Legends, Lessons & Legacies: The Jewish Community’s Impact on Birmingham’s Civil Rights Movement

T.K. Thorne’s book Behind the Magic Curtain came out eight days after this program. It’s about the white allies who worked behind the scenes in Birmingham’s civil rights years, and a number of them were leaders of the city’s Jewish community. Those men took real risks. Jews in Birmingham weren’t fully accepted themselves, and standing with the movement could cost them their businesses.

Thorne was joined by the children of three of the men in her book: Richard Berkowitz, son of Abe Berkowitz; Stephen Grafman, son of Rabbi Milton Grafman; and Tracy Friedman Stein, daughter of Karl Friedman. Tracy remembered civil rights meetings in the family’s home, and the bullet that came through their window because of her father’s work. He never replaced that pane of glass. The program also looked at what the three men were doing for Zionism and Israel at the same time.

Larry Brook, editor of Southern Jewish Life and Israel InSight, moderated. The two magazines sponsored it with AIC, and AIC ran the Zoom. Of the 318 people who registered, 221 showed up, and about 60 more watched on Facebook Live.