The Time is Always Right to Do What is Right – Lessons From Recent Civil Rights Journey


Mitchell Posner, Baltimore Jewish Council board member
Civil Rights Mission group photo

In 1966 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “To ignore evil is to be an accomplice to it.” In 2024 I experienced something I had never felt before and couldn’t ignore – I sensed evil in the air! 

The Baltimore Jewish Council’s (BJC) and The Associated’s Civil Rights Journey started in Atlanta on Sunday, September 15, and ended in Montgomery, Alabama on Wednesday, September 18.

The last night of our four-day journey, I felt it. It hit hard after dinner while walking past the Montgomery railroad terminal where people who were taken from Africa ended their journey, then passing the historic buildings on Commerce Street where they were “warehoused” until they were taken to the Court Square Circle to be auctioned off to become slaves (the City of Montgomery’s historical marker at the circle reads – the “Historic hub for business in Montgomery”)! The spirit of evil was pervasive.

These are the experiences of our journey that sharpened that sense:

  • Monday morning, we started in the King Center Neighborhood where Dr. King was born and grew up, we saw the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the King family preached, and the tombs where he and his wife are interred.
  • We then took a long bus ride to Birmingham, AL. I immediately got the chills when we disembarked at the 16th Street Baptist Church, where members of the local KKK planted dynamite under the steps just inside the doorway adjacent to where we were standing, murdering four little girls who were changing into their choir robes in the adjacent restroom.
  • We then crossed the street and entered Kelly Ingram Park, where we met and were inspired by veteran Civil Rights Warrior Bishop Calvin Wallace Woods, Sr. This park was the site where Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor ordered his police to beat peaceful demonstrators with nightsticks, set their German Shepherds on them and unleash high-pressure fire hoses at the protesters, many of whom were children.
  • The following morning we headed to Selma, where we had the privilege of walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Our emotions were heightened beforehand, hearing the spellbinding experiences of Ms. Lynda Blackmon Lowery, the youngest person to participate in the entire Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March.
  • At the far side of the bridge, I was surprised to find the organically developed Civil Rights Memorial Park – their tributes have been erected to memorialize luminaries such as Dr. and Mrs. King and Rep. John Lewis and lesser-known heroes such as Rev. Hosea Williams, Sr. (“Leader of the Selma-Montgomery March” who “…fed the hungry”) and Amelia Boynton Robinson and Marie Foster (“Mothers of the Civil Rights Movement Before and Beyond The Bridge”).
Civil Rights, Rosa Parks bus boycott sign
  • Our bus traveled the length of the 54-mile Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. Our first stop in Montgomery was the Rosa Parks Museum. I was mesmerized by the portrayal of the arrest of Ms. Parks animated in an actual 1955 Montgomery City Bus and intrigued to see a 1956 station wagon used as part of the carpooling system organized to transport those who avoided city busses during the subsequent boycott.
  • On our final morning, the entire experience was amplified by our visit to Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice (dedicated to the more than 4,400 victims of racial terror lynchings); their Legacy Museum which takes you through American history from enslavement to mass incarceration (I was spellbound watching the holographic images of people being held in recreations of the holding cells in the aforementioned “warehouses”) and the extensive outdoor Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. These three places combined to reinforce that haunting sensation of evil that has stayed with me to this day!
Civil rights sign, lynching of Howard Cooper

Since our trip, I’ve reflected on how many similarities there are between the African American experience and our Jewish communal history. The dehumanization experienced in Kelly Ingram Park evoked photos I’ve seen of Jews cleaning gutters under the watch of Nazis in the late 1930’s. The railroad transport to forced labor was similar to the Holocaust experience. The Pettus Bridge/Selma to Montgomery March reminded me of the Death Marches just before concentration camp liberations. The Birmingham Church bombing was a clear act of terrorism similar to the challenges we face today. And, the holograms in the holding cells at the museum spoke like the 101 remaining hostages in Gaza crying to me for help.

As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 20, I’m reminded of three of Dr. King’s quotes:

  • “Hate destroys the hater”,
  • “The time is always right to do what is right”, and
  • “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?”

Many agencies of The Associated offer substantive and impactful opportunities to volunteer your time, talent or treasure in service of others – both within our Jewish community (in Baltimore and Israel) and our neighbors throughout the Baltimore region. The civil rights mission reinforced my commitment to double down on the call to service. Hopefully, you will be inspired to answer the call on the National Day of Service on January 20 and beyond.


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The Associated is a home for everyone in the Baltimore Jewish community. We offer several email lists to help people find a community, engage with their peers and support Jewish journeys around the world.

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