviews of our families, communities, and learning institutions. Spill the Honey has produced a series of factual film documentaries highlighting the historic and contemporary rebirth of the beneficial alliance between Jewish Americans and African Americans. The title of the film series is “Shared Legacies.”
The documentaries include engaging interviews of Harry Belefonte, John Lewis, CT Vivian, Andrew Young, Rabbi Alvin Sugarman, Susannah Heschel, and Clarence B. Jones.
Lest we forget. Over 116 years ago, Blacks and Jews established the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). On April 11, 1945, during World War II, Black American soldiers fought to help liberate Jews from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp near Weimar, Germany.
This year marks the 198th anniversary of the Black Press of America, and we note the contributions of the Jewish community in New York City that helped Reverend Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm to publish the first edition of Freedom’s Journal on March 16, 1827
It was pleasing to join Dr. Shari Rogers, Rabbi Dr. Judy Schindler, Brian Knowles, and others from Spill the Honey and Jewish scholar Dr. Michael Berenbaum at the educational training session in Los Angeles. We are making progress. Sharing our legacies will lead to strategically sharing and shaping our future.
Reverend Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. is the President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), and Chair of Spill the Honey and the Black Jewish Action Alliance (BJAA). He is the Executive Producer of The Chavis Chronicles on the PBS TV Network across the nation.
