Standing in the Shoes of Civil Rights Witnesses

There is something haunting about a pair of empty shoes, especially children’s shoes when you know children have been murdered. I stood at the corner of Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama, looking at the sculpture that Elizabeth MacQueen built to memorialize the four young girls who were killed when the 16^th Street Baptist Church was bombed in September 1963. My eye was drawn to a pair of empty shoes at the bottom of the sculpture.

I was there as part of a Civil Rights trip organized by Rabbi Evan Krame’s Jewish Studio and sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. Growing up, I had learned about racial injustice and the significance of the civil rights movement, but the personal connections formed on this trip brought forth increased empathy for the individuals and communities involved. When grappling with the pain of racism, antisemitism, or other means to disregard another’s humanity, it is sometimes necessary to hold onto an image. For me, the image was a pair of empty shoes.

The power of this trip was the opportunity to hear from those who could bear witness.

At the 16^th Street Baptist Church, we heard from Rev. Carolyn McKinstry, who survived the bombing as a teenager. Four of her friends were chatting in a girls’ room when the bomb detonated; they all died. We followed in Rev. McKinstry’s footsteps as she showed us how she walked past the girls’ room and upstairs to the sanctuary where she found herself when the bomb blast ripped through the side of the church. As she talked, the four girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, became more distinct individuals. Rev McKinstry shared that she had also been present four months earlier at another significant point in history: the Children’s March. In May 1963, thousands of children attempted to walk from the 16^th Street Baptist Church to downtown Birmingham.

As we stood in the church listening to Rev. McKinstry, it came into focus for me that it was children, her friends and classmates, who stood up against segregation, had fire hoses and police dogs turned on them, and went to jail. I had learned about these events, but hearing from someone who was there moved the learning from my head to my heart.

While it is impossible to walk in the shoes of the great civil rights leaders, seeing firsthand the locations where history happened was pivotal. Our visit to Selma provided the opportunity to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and even more remarkably, to hear from Joanne Bland, who was there on that “Bloody Sunday.” Bland was a child at the time and had a child’s view of what it meant to live in the segregated south. The right and power to vote was not lost on our group as the timing of the trip was less than a week after the most recent presidential election. The structural poverty we observed among the African American community, along with experiences that provided a deep dive into the dehumanizing experience of slavery, Jim Crow, and current incarceration rates was at times overwhelming. It was an emotional rollercoaster as we reflected on intractable aspects of continued injustice.

In Montgomery, we stepped back into history again when we met with Valda Harris. Living down the street from Martin Luther King, Jr’s parsonage, Valda Harris’ childhood was bookmarked by the Montgomery Bus Boycott when she was a child and the Freedom Riders when she was a teenager. In 1961, the Freedom Riders traveled through the south to test the Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation on interstate buses and terminals. When they disembarked in Montgomery, they were brutally attacked. Valda Harris’ home served as a safe house for the Freedom Riders as they spent several days regrouping and recovering. It was an unforgettable experience to be invited into this home and sit in the same rooms once host to John Lewis and the Freedom Riders.

Rev. Carolyn McKinstry, Joanne Bland, and Valda Harris share a common trait with the last remarkable women we met on our Civil Rights trip, Dr. Vonnetta West. Among other accomplishments, Dr. West is a consultant at the King Center in Atlanta and a scholar of nonviolence. All four women talked about the need for civil, respectful discourse and the imperative to see the humanity in each of us.

Dr. West brought us back to the present, and spoke about how protesters lose their cause when they “name call” and dehumanize those they disagree with. She talked about allyship and about how a visit to the Holocaust Museum affected her, and shared that it is impossible not to be moved when you stand before the exhibit with the shoes of so many who were murdered during the Holocaust.

As I listened to these women, I was reminded of the Judaic teaching that we are all created in the image of God, b’tzelem Elohim (Genesis 1:27). I see this idea reflected in the principles of nonviolence that mandate that we seek to defeat injustice, not people. It is imperative that we see humanity in each of us. Finding a connection to another’s lived experience is one way we create meaning and gain understanding.

Traveling with a Jewish group, I found myself thinking of both the Jewish values I grew up with and the trauma of the Holocaust. I am a first generation American on my father’s side. He and his family had to flee Nazi Germany, so the stories I learned about the injustice of treating a people as “less than” or inferior felt personal. When the holograms of two slave children at the Montgomery Legacy Museum cried out, “have you seen our mother,” I saw this echoed in photographs of Jewish children behind barbed wire in a concentration camp.

This trip allowed us to learn about the lived experiences of those who witnessed a cruel and dark period of our country’s history. Their stories were a gift. In Judaism, we are taught that we have an obligation to do our part for Tikkun Olam, to repair the world. We are taught, “it is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it” (Pirkei Avot 2:16). The women we met shared with us what they and others did and continue to do. They challenged us to ask ourselves, what are we doing today with our freedom?

We need to recognize humanity in each of us. We need to increase our ability to have civil discourse even when we disagree. We need to listen and learn from each other so that increased understanding will strengthen allyship. Judaism teaches that we are required “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly” (Micah 6:8). While we may not be able to literally walk in each other’s shoes, when we are united, we can stand up against all forms of injustice.

Lisa Handelman is The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington’s Director of Inclusion & Belonging.