communities and providing 
“a roadmap for courageous 
conversations.”
Detroit’
s public premiere, 
planned for the Charles 
Wright H. Museum of 
African American History in 
April, was canceled due to the 
pandemic. But the documen-
tary made its way into local 
educational platforms like 
the University of Michigan’
s 
Ross Business School — 
where the Diversity, Equity 
and Inclusion Task Force has 
worked with students to host 
webinars that apply the film’
s 
model of diverse communi-
ty-building to the business 
world.

BRIDGE BUILDING
Blake Weissman, 20, is a 
student at the Ross Business 
School. Since 
spring, he’
s 
served as national 
youth president 
of Spill the Honey 
Foundation, the 
nonprofit behind 
the film.
He works to bring Shared 
Legacies to college audiences 
through virtual screenings, 
discussions and webinars that 
engage students on issues 
like allyship, police reform 
and education. He also works 
with 17 youth ambassadors 
on campuses in Chicago, 
Philadelphia, Atlanta and 
Ann Arbor.
In our polarized society, 
having a bridge-building 
ambassador on every college 
campus would be an amazing 
way to create “sustainable, 
lasting change from the 
inside out,” Weissman said. 
While he’
s passionately 
picking up the baton to run 
alongside a new generation 
of changemakers, Weissman 
knew “absolutely nothing 
of Black-Jewish relations,” 
before attending the Atlanta 
premiere with his family. 

When the credits rolled, 
and the original theme song 
played, he found himself 
on his feet applauding, sur-
rounded by nearly 2,500 
guests.
“It was very, very powerful, 
and it planted a seed in me,” 
he said of the film. 
“This could have been a 
lost part of American histo-
ry,” said Rogers. Since 2015, 
she’
s traveled from Selma, 
Ala., to Israel, collecting 
nearly 90 hours of interviews 
from those who haven’
t for-
gotten the union. “It was in 

their memories, but no one 
ever asked them what they 
witnessed,” she said.
Dating back to 1909, with 
the founding of the NAACP, 
the film explores the modern 
alliance between two peoples 
who have endured segrega-
tion, racism and violence. 
It discusses the pinnacle of 
that alliance: the friendship 
between Dr. Martin Luther 
King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham 
Heschel during the Civil 
Rights Movement. 
Mutual respect and under-
standing of these significant 
leaders is credited as the 
catalyst for Jews joining the 
Civil Rights Movement, just 
as King and Heschel’
s deaths 
in 1968 and 1972, respective-
ly, point to the unraveling of 
the Black-Jewish bond. 

REVIVE THE COALITION
Rev. Kenneth J. Flowers of 
Detroit’
s Greater New Mount 
Moriah Missionary Baptist 
Church says, “If people 
see the shared legacies and 
the work we did together, 
they’
ll understand now is 
the time to revive and renew 
that coalition of conscience 
between people of goodwill, 
people of morality, people 
who have great spirits about 
them, to step up and stand 
up for freedom, justice and 
equality.”
Flowers, one of sever-

al Metro Detroiters in the 
film, says Coretta Scott 
King shared with him the 
relationship between her 
husband and Rabbi Heschel 
when Flowers was a student 
at Morehouse College in 
1979. These conversations 
helped him understand the 
importance of being involved 
with the Jewish community, 
he says, and keeping them 
involved in “Black-Jewish 
dialogue” and movements for 
justice and equality. Today, 
he serves as a leading mem-
ber of the Coalition for Black 
and Jewish Unity and has 
been in conversations with 
Morehouse since the film 
debuted to bring education 
of the alliance to the school 
where Dr. King graduated.
“We have far more in com-
mon than what separates us,” 

Flowers says, of Black and 
Jewish communities today, 
“though there are things 
we need to do. If we look 
at what worked then, it can 
work now.”
In addition to on-screen 
appearances, several Metro 
Detroiters played significant 
roles in creating the film, 
Rogers says, including fellow 
writer/narrator Shoshana 
Janer, film editor Stuart 
Shevin and friend Shari 
Ferber Kaufman who funded 
the initial filming in Selma. 
Shari’
s father, Fred Ferber, 
a Holocaust survivor liv-
ing in Birmingham, is also 
featured in the film. Now 
90, Fred says the first Black 
people he saw in his life were 
the American soldiers who 
rescued him from a Nazi 
concentration camp after the 
war. The film notes that sol-
diers like these risked their 
lives to bring Ferber and oth-
ers their freedom, even while 
lacking their own freedoms 
at home.
Rogers credits the major 
fundraising of Shared 
Legacies to Atlanta, but 
Detroit, she says, is where 
the idea started. Years ago, 
she saw Dr. Clarence Jones, a 
lawyer and speechwriter for 
Dr. King and a future friend 
and ambassador of the film, 
speaking to a group of high 
school students at the Wright 
Museum in Detroit.
Jones remembers today, 
“I told them that much 
of the success the Civil 
Rights Movement was able 
to achieve was because of 
the substantial support we 
received from the Jewish 
community. I wasn’
t just 
talking about financial sup-
port and contributions, but 
about people who actually 
joined and worked with us. 
“To me, that’
s one of the 
untold stories. But, I’
m a wit-
ness to it.” 

Blake 

Weissman

“IF PEOPLE SEE THE SHARED 
LEGACIES AND THE WORK WE DID 
TOGETHER, THEY’LL UNDERSTAND 
NOW IS THE TIME TO REVIVE 
AND RENEW THAT COALITION OF 

CONSCIENCE.”

— REV. KENNETH J. FLOWERS

 NOVEMBER 19 • 2020 | 43

