0:02

Happy Saturday. This week on

0:04

the show, I talked to Jeremy Katz

0:06

about his new book, The Jewish Community

0:08

of Atlanta, as well as the work that he does

0:10

at the Bremen Museum and how that museum

0:13

is preserving past present and

0:15

what they hope will be future of the Jewish

0:17

community in Atlanta for everyone. And

0:19

in our discussion, we also talked about our previous

0:22

episode on the Hebrew Benevolent Temple bombing,

0:24

and we're replaying that as a Saturday Classic

0:27

today. This episode originally

0:29

came out February

0:34

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:37

a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,

0:46

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry

0:48

and I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and

0:51

uh for our listeners. Like I know, sometimes

0:54

when I'm listening to podcasts, I'm just letting

0:56

them flow and I don't always look at what's coming next,

0:58

like when I'm driving around. But if you are

1:00

a person that looks at your podcast

1:03

selection and you pick one or you just see it

1:05

come up and you like to read what's coming up, if

1:07

you saw the title for today's episode, you

1:09

might be braced for a really horrific or upsetting

1:12

story. I, in fact, was braced for such

1:14

a thing when you told me what you were researching this week.

1:17

Uh. I give you

1:20

relief because the bombing of the Hebrew Benevolent

1:22

Congregation temple in Atlanta in the late

1:24

nineteen fifties was a unique moment in

1:26

the civil rights movement. And while there

1:29

are some elements of the temple's free bombing

1:31

history and some UH

1:34

ideologies that are troubling

1:38

and horrific, I

1:41

will give you a spoiler and say that overall, this

1:43

is really a very very hopeful story.

1:45

Yeah, there is. There is definitely a bombing.

1:48

There is also racism and anti semitism,

1:51

But the story is

1:53

not the parade of tragedy you may be expecting

1:56

based on title. Correct. So

1:59

it may if you were worried or scared

2:01

that this is when you just were not ready for today.

2:04

Uh, it is probably not

2:06

going to be as upsetting as you think, although

2:08

of course there is some upsetting rhetoric

2:11

being discussed on the part of people that would

2:13

bomb a thing. UH. So

2:15

we're going to hop right into it. While

2:18

Atlanta has had a Jewish population

2:21

since the city was founded, at the end of eighteen

2:23

forty seven, Jews were really

2:25

a small minority of the city's people. In

2:28

eighteen fifty, fewer than thirty Jews

2:30

were recorded living in Atlanta, less

2:32

than one percent of the city's residents,

2:34

and by eighteen sixty, the year before

2:37

the United States Civil War began, the

2:39

Jewish population in the city had doubled.

2:42

Atlanta's Hebrew Benevolent Society

2:44

was also founded. That organization

2:46

came together with two primary missions,

2:49

assisting the city's impoverished

2:52

Jewish population and securing

2:54

a burial ground. Two years

2:56

after the Civil War ended, while Atlanta

2:58

was still rebuilding as a city,

3:01

the Hebrew Benevolent Society took its

3:03

next step establishing a temple.

3:06

And this move was precipitated by the words

3:08

of the Rabbi Isaac Liser of Philadelphia,

3:10

who was here presiding over a wedding

3:13

that was the first Jewish marriage ceremony in

3:15

Atlanta in January of eighteen sixty

3:17

seven, and Rabbi Liser told

3:20

the Southern Cities Jewish community that

3:22

they should establish a permanent place of worship,

3:24

and his words were definitely heard

3:27

and they were encouraging. When

3:30

the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation was founded

3:32

in eighteen sixty seven, it was the first

3:35

official Jewish institution in Atlanta

3:38

by the late spring of that year, just

3:40

four months after Rabbi Liser's encouragement,

3:43

they had their charter. Over the next

3:45

eight years, the congregation planned

3:47

and built a temple in downtown Atlanta,

3:49

which was completed in eighteen seventy five.

