American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Rabbi Israel Dresner, 2 of 2

[Interviewer] --that over the years you've done a lot of thinking privately about the Freedom Rides and your Freedom Ride. [Dresner] I've been involved in lots of struggles other than the black struggle. [Interviewer] I know-- [Dresner] I was anti-Vietnam, I was anti-Iraq, I was pro-gay. [Interviewer] First thing I read about you was that you're the most-arrested rabbi in the United States, that's his claim to fame. [laughing] But when you think back about the rides, what-- do you have one memory in your mind, one thing that you remember, and that can be anything, what do you remember about the rides? [Dresner] Well one of the things that I remembered about the Rides was that I had grown up as a young jew who lived through World War Two, in America, I didn't know most of what was going on in Europe, but I knew more than most people in America and after the war I certainly knew a lot

more than most people in America in terms of the Holocaust and so forth and so on. And I had a chip on my shoulder and I have to admit this, I'm ashamed to admit it almost, I had a chip with regard to Christianity. Europe was a totally Christian continent and the people who murdered my people were all born Christians, they were born Protestants or Catholic. Germany was 65 percent Protestant and 35 percent Catholic. And one of the things that I really-- the Freedom Ride helped me get over was my chip with regard to Christianity. There were such wonderful Christians on the trip that they really influenced me, black and white, these ministers who came with us. One of them was a great man by the way, Robert McAfee Brown was famous, he was the only famous person in the group who got arrested with us. He had been on the cover of Newsweek Magazine as one of the great Protestant theologians in the country.

He was professor at Union Theological Seminary of Theology, he had been one of the main disciples of the great Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the greatest Protestant theologians of the twentieth century and I saw that these guys were motivated by their Christianity to do the right thing. They were motivated to go out and lend a hand to people who were suffering and exploited and so out of their Christianity, just as I was motivated out of my Judaism. And I thought that was just beautiful and terrific and it really got me a little bit over my hang-up of being weary of Christians kind of thing. [Interviewer] Did you-- and I want you to stick straight to the Freedom Rides-- what do you think that the Freedom Rides accomplished? [Dresner] I think it did a couple of things. One, what

was said earlier, it brought the race question to the front pages of the American-- to the front page of the news commentary on television and radio and so forth. The second thing, I think it made Americans more aware of the diversity of America, which I also pointed out before, because the Freedom Riders were white and black, were Christian and Jew, were Protestant and of every denomination, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, etc, etc, and I think thirdly, it brought non-violence to the center of American life. America has not been a non-violent country. From our birth when the earliest colonists came to this country and started fighting with the Indians and so forth. But Dr. King was an absolute genius, I think, and Jim Farmer of CORE was also very much

devoted and dedicated to non-violence. Both of them had read Gandhi, both of them recognized that Jesus was the Prince of Peace and I remember when Dr. King came out against the war in Vietnam and Lyndon Johnson would not speak to him ever again, he had entree to the White House before that and many black leaders in America denounced Dr. King for coming out against the war in Vietnam, they said "listen, that's not our issue, our issue is us," just the way Jewish leaders frequently say "listen, blacks are not our issue, we wish them well, but that's not our issue." And so forth and so on. Dr. King said "we're first-class Americans, if we're first-class Americans we have a right to speak on every issue, we're not somebody who is limited to one issue, us, and nothing else in America." And God bless him, I haven't known very many great men in my life, but I'm fogging up a little bit now,

but Dr. King was incredible incredible guy and I really thank God that I had the privilege of knowing him personally, that he spoke in my congregation twice, etc etc. [Interviewer] I just got a couple more quick questions, and this doesn't have to be long, but one of the things I really want to try in this film is to just talk briefly about the significance of Gandhi to this whole movement. Because I don't think, in some of the things I've seen, which are great, Eyes on the Prize and other things-- [Dresner] I'm in Eyes on the Prize, by the way. If you take a look at Selma after the Sunday with the gas and the horses and the billy clubs at the Pettus Bridge, Dr. King asked clergy to come to Selma and I flew down and on Tuesday Dr. King led us across the bridge again, two days after the Sunday. Dr. King was not there that Sunday, he was in Atlanta preaching

