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