55 Years Ago Today, 16 Rabbis Were Arrested Protesting Segregation. Read Their Story.
Recovering one of the greatest moments in American Jewish civil rights history
Ask a typical American Jew about Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement, and they’re likely to tell you about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. A handful might recall Rabbi Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, who spoke immediately before King at the March on Washington.
But fewer remember the St. Augustine 17—the 16 Reform rabbis and one lay leader who went down to protest segregation in St. Augustine, FL, in June 1964 at the express invitation of King. There, the group was arrested and jailed, in what was the largest mass arrest of rabbis in U.S. history. From their jail cell, they wrote a manifesto explaining the moral urgency behind their activism. Yet today, their story has largely been forgotten, or at least, sidelined.
Until now.
I first learned about this little-known event from Mitzi Steiner, who had interviewed the rabbis and local African American activists for her award-winning undergraduate thesis at Barnard. Six years ago, I asked her to write up that research in article form so others could know the remarkable story. Today, on the 55th anniversary of the rabbis’ arrest, you can read that piece in Tablet Magazine, along with the first-ever publication of the handwritten original of the rabbis’ prison manifesto.
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