at Ebenezer Baptist. [Interviewer] So you're in the group that actually makes it across. [Dresner] We crossed the Pettus Bridge and Dr. King stopped us because the state police were lined up there the way they were two days earlier, with the horses and everything else and Dr. King asked everybody to kneel except two people. The two people he asked not to kneel were Ralph Abernathy and Si Dresner, that's me. And if you see the Selma part of Eyes on the Prize, including in the book, you'll see two people standing and everybody else including Dr. King kneeling. I'm one of the two guys standing because Dr. King asked each of us to deliver a prayer and he wanted a Christian and a Jew to deliver the prayer, and he knew me best of all the rabbis who were there, there were other rabbis there, and so I delivered a prayer, and then Dr. King turned us around and we went back to the Brown Memorial Chapel and SNCC denounced Dr. King at that time for selling out and so forth. What they didn't understand is

that Frank Johnson, the federal district court judge, had said that the day before had said he was going to issue a ruling within a week on whether the march was-- whether the state had a right to stop the march. Whether Governor Wallace, Wallace was the governor then of-- George Wallace was the Governor of Alabama, had a right to stop the march and Dr. King didn't want the march to be illegal and he was right. [Interviewer] We're not on the Freedom Rides, it's a great story but let's roll again. So anyway, the question was, just quickly-- [Dresner] It's hard for me to do anything quickly. [Interviewer] As quickly as you can, [laughing] we just want you to talk a little bit about the significance of Gandhi. [Dresner] I think that Mohandas K. Gandhi was extremely

influential in his teachings both on Dr. King, on Jim Farmer, on others who were very very involved in the race struggle before the race struggle in America ever came to the the front pages of the newspapers and so forth. Remember Dr. King was 19 years old when Gandhi was assassinated. So that they overlapped, Gandhi was assassinated I think in January '48, Dr. King was born in January, January 15th, '29, he was 19 years old and he already had graduated Morehouse I think at that point. [Interviewer] What was Gandhi's [inaudible] [Dresner] You have to understand that Mohandas K. Gandhi took on what was considered the greatest empire in all of history, one-quarter of the earth was, when I was a kid, was colored pink, that was the color of the British Empire. The Roman Empire was nowhere near that in its day. And Gandhi took it on with the teachings of non-violence,

of-- and he beat them, he beat them, he got independence for hundreds of millions of people and so forth through-- and Gandhi's teachings had a profound influence on the early leadership of the Civil Rights Movement. Jim Farmer, who was the head of CORE and who initiated and inaugurated the Freedom Rides was a disciple of Gandhi the way he was a disciple of Jesus, the way he-- and they understood that the only way it could be done in America is through peaceful methods: protests, yes, active, yes, but not violent protest, not violent activism. And-- because that would have turned the American public against the moment. They would have just-- it would have just compounded their stereotype, blacks are violent, blacks are criminals, blacks are whatever blacks are supposed to be and so forth and so on, and so that

it was just a stroke of genius, in my opinion, and the Freedom Rides illustrated that. The people who got beaten did not strike back. The people who got beaten did not have weapons with them. The people who were beaten did not have sticks and billy clubs the way the people who beat them did and so forth. It took a lot of courage and by the way there were many people in the African-American community who objected to the non-violent part of the movement. Every movement has its divisions. I mean, all Jews don't agree with each other and all and-- nobody agrees with each other, all groups are not 100% and SNCC started out as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was given birth by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, it was the youth movement originally, of SCLC, which Dr. King founded and was the head of. SNCC turned

against Dr. King in his last years so that there were people in the black community who said "only through violence will the white hate-mongers understand." It would not have worked, it was, not, I repeat, it was genius on the part of the Jim Farmers and the Bayard Rustins and the others who were devoted for years before 1961 to the teaching of non-violence. [Interviewer] One last question, there's a phrase that kind of echoes around in this literature, "the beloved community," what does that mean? [Dresner] Dr. King coined that phrase, as he coined many other phrases, "I have a dream," etc. etc. and he was speaking of the ideal community, what Jews called a "messianic dream" or the "messianic community." We all have a sort of a picture of what

the world ought to be, instead of what the world is and Dr. King understood that each of us has to do as much as we can to change the "is" into the "ought." We'll never quite get to the ought, we're human beings, we're not God, and we will always fall short of being perfect, obviously. But we can sure do a lot better than we normally do and Dr. King was constantly prodding us to that and all the other civil rights leaders were doing the same. In Judaism we call it "tikkun olam," "repairing the world," making-- in other words, when you get born there are lots of terrible things about the world. Let it be said when you die that at least in some areas you made a small contribution to making the world a better place, a less bad place than it was when you were born, and that's what "the beloved community" was, "the beloved community" was the community that ought to be and that

has a small nucleus now that has already reached that stage and that small nucleus has to try to expand and extend its teachings so that we get closer to the ultimate beloved community.