3:52

The early years for the temple, which

3:54

is the name it came to be known by that shortened version,

3:57

We're a little bit rocky. There was a series

3:59

of change overs in rabbis as the congregation

4:02

struggled with its identity and the type

4:04

of worship that it would favor, swaying

4:06

between traditional and reform ideologies.

4:10

But in three year

4:12

old Rabbi David Marx was hired and

4:14

he would stay at the temple for more than half a

4:16

century, steering it toward classical

4:18

reform Judaism. When Rabbi

4:21

Marx retired after World War Two, he was

4:23

replaced with Rabbi Jacob roth's Child

4:25

in nine six. Rothschild

4:28

built on Marx's work and fostering connections

4:30

with the greater Atlanta community, including

4:33

with other religious faiths. Rabbi

4:36

roths Child was also a vocal supporter of

4:38

civil rights and social justice, and This

4:40

was a departure from his predecessor's work,

4:43

who had felt that in order to keep his congregation

4:45

as safe as possible from anti Semitic

4:47

sentiments in the community, it was

4:49

best to avoid confrontations with the

4:52

wider community on such issues. To

4:54

be clear, there was a very real

4:56

and understandable reasoning behind

4:59

Marx's effort is to keep peaceful relationships

5:01

with Atlanta's gentile population. Many

5:05

of the Temple community remembered vividly

5:07

an event from nineteen thirteen when

5:09

a member of the temple named Leo Frank

5:12

was lynched by a mob after

5:15

being accused of the murder of

5:17

a young girl. The evidence against

5:19

him was thin, but by virtue

5:22

of being an outsider, being a Northerner

5:24

who had moved to the South and a Jew, Leo

5:27

Frank became a scape a scapegoat

5:29

who was easy to vilify.

5:31

That is a way oversimplified

5:34

version of this story. We have

5:36

an episode about it in the archive.

5:38

It was a huge miscarriage of justice,

5:42

and much of the Jewish community in Atlanta

5:44

opted to keep a low profile

5:46

after that out of out of self

5:49

preservation. Yeah, so when

5:51

we say that that Rabbi Marx had not been

5:54

vocal about civil rights. It wasn't necessarily

5:56

because he didn't care about them, but he was very concerned

5:59

about the anti semit issues that were still

6:01

very much a part of culture at

6:03

the time. But on Yam Kapoor.

6:06

Almost from the time that he became the

6:08

rabbi at the temple, Rothschild

6:10

used the holiday as an opportunity to speak

6:12

about segregation and to vocally

6:14

oppose Jim Crow laws. He

6:17

did so during subsequent Yam Kapoor

6:19

sermons as well. It kind of came to be expected

6:22

as the topic. He

6:24

included the following as he addressed his congregation,

6:28

how comforting this day might be.

6:31

Here's the perfect opportunity to find

6:33

ourselves forgiven. God's

6:35

standard is too high for us. His law

6:37

is too difficult. Our sins

6:40

were just the expected failures

6:42

of all mortals. All we need to

6:44

do, therefore, is come into His presence

6:46

On each Yam Kapoor, acknowledge

6:49

our inevitable guilt and pray

6:51

for forgiveness and low we shall be

6:53

forgiven. We are held accountable

6:56

for our conduct, We are responsible

6:58

for our acts. Won't rationalize

7:01

your guilt by claiming that morality

7:03

is too difficult for attainment by

7:05

mere man. Don't pretend helplessness

7:08

because the right way to live is placed

7:10

out of your reach. Don't for a moment

7:12

think that you can blame your sinfulness on the

7:14

fact that goodness is beyond your

7:17

grasp. Quite the opposite is true.

7:19

We must do more than view with

7:21

alarm the growing race

7:23

hatred that threatens the South. The

7:26

problem is ours to solve,

7:29

and the time for the solution is now.

7:32

We have committed no overt sin

7:34

in our dealings with negroes. I

7:36

feel certain that we have treated them

7:38

fairly. Certainly, we have not used

7:41

force to frighten them. We have even

7:43

felt a certain sympathy for their predicament.

