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