“Civil rights: Crowd hears rabbis’ riveting story,” The St. Augustine Record, by Laura Hampton, Wednesday, June 18, 2014.
On Tuesday, June 17, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program recorded oral history interviews with rabbis who were arrested during civil rights protests in St. Augustine in 1964. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. invited the rabbis to come to the city, and 6 of the original 16 returned to St. Augustine this week for a two-day event, “Justice, Justice 1964” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Dr. Paul Ortiz moderated a public panel with the rabbis on Tuesday night at the Ringhaver Center in Flagler College, covered in The St. Augustine Record.
The “Justice, Justice 1964” event was titled from a passage from Deuteronomy in the Bible, which reads, “Justice, and only justice, shall you pursue.”
For more information about the “Justice, Justice 1964” event:
- Read the original letter, “Why We Went: A Joint Letter from the Rabbis Arrested in St. Augustine, Florida June 19, 1964” from the 16 rabbis, available online from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
- See additional coverage from The St. Augustine Record, “Civil rights: Rabbis reunite 50 years after arrest for protest” from June 2014.
You’ve lionized us, and we really appreciate that. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, but the real heroes are not the people who came down here for a couple of days — namely us. The real heroes were the people who fought the battle day and night, week after week, month after month, year after year.
-Rabbi Israel Si Dresner
Photos by Deborah Hendrix.