Speaker 1: For now, it's time for the Way Black History Fact.
Speaker 1: Today's Way Black History Fact is sponsored by an underground
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Speaker 1: latest in beachwhere, visit Underground Beach Club dot com. All right,
Speaker 1: today's message comes from Atlanta Journal Constitution. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about freedom Writers, and the headline says freedom Writers.
Speaker 1: Our allies were American Jews, So this is when Jewish
Speaker 1: people were supporting black people in this country. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of this and we've talked about things like
Speaker 1: this in the past.
Speaker 2: This feels topical.
Speaker 1: And important, and you know, this show is about Allyship.
Speaker 2: This is a tough episode to do correctly.
Speaker 1: But we're going to try to espouse some moments in
Speaker 1: history where Allyship has kind of moved the narrative forward.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty six Treme Court decision ruled segregated seating
Speaker 1: on interstate buses was unconstitutional throughout the South. However, these
Speaker 1: rulings were basically ignored, so in the spring of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, a group of seven black and six white
Speaker 1: activists organized by the Congress of Racial Equality put the
Speaker 1: decisions to the test by riding Greyhound and Trailway buses.
Speaker 2: From Washington, d C. Through the Deep South.
Speaker 1: The Freedom Riders, as they were called, also planned to
Speaker 1: use white's only restrooms and sit at a white only
Speaker 1: lunch counter. The buses were met by angry whites in
Speaker 1: many cities, and the police would often give the mobs
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen minutes to beat the activists before putting
Speaker 1: a stop to the violence. In Birmingham, Alabama, it was
Speaker 1: mostly fists and they forcefully threw us to the back
Speaker 1: of the bus, said Charles Pearson, a Moorhouse College student
Speaker 1: at the time and at eighteen, the youngest of the
Speaker 1: core Freedom Riders. He goes on to say, what prevented
Speaker 1: me from getting more savagely beaten was two of the white.
Speaker 2: Writers came to my rescue. Quote.
Speaker 1: In our fight for freedom, we had allies, said Atlanta
Speaker 1: businessman and civil rights activist Hank Thomas, was a Howard
Speaker 1: University student when he joined the Freedom Writers. Goes on
Speaker 1: to say, just like the defeat of Germany involved allies,
Speaker 1: we had allies, and our allies were the American Jews.
Speaker 1: Fifty percent of all the Freedom Writers were eventually white,
Speaker 1: added doctor William Harbor, and this part comes from I
Speaker 1: believe it's Eish dot Comish. I believe it's Light or
Speaker 1: Flame and maybe Yiddish, but it's a Jewish website, all right,
Speaker 1: added doctor Harbor, and I believe that if we didn't
Speaker 1: have the participation of young white students, we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been this far as far as progress in the United States.
Speaker 1: And I want to say this too. In the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: hundreds of Jews worked tires tirelessly to advanced civil rights.
Speaker 1: Two of them were murdered. And this is again doctor
Speaker 1: William Harber. He says, quote, I am one freedom writer
Speaker 1: who will never ever forget the assistance of Jews. So again,
Speaker 1: there's solidarity here. You know, there's there's a history of
Speaker 1: working together.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Hank Thomas, who is American figure, sorry, a major figure
Speaker 1: in the American civil rights struggle and one of the
Speaker 1: first freedom writers who traveled throughout the American South in
Speaker 1: the sixties, was another person to again espouse this relationship
Speaker 1: between black people and Jewish people.
Speaker 2: Obviously, the NAACP has its roots in the same
Speaker 1: Sort of composition, and it's times like these that we
Speaker 1: want to remember who supported us and support them as
Speaker 1: best as we know how as led by our hearts
Speaker 1: in their times of needs, so it just felt topical
Speaker 1: to share this