A conversation with Caroline Light (Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University), author of That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South, about the American Jewish tradition of charity and its southern roots. Drawing from confidential case files and institutional records from various southern Jewish charities, Light relates how southern Jewish leaders and their immigrant clients negotiated the complexities of “fitting in” in a place and time of significant socio-political turbulence, post-Civil War. Ultimately, the southern Jewish call to benevolence bore the particular imprint of the region’s racial mores and left behind a rich legacy.

About the film: When five Howard University students sat on a segregated Maryland carousel in 1960, the arrests made headlines. When the largely Jewish community near Glen Echo Amusement Park joined the Black students in picketing, the first organized interracial civil rights protest in US history was born. The pickets attracted Nazis, Congressman, and a press avalanche. Picketing together for these unlikely allies led to partying together, and union organizers mentored student activists. With never-before seen footage, and immersive storytelling by Emmy-award winning director Ilana Trachtman, four living protesters rescue this untold story, revealing the price, and the power, of heeding the impulse to activism. Discussion with director to follow