7:46

No, our sin has

7:48

been the deeper one, the evil

7:50

of what we didn't do. This

7:53

was, as you might suspect, not entirely

7:56

welcomed rhetoric. The fear

7:59

of bigoted anti Semitic sentiment was

8:01

still very real to some of the people

8:03

that Rothschild was speaking to. They had lived

8:05

through that nineteen incident, and they knew

8:07

how scary the world could be. They

8:09

didn't want to invite conflict or stirrup

8:11

trouble, and they were certainly afraid of stirring

8:14

up the level of anti Semitism that

8:16

had led to Leo Frank's murder. I

8:19

would say also, this was in the nineteen

8:22

forties, so there was huge

8:24

reason to be afraid based on events going on in

8:26

Europe yep like there was, there

8:28

was a lot of a reason that people

8:31

felt the need to stay quiet. And

8:34

then additionally to all that, Rothschild

8:37

was something of an outsider himself. He

8:39

was from Pittsburgh and he came to lead the temple

8:42

after having served as an Army chaplain.

8:44

So while some of his congregation agreed

8:47

with his ideas but feared retribution

8:49

for them, others dismissed his message

8:52

as being out of touch with the culture of

8:54

the South and the tentative peace among

8:56

the differing cultures that made up Atlanta.

9:00

But to Rothschild, the morality that he

9:02

felt was an integral part of his

9:04

faith meant that he had to use his platform

9:06

to address social injustice. So

9:09

he continued to speak out again and again,

9:11

and he put actions behind his words. He

9:14

joined interfaith organizations and civic

9:16

groups, including the Southern Regional Council,

9:19

the Georgia Council on Human Relations, as

9:22

well as the Greater Atlantic Council on Human

9:24

Relations, and under his stewardship,

9:27

the temple hosted an institute

9:29

for the Christian clergy every February.

9:32

And while he worked hard to foster understanding

9:34

across varying faiths, Rabbi

9:36

Rothschild also works to bridge the

9:39

color divide as well, asserting that

9:41

black ministers must be included in

9:43

these kinds of gatherings, and he also invited

9:45

leaders of the black community to speak at

9:47

the temple. In late nineteen fifty

9:50

seven, so after he had been working at this

9:52

for about a decade. In Atlanta, Rothschild

9:55

co authored the Atlanta Manifesto,

9:57

which was an anti segregation document

9:59

that was sign and by more than eighty area religious

10:01

leaders and was directed at city authorities.

10:05

While he worked on the manifesto,

10:07

Rothschild was not one of the signatories

10:09

because he felt that the city's Christian leaders

10:11

should head the initiative for it to have its best

10:14

chance at a positive reception, and

10:16

that manifesto read in part,

10:19

we do not believe that the South is more

10:21

to blame for the difficulties which we face

10:24

than our other areas of our nation.

10:27

The presence of the Negro in America

10:29

is the result of the infamous slave

10:31

traffic, an evil for which the North

10:33

was as much responsible as the South.

10:36

We are also conscious that racial

10:39

injustice and violence are not confined

10:42

to our section, and that racial problems

10:44

have by no means been solved anywhere

10:46

in our nation. Two wrongs,

10:49

however, do not make a right. The

10:51

failures of others are not just a

10:53

justification for our own shortcomings,

10:57

nor can their unjust criticisms

10:59

excuse us for a failure

11:01

to do our duty in the sight of God

11:04

are one concern must be

11:06

to know and to do that

11:09

which is right. And all

11:11

of this vocal opposition to racism

11:15

on the part of the rabbi did not go unnoticed

11:17

by the greater population. But

11:19

unfortunately the rabbi's efforts to foster

11:21

understanding and compassion led to some

11:24

very serious consequences, and we're going to talk

11:26

about that right after we first paused for

11:28

a little sponsor break.

11:39

While there were people in Rabbi Rothschild's

11:42

congregation who were a little unsettled

11:44

by his constant engagement

11:46

with social issues, there were plenty

11:49

of people from outside the temple's

11:51

community who were downright incensed.

