sAA

Trusting Trust, Hating Hate

Congressman Lewis decries separatists and the attention they get.

HARRY KIRSBAUM
Staff Writer

A

U.S. Congressman who
helped lead the civil rights
movement says separatists
such as Nation of Islam
leader Louis Farrakhan harm the his-
torically close relationship between
blacks and Jews, and the media corn-
pound the problem by highlighting
the negatives.
"In many communities, and even
on the national level, there's still a
close, viable relationship," said John
Lewis, a Democrat who represents
Georgia's 5th District in Atlanta. But,
he said, "it's unfortunate that the
American media play up those people
who preach separatism, a guy like
Farrakhan, rather than write stories of
actions of Jews and blacks working
together."
Lewis, in town last week at the
Jewish Community Center of
Metropolitan Detroit's Jewish Book
Fair to promote his book Walking with
the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement,
said positive action across the country
has been largely overlooked because of
the fiery rhetoric of a few.
Citing several programs in his dis-
trict, including black-Jewish coalitions
that meet regularly and programs that
send black and Jewish high school stu-
dents to Israel and Africa together, he
talked of "building a cadre of people"

Montgomery that led to the Voting
to build a sense of trust and under-
Rights Act of 1965.
standing.
All along, Jews were always the
As a young man Lewis suffered
largest group of non-black participants
numerous arrests and beatings during
in the civil rights movement, he said.
the civil rights movement. He said
Lewis, elected to Congress in 1986,
people in the Ku Klux Klan and the
is a member of the
White Citizen's Council
House Ways and
discriminated against
Means Committee,
blacks and Jews alike.
and co-chairs the
"Not only black
Congressional
homes and churches in
Urban Caucus and
the south were burned,
the Congressional
but temples and syna-
Caucus on Anti-
gogues," he said. "We
Semitism.
He led a
were in the same boat."
delegation of fresh-
Born the son of share-
men black members
croppers, outside of Troy,
of Congress to
Ala., Lewis joined Dr.
Israel.
Martin Luther King Jr. in
When the
the civil rights movement
Democrats con-
in the early 1960s.
trolled the House,
He led sit-in demon-
he said, the black
strations at lunch coun-
members and the
ters in Nashville, Tenn.,
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) Jewish members of
challenged segregation in
Congress "met con-
bus terminals and became
stantly" over issues about aid to Israel
a planner and one of the keynote
or Africa, or when "somebody said
speakers at the "March on
something that neither group liked."
Washington" in 1963.
The voting records of Congressional
In 1964, involved in voter registra-
blacks
and Jews continue to be "almost
tion during the "Mississippi Freedom
identical," he said, but other than indi-
Summer," he was leading 525
vidual members speaking out about
marchers across a bridge in Selma,
the positive relationship between the
Ala., when Alabama state troopers
two groups, "We don't get out and
attacked them. The incident became
make a lot of noise about it, or publi-
known as "Bloody Sunday," which
cize it. We just do it."
triggered the march from Selma to

Education is an important aspect of
keeping an open dialogue between the
two groups. Lewis said lessons of the
Holocaust and the civil rights move-
ment should be started early with chil-
dren, before the deniers and separatists
can have an effect on them.
In his book, Lewis supported the
idea and goals of the Million Man
March, but wrote, "I did not march
because I could not abide or overlook
the presence and central role of Louis
Farrakhan, and so I refused to partici-
pate.
"It wasn't just Farrakhan's remarks
made shortly before the march about
Jewish people being 'bloodsuckers'
that turned me away," said Lewis. "It
was his long history of similarly hate-
ful, divisive words and ideas. I believe
in freedom of speech, but I also
believe that we have an obligation to
condemn speech that is racist, bigoted,
anti-Semitic or hateful. Regardless of
the race of the speaker, I won't be a
party to it."
Looking back at Martin Luther
King Jr.'s ideas of brotherhood and
justice that cut across all lines of race,
gender and wealth, Lewis said the
media should concentrate on what's
happening in Washington,
Philadelphia and Atlanta. "They are
cities that have a long history of blacks
and Jews working together," he said.
"They've never given up on the
`Beloved Community.'" ❑

Preaching Muslhn Unity

But ADL decries Farrakha n speech as 'virulent anti-Semitism.

KATHY SHAFRAN
Special to The Jewish News

7

he Anti-Defamation League
in Michigan is decrying
what it is calling a "shock-
ing display of virulent anti-
Semitism" by Nation of Islam leader
Louis Farrakhan.
In a speech Sunday to a standing-
room-only crowd at the Islamic
Center of America in Detroit, he
called on the Islamic community to
bridge the gaps between Muslim
groups in America. If they did, he

said, they could overcome the political
influence of American Jews. "We have
let the Zionists run the show too
long," he said. "Muslims in America
number 6 to 8 million," he said,
quoting figures offered by Detroit's
current Islamic Imam.
"We're the second largest religion
in this country. But who surrounds
the president — Zionists," he said.
"They make up 2 percent of the
population," Farrakhan calculated,
"but they're 42 percent of the cabi-
net."
"So," Farrakhan asked his audience,

"is there any reason not to understand
why Clinton is leaning away from the
Arab people?"
Officials with the Jewish
Community Council of Metropolitan
Detroit say Farrakhan's statistics are
far off base. "But more important,"
says Allan Gale, assistant director of
the council, "it's not relevant." Gale
said, "All Americans should be politi-
cally active, but to compare the num-
ber of Arab Americans to Jews is riot
relevant, it's Jew baiting."
Farrakhan was invited to address
Detroit's Arab Islamic Community as

part of a tribute to the Islamic
Center's founder, Imam Mohamad
Jewad Chirri, on the fourth anniver-
sary of his death. Farrakhan's appear-
ance drew hundreds of Arab Muslims
from across metro Detroit as well as
hundreds of local African American
Muslims.
He implored these two Islamic
groups to work together toward a
common goal.
"I want to see the Arab and Islamic
community locked together in the
struggle against tyranny," he said. And
the crowd roared in a standing ova-

11/20
1998

Detroit Jewish News

17

