The Charlotte Jewish News - June-July 2014 - Page 6
Near Sell-Out Crowd Attends “From Swastika to Jim Crow” Movie
Fundraiser to Support Shalom Park Freedom School
By Amy Lefkof
Joint destinies:
Jewish refugee scholars and
Black Southern college
students,
Shalom Park Jews and Freedom
School scholars
Transforming each others’ lives.
Passing through the waters to
a better life.
Passing through the waters to
a free future.
These words are from “Blaeks
and Jews Walking Together - Then
and Now,” a poem written by
Rabbi Judy Sehindler as she
watehed the PBS doeumentary
From Swastika to Jim Crow at the
May 1 Shalom Park Freedom
Sehool (SPFS) movie fundraiser
that drew nearly 250 Shalom Park
and greater Charlotte eommunity
supporters to Sam Lemer Hall.
One supporter, Temple Beth El
eongregant David Cohen, ob
served, “Part of the dream [in ere-
ating Shalom Park Freedom
Sehool] was that through helping
others in our Charlotte eommu
nity, our Shalom Park eommunity
would be touehed and trans
formed even if only in a small
way. Tonight I saw that has hap
pened. Shalom Park Freedom
Sehool is not just a reality, but a
truly superb reality.”
At the beginning of the
evening, SPFS Co-Chair Lisa
Garfinkle announeed to applause
the deeision of the SPFS Steering
Committee to expand the six-
week literaey-based summer
program for eeonomieally disad
vantaged ehildren to support 80
students in 2015, up from the 50
students that have been served
sinee summer 2011. Of the stu
dents, ealled seholars, attending
SPFS sinee 2011, 90% have suf
fered no summer reading loss,
whieh is the goal of the program,
with 65% gaining one or more
levels of reading eomprehension
after just one summer.
From Swastika to Jim Crow
tells the eompelling but little
known story of Jewish refugee
seholars who were expelled from
their teaehing posts in Nazi Ger
many and found refuge and em
ployment at historieally blaek
eolleges and universities in the
South. Having eseaped perseeu-
tion in Nazi Germany, only to en-
eounter the raeial perseeution of
the segregated South, these Jewish
professors earefully navigated this
surreal environment and posi
tively impaeted the lives of their
blaek students by mentoring them,
eneouraging them to apply for
Fulbright seholarships and Ph.D
programs, and inspiring them to
dream big dreams.
Following the doeumentary,
Jaekie Fishman, the ehild of a
Holoeaust survivor and the
mother of a son who attended
Morehouse College, moderated a
panel diseussion that drew a pow
erful parallel between the histori-
eal relationship between
Ameriean Jews and Afriean-
Amerieans, and the elose assoeia-
tion that exists today between the
Shalom Park eommunity and the
eeonomieally disadvantaged
seholars who attend Shalom Park
Freedom Sehool.
Rabbi Sehindler, the first pan
elist, spoke to the historie linking
of arms between Jews and
Afriean-Amerieans to register
blaek voters during the Freedom
Summer of 1964,
and the infamous
murder of blaek
CORE aetivist
James Chaney, and
Jewish aetivists
Miehael Sehw-
emer and Andrew
Goodman. She
opined how this
working together
has eontinued up
People from all parts of the Shalom Park community at- today with the
tended the SPFS May 1 fundraiser. Photo courtesy of linking of arms at
Ralph Besnoy.
Shalom Park Free
dom Sehool.
Prineipal Beth Wardy of
Sterling Elementary, a
sehool that sends students to
SPFS, explained how 90%
of her students live in
poverty, with a eurrent
eount of 60 homeless stu
dents. To spend six weeks at
Shalom Park with enriehing
summer aetivities that in-
elude ehess, opera, swim
lessons, yoga, and sign lan
guage, is to have new doors
opened, sinee most of their
lives eenter around only two
plaees: their apartment and
their sehool.
The final panelist, Kevin
Vandiver, SPFS’s first site-
direetor and a graduate of
the Duke Divinity Sehool,
plained that Freedom Summer of
1964 also established a network
of voluntary summer sehools —
“Freedom Sehools”- as an alter
native to Mississippi’s totally seg
regated and underfunded sehools
for blaeks, and that the eurrent
Children’s Defense Fund Freedom
Sehools follow this model. Van
diver urged his mostly Jewish au-
dienee to remember the lesson of
Queen Esther who was plaeed in
her position as Queen to help save
her people. Vandiver suggested
that his Shalom Park audienee
was in a unique position to help
support SPFS, and should do so as
a matter of justiee, not eharity; not
a hand out, but a hand up.
The SPFS program eosts
(Left to right): Temple Israel congregant
Alan Goldberg who photographs SPFS
scholars every summer, SPFS s first site di
rector Kevin Vandiver, and Mary Nell
McPherson, Executive Director of Freedom
School. Photo courtesy of Ralph Besnoy.
ex-
$1,200 per seholar. Although
$60,000 has already been raised to
host 50 seholars for 2014, foeus is
now on raising funds to serve 80
seholars in Summer 2015. Event
Chair Cheryl Alley said prelimi
nary figures show donations and
multi-year pledges at $16,000
from the May 1 Event. To donate
online, please go to www.spfree-
domsehool.org and indieate
Shalom Park Freedom Sehool
when making your donation.^
FREEDOM SCHOOL FARTHERS
Sltalorn Park Froedom School
A SURPRISING CONNECTION.
A REMARKABLE LEGACY.
Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow teWs the compelling but little known story of
Jewish professors who fled Nazi Germany during WWII, came to America
and found teaching positions at historically black colleges and universities
in the South. There they came face to face with the absurdities of a rigidly
segregated Jim Crow society.
Discoverthe connections and encounters between these refugee scholars
and their students, and their great impact on each other, the Civil Rights
Movement, and American society.
Presented thanks to support from the William and Patricia Gorelick Family
Foundation, Shelton and Carol Gorelick, Scott and Dana Gorelick, Jeff and
Bari Gorelick, Howard and Julie Levine, and Lori and Eric Sklut.
Levine
Museum
BEYOND SWASTIKA
AND JIM CROW
of the New South
JEWISH REFUGEE SCHOLARS
no Levine Museum
www.museumofthenewsouth.org
Open daily • 200 E. 7th St., uptown Charlotte
1 SCIENCE COUNCIL
ON EXHIBIT MAY 7 - SEPT. 14, 2014
Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Schoiars atBiack Coiiegeswas created and is circulated by the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, New York City. The exhibit is
made possible through major funding from the Leon Levy Foundation. Additional support provided by the Helen Bader Foundation; The Lupin Foundation, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation; public funds
from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the Alpern Family Foundation; and the Charles and Mildred Schnurmacher Foundation.