Two Civil Rights Milestones. One Nation in Freefall
July 2nd: When Civil Rights Rose — and Now Begin to Fall. 162 Years Later, The Battle for Equality Is Being Lost.
Today marks two critical days in the history of the United States — July 2, 1863 and July 2, 1964 — mark turning points in America’s long, unfinished fight for freedom and equality. Today, that fight is unraveling.
On July 2, 1863 — exactly 162 years ago — the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg was fought. This was one of the most important battles in the American Civil War, which began because Southern states wanted to keep slavery, while the North fought to preserve the Union.
Earlier that year, in January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring enslaved people in the Confederate states to be free. This changed the war’s purpose — making it not only about saving the country but also about ending slavery.
Gettysburg turned the tide. Two years later, in 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery. But freedom on paper did not mean freedom in life. Black Americans faced nearly a century of segregation, violence, and economic bondage.
Reconstruction’s promise was crushed by Jim Crow. Lynch mobs ruled. Voter suppression and segregation was law. Over 90% of Black families in the South were trapped in sharecropping, giving up half or more of their harvests just to survive, essentially “slavery rerouted.” Still, Black communities built schools, churches, and civic institutions — foundations of resistance, dignity, and hope.
By the mid-20th century, the fight for civil rights roared back. Black leaders led the charge — organizing, litigating, and demanding justice. Du Bois. Wells. Parks. Malcolm X. Marshall. King. Their courage shook the conscience of a nation.
And on July 2, 1964 — 61 years ago today — President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, banning legal segregation and outlawing discrimination. It was a watershed moment. But it wasn’t the end. The Black freedom struggle was always led by Black Americans — but they were not alone. Jewish Americans, among others, stood beside them. Sometimes quietly, sometimes fighting along, but always firmly.
Long before Selma, Jewish voices condemned slavery. Rabbi David Einhorn preached abolition while mobs threatened his life. Haym Salomon helped fund the Revolution. Jews operated stops on the Underground Railroad. For example: August and Henrietta Bondi, a Jewish couple, operated a stop in Greeley, Kansas, providing refuge for enslaved people. Their home became a key location in the fight against slavery.
From 1910 to 1940, more than 5,000 Black primary and secondary schools and Black colleges, including Howard, Dillard and Fisk universities, were established in whole or in part by contributions from Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. At the height of the so-called "Rosenwald schools," nearly 40 percent of Black people in the south were educated at one of these institutions.
In the 20th century, Jewish lawyers played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement. Jack Greenberg, a key figure at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, was one of the attorneys who argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court, serving alongside Thurgood Marshall. Charles Hamilton Houston—though not Jewish himself—was the legendary NAACP legal strategist often called the "man who killed Jim Crow"; he mentored many civil rights lawyers, including Marshall. Herbert Hill, who was Jewish, served as the NAACP's labor director from 1951 to 1977. He was a fierce advocate for racial integration in labor unions and helped advance economic justice for Black workers across the country.
Jewish rabbis locked arms with Dr. King in Selma. Jewish organizations battled racism in the courts and in Congress. Some gave their lives in that fight. Of the hundreds of allies murdered or attacked during the civil rights era, a disproportionate number were Jewish.
Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — two young Jewish activists — were murdered alongside James Chaney, a Black colleague, by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi while registering Black voters.
While exact numbers vary, the fact remains, several dozen Jews were beaten, jailed, or killed during the civil rights struggle — sacrificing in solidarity with their Black brothers and sisters.
A fact often ignored, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. And beyond the Black freedom struggle, Jews fought for labor rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights — always driven by tikkun olam, the call to repair a broken world.
But today, the very protections Jews helped build are being torn down — and turned against them.
Antisemitism is surging — not from the margins, but from the institutions that once claimed to stand for justice. The U.S. government found Columbia and Harvard violated Jewish students' civil rights. Lawsuits are piling up. Jewish students are stalked, spit on, harassed and threatened. Jews are banned from conferences. Jewish writers are blacklisted. Jewish, or Jewish sounding job applicants dismissed. Progressive spaces that once welcomed Jews now demand they renounce their identity to be included.
Worse still, too many are silent. The same community that helped win justice for millions is now told it no longer deserves any. That Jews — and only Jews — are not entitled to dignity, safety, or civil rights, that is the overall message.
The mobs chanting for Hamas, purging Jews from movements, universities, publishing houses, and activist spaces — this isn’t “resistance.” It’s a cult. One that demands Jews denounce their people, their history, even their safety — or be cast out.
They demand Israel — the only country in the region where Arabs, Christians, women, and LGBTQ+ citizens have full rights — be dismantled. They demand the heartland of Jewish state to be ethnically cleansed from Jews. How’s that for “Human Rights”? The irony, they do it while chanting “Death to America.” This is not fighting for civil rights, equality or freedom. It is mockery. It is a cult. Let’s be clear: what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.
And nowhere is this the mockery to civil rights more visible than in the rise of DEI — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. What began as an effort to expand opportunity has morphed into a rigid ideological machine — one that judges people not by their skills, character, or ideas, but by the darkness of their skin, the novelty of their pronouns, or the shock value of their hair color. Identity has replaced merit. Race has replaced qualification. Institutions openly discriminate — not only against Jews, but against all Americans, and anyone who refuses to play by the new rules of selective victimhood and “oppression.” In the name of “equity,” the very concept of equality was dismantled. DEI truly stands for “Discrimination, Exclusion, Indoctrination”
The Trump administration is making serious efforts to restore sanity — creating executive orders against DEI, shutting down all DEI programs in the federal level, targeting antisemitism, launching investigations into discriminatory campus climates, and forming task forces to protect religious liberty and equal treatment for all. But the fight for equality is older and deeper than any single administration. It spans generations.
We also must keep perspective. Despite its imperfections, America remains a global leader in rights and freedoms. Compare that with much of the Arab-Muslim world:
In Saudi Arabia, women cannot marry without a male guardian’s permission and are punished for showing their hair.
In Iran, gay people are executed and women tortured, raped, imprisoned and murdered for showing some hair.
In Gaza, LGBTQ+ individuals are persecuted, often tortured, beheaded and thrown off buildings.
In Lebanon, Palestinians are denied citizenship, banned from over 70 professions, and confined to camps.
In Qatar and other Muslim majority countries, modern day slavery is the norm. Thousands die from subhuman living and work conditions and are trapped in a life of slavery away from their home.
Yet the same activists and “Human Rights” organizations who chant “From the river to the sea,” “apartheid” and “end the occupation” are silent about all this. Excusing regimes that imprison and execute dissidents and are serial human rights violators.
Well said
In the words of my long gone grandma:
You do and do and do for these people
and this is the thanks you get?