of the key places that were at the fore-
front of the Civil Rights movement 
— Selma, Birmingham, Montgomery 
and Atlanta. The trip was sponsored by 
the JCRC/AJC with support from the 
Ravitz Foundation.
The experience was indeed edu-
cational, but it was so much more. It 
was a barrage of powerful and often 
disturbing moments that grabbed our 
hearts and never let up. We started with 
a visit to the King Center in Atlanta, 
a huge complex that encompasses the 
original and new Ebenezer Baptist 
Church, where Sen. Raphael Warnock 
had just preached the day before. 
Just steps away, in the center of a 
large concrete pond, sits the massive 
marble tomb that is the final resting 
spot for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and 
Coretta Scott King. In the background, 
we heard a nonstop loop of Dr. King’s 
booming voice, 
along with a 
collection of his 
most notable 
quotes etched 
throughout the 
area. We stared 
at the tomb 
and took in the 
magnitude of the loss. Dr. King was 
only 39 when he was gunned down. 
We quietly lingered and asked ourselves 
what might have been, but the tomb 
only stared back at us and offered no 
answers. 
From Atlanta we took a bus ride to 
Birmingham, ground zero for some 
of the most brutal attacks of the entire 
era. Our guide prepared us for what we 
were going to learn, and why the city 
was once referred to as Bomb-ingham. 
We visited the16th Street Baptist 
Church, where four girls were killed 
going to Sunday school. We stood out-
side the corner wall that had once been 
decimated with the blast of 19 sticks of 
dynamite. Sixty years have passed, but 
the tragedy still felt painfully raw. 
The next morning, we headed to 
Selma to walk across the Edmund 
Pettus Bridge, the site of Bloody Sunday 
on March 7, 1965, where 600 marchers 

were brutally attacked by state troopers. 
But first we heard from a woman who 
was present that day and badly injured. 
At 15 years old, “Miss Linda” had 
already been arrested nine times for her 
work with the movement. She recalled 
the time she and about “50 to 70 girls” 
were jammed in a tiny jail cell, and only 
gained strength by together tearfully 
singing “We Shall Overcome.
” 
We walked across the bridge, with 
images in our heads of both the vio-
lence and the courageous leadership of 
people like John Lewis and Dr. King. 
Selma is a depressing place. It feels run 
down, gloomy, empty. The ghosts of its 
past sins seem to haunt the entire place. 
Going into the trip, we knew it would 
be educational. And it was. But the 
shared experience went beyond just 
being a history lesson. It was a deep 
dive into cultural empathy — the cru-
elty of hate and 
how the scars of 
history have a 
way of lingering 
for generations. 
But perhaps 
most impor-
tantly, it was 
about the power 
of relationships — new and old — 
that can help us get through difficult 
times. We need each other. Books, doc-
umentaries and lectures can effectively 
transfer information, but a warm hug at 
a somber place nourishes the soul. (We 
did a lot of hugging.) 
We spoke often about how tragic it is 
that America is still grappling with the 
issues of racial inequality six decades 
after the Civil Rights movement. But 
this group always understood that, 
despite the immense pain from the 
past, we have no choice but to keep 
working toward achieving the “beloved 
community” that Dr. King envisioned. 
We may have left our trip shaken 
by what we saw, but we also left unde-
terred by the challenge ahead. 
We have a lot of work to do. 

 

Mark Jacobs is the co-founder and co-director of 

the Coalition for Black and Jewish Unity of Detroit.

OUR COMMUNITY
ON THE COVER

ABOVE: Mark 
Jacobs and Rev. 
Kenneth Flowers. 

“THE ONLY WAY OUT 

IS THROUGH.”

— ROBERT FROST

continued from page 12

BELOW: Shayna 
Lopatin, Bishop 
Calvin Woods 
and Rabbi Asher 
Lopatin.

LEFT: Mark Jacobs 
and Rev. Deedee 
Coleman.

14 | JUNE 1 • 2023 