11:54

For example, in May of n Rothschild

11:57

was engaged as a speaker at Atlanta's first

11:59

bapt As church. In the evening of his

12:01

lecture, a man appeared outside

12:03

the church carrying a picket sign specifically

12:06

against the rabbi, and

12:08

then he later heckled the rabbi during

12:10

the Q and A segment of the evening's presentation.

12:14

And there was already a weird

12:16

conflation on the part of white

12:18

supremacist groups when it came to

12:20

the Jewish and Black communities. If

12:23

you listen to our episodes about the Palmer

12:25

Raids, you may recall how Palmer and

12:27

stirring up a panic, started to lump

12:29

anarchists and communists together

12:32

as one huge threat pool and

12:34

then eventually cast suspicion on all

12:36

immigrants. There was a similar

12:39

though different rhetoric playing out in

12:41

the South of the nineteen fifties. And to be clear, there

12:43

are Jewish black people, yeah,

12:46

but this was viewing

12:48

the Jewish community as a whole in the Black community as

12:50

a whole sort of the same general threat

12:53

base, yes uh.

12:55

And so for example of how these things got

12:57

combined, one flyer that

12:59

was being circulated by the Christian Anti

13:02

Jewish Party at the beginning of the nineteen

13:04

fifties was titled Jews behind

13:06

race mixing, and this flyer

13:08

claimed that the Jewish population was working

13:10

against segregation so that the white

13:13

race would be diluted and weakened, warning

13:15

that quote a race once mongrelized

13:18

is mongrelized forever. So

13:20

there was no illusion that an outspoken

13:23

rabbi arguing against segregation

13:26

wasn't going to make people angry.

13:29

But the real moment where it became clear

13:31

that rossjo that Rothschild was

13:34

really ruffling feathers came and the

13:36

very early morning of October twelfth, when

13:39

there was an explosion at the temple.

13:42

It was three forty am on a Sunday.

13:44

Rabbi Rothschild was called at seven five

13:47

am by the custodian at the temple,

13:49

Robert Benton. Benton

13:52

had been the one to discover the damage when he

13:54

arrived at work that morning. And you might think,

13:57

as you listen to this and you think about the timeline,

14:00

that an explosion that large at

14:02

three in the morning would have woken the neighborhood,

14:04

and it did. But when police

14:06

patrolled the area in response to calls

14:08

about the noise, they did not drive up the temple's

14:11

driveway and from their perspective.

14:13

They couldn't see the hole in the building from

14:15

the streets, so it looked like everything was fine. I'm

14:18

imagining that they went to investigate this noise

14:20

and then we're basically like, huh, that

14:22

was weird, right. Fifty

14:27

sticks of dynamite had been detonated

14:30

at the temple's north entrance, and the blast

14:32

made a huge hole in the building.

14:35

Fortunately, though there were no injuries.

14:37

There was, however, somewhere between

14:40

one hundred thousand and two hundred

14:42

thousand dollars worth of damage to the structure,

14:45

depending on what source you are looking

14:47

at. Yeah, especially if you're looking

14:49

at newspapers from the time, the number

14:51

varies wildly. One of the things

14:54

that I read suggested that two

14:56

hundred was like the highest estimate, but as

14:58

they, you know, got

15:00

more and more information about how bad the

15:02

damage was, it it crept downward a little

15:05

bit closer to the one thousand dollar number.

15:07

Still a very large sum in wherever

15:12

or now. Yeah, I think we're so used to modern

15:15

uh stories of explosions

15:18

or damages being in the billions, that it

15:20

may not seem initially that

15:22

large an amount to the modern

15:24

ear but in fact it's

15:26

a lot of money. Uh and this attack

15:29

was claimed by a white supremacist group

15:31

called the Confederate Underground. A man

15:33

claiming to be the leader of the group and calling

15:35

himself General Gordon, phoned

15:37

the United Press International Office

15:39

to tell them, quote, we bombed a

15:41

temple in Atlanta. This is the last

15:44

empty building we will bomb. Negroes

15:46

and Jews are hereby declared aