Jews & the Civil Rights Movement

The Black community continued to face discrimination under the racist Jim Crow laws in the South which led to the civil rights movement. Jews across the United States, by overwhelming majority, joined the cause to end segregation and supported the civil rights cause. The partnership between the communities was, in some ways, epitomized by the little-known story of Esther Swirk Brown, a Jewish homemaker from Kansas City, and her legal crusade to end school segregation.