Kansas City icon Alvin Brooks knows more about the Civil Rights Movement here than almost anyone alive. And Brooks, former Kansas City mayor pro tempore, insists that progress for Blacks here would have been much more difficult without the consistent and persistent help of Jewish residents and l eaders. “Jews in this community and across the nation,” he says, “were helping Black people because of their own experiences. It’s one thing to sympathize. I can sympathize with you if you’ve got pain, but if I’ve had that same pain, it’s empathy. And Jewish people felt that.” What Brooks and others describe here in the Heartland is the deep Jewish-Black civil rights relationship that Henry Louis Gates’ seeks to describe nationally in a four-part documentary, “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven Story,” which starts this evening on Kansas City PBS. Coming Tonight to Kansas City PBS That relationship here has had its occasional struggles, but almost from the beginning, Blacks found willing partners in Jews, who understood the evils of bondage and its many ripple effects after American slavery officially ended because of their own connection to Jews enslaved in Egypt long ago. But many area Jews try to tell their stories of helping Blacks with modesty and without embellishment. For instance, retired federal judge Howard Sachs, who once served as chairman of the board of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City (as later did his son, Adam P. Sachs), told me this: “Arguably, reaction to the Nazi era was the foremost factor . . . Before Hitler, I doubt that American Jewish sympathy for the Blacks was notable.” Beyond that, he added, the Hebrew Bible is “as likely to inspire West Bank settlers as civil rights workers.” Related Content Still, Adam Sachs, the incoming chairman of the board of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum here, adds this: “I’ve been on and off the (Urban League) board since the mid-90s and have tried to help empower the leadership to push for necessary change, notwithstanding the risks of ruffling corporate/civic/political feathers along the way.” Indeed, so many Jewish leaders here worked with Black leaders — often in partnership with Christians and others — to secure fair and equitable treatment of Black residents (still an unfinished job) that to list them all would be nearly impossible. Beyond that, many, such as Rabbi Samuel Mayerburg, Rabbi Morris Margolies, Bruce Watkins the Rev. Nelson “Fuzzy” Thompson and dozens of others are no longer living, though many Kansas Citians still hold them and others as precious memories. The stories, too, are plentiful, and, among many others, Mark Levin, founding rabbi of Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park, enjoys telling several of them. For instance, Levin credits the civil rights work of the late attorney and good-trouble maker Sidney L. Willens, who was proud to identify as Jewish, for having “brought the Jewish community and the Black community together.” In this undated photo, lawyer Sidney Willens (center) and Fred Brunn, president of the Marlborough Neighbors Association, hold one of two “Shame of the Neighborhood” awards they posted on vacant houses at 7332 and 7334 Forest Ave. Willens was representing several residents of the southeast Kansas City neighborhood who were concerned that dilapidated housing threatened property values. These two houses were judged by neighbors to be the biggest eyesores in the area. (Photo Courtesy of The Kansas City Star) Indeed, when I was first a Kansas City Star reporter in the 1970s, I relied on Willens to alert me to various civil rights activities, including his efforts to racially integrate neighborhoods, such as Marlborough Heights, in safe and legal ways and to ensure the Kansas City Police Department treated everyone fairly. Levin also points to the important anti-racism work done here by Jewish activist Leonard Zeskind, whom he describes as “absolutely prophetic.” Zeskind was nationally known as an expert on the white nationalist movement and founder of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. And it’s no secret that Rabbi Michael Zedek, who led Congregation B’nai Jehudah for many years, and U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who has represented Kansas City in Congress for more than two decades, have been close friends for years and have worked together in various ways for racial justice. As Zedek says, “In the early 1970s, Emanuel Cleaver and I were invited to a group of 18 clergy in the city who met once a month for breakfast. We were a bit wet behind the ears metaphorically and we became friends, and that friendship is one of the joys of our lives to this day.” Cleaver says that Zedek’s openness to people of any race meant that the relationship the two of them developed became one that “was no longer between an African-American and a Jewish-American; it was friendship. That grew and we began to do a lot of different things together.” And the Rev. Robert Lee Hill, pastor emeritus of Community Christian Church, says that “what Michael and Emanuel did became the seedbed for Harmony in a World of Difference,” a project that sought to underpin the quest for racial justice with a moral base drawn from religion. Rabbi Morris B. Margolies (right), president of the Rabbinical Association of Kansas City, and the Rev. Charles H. Helmsing (left), bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Catholic diocese, pictured with an unidentified priest in January 1966 as part of the fair housing campaign sponsored by the Greater Kansas City Council on Religion and Race. (Photo Courtesy of The Kansas City Star) As for the work of Rabbi Margolies, he was a champion of civil rights, fought for non-discriminatory housing in Kansas City and marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama. As Dan Margolies, the rabbi’s son and my former Star colleague, told me, “I was only a kid then, but I remember that after my father returned from Hattiesburg, a local vigilante group called ‘The Minutemen’ threatened our family and that, for a brief while, we had a police guard around our house. My father spoke out from the pulpit about Jim Crow frequently. . .” Indeed the rabbi’s sermon archive is packed with words that helped to inspire area Jews and others to get engaged with the Black community. Alan Edelman, former chair of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, recalled that Rabbi Margolies “used to teach us that you can’t sit at the Passover Seder every year and talk about freedom from slavery and not participate in the civil rights movement.” Beyond all the personal connections, of course, Jewish institutions here often have been in constructive and long-term relations with Black institutions. An obvious example is the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee, where such leaders as Judy Helmann, and Marvin Szneler have been deeply connected to local Black efforts to improve racial justice. This 1992 photo features the Rev. Nelson ‘Fuzzy’ Thompson (left), subject of a Lincoln University alumni roast, and two of his roasters, Judy Hellman, and Missouri State Sen. Phil Curls. (Photo courtesy of The Kansas City Star.) As Hill notes, “JCRB/AJC has truly been at the forefront of standing up for social justice in an organized way.” And Szneler told me this: “We worked hard to continue the good work of Sidney Lawrence, David Goldstein, Judy Hellman, Bert Berkley, Judge Sachs and so many others in the struggle.” Returning to the question of what motivated Jews in the Heartland to value connections with Black Kansas Citians, Hellman said this: “We were taught to welcome the stranger because we were strangers in a strange land and that we shared a history of persecution. We shared a history of hatred against us, so we have that in common.” To which Zedek added this: “One of the magical notions of rabbinic tradition is that in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible there are 36 variations on ‘know the heart of the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’ So that’s a piece of it.  “Justice is not a monopoly for only one group. I would love to imagine that any person who has been pushed aside would have empathy and action for others who have had that experience. And in the American encounter there is no group for whom that is more definitive than the African-American community.” Cleaver also points to the Hebrew Bible where there’s “an amazing story line of someone coming to the aid of someone else” and that is a pattern he says Jews follow today. SuEllen Fried (left), a member of the local Jewish community and founder of the Kansas City Stop Violence Coalition, stands with Alvin Brooks, president of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, and his wife, Carol Brooks. The photo was taken in November 1997. (Photo Courtesy of The Kansas City Star) To which Hill adds: “Antisemitism and racism are part and parcel of the same bag of trouble and there’s power in sticking together through the trouble.” David Achtenberg, an emeritus law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City whose family members were close friends with the family of local Black leader Harold Holiday Sr., describes how “we were raised to be racial equality people. I think I was taught antiracism before I was taught Judaism.” But he notes that Jewish ethics also were a motivation for the work his family did for racial justice with Kansas City’s Black community. And yet, as Brandon M. Terry writes in his 2025 book, “Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement,” it was Black American slaves who long before the Civil War “gravitated toward the Exodus story . . . identifying their awful plight with that of the enslaved Hebrews . . .” But whichever group made that connection first, it has been a lasting bond. Many more stories about this could be told and names mentioned, including, among others, Ruth Schechter, who decades ago alerted me to many fair housing issues. But maybe for a last word here we should return to Alvin Brooks, who says this: “There has been a long relationship in this community between the Black and Jewish people. And that has made a difference.” Kansas City’s future will be much brighter for everyone if this Jewish-Black connection not only continues but flourishes. Bill Tammeus, an award-winning columnist formerly with The Kansas City Star, writes the “Faith Matters” blog (https://substack.com/@billtammeus429970) for The Star’s website. His latest book is Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety. Email him at [email protected]. The post History of Persecution Binds Black, Jewish Communities first appeared on Flatland. ...read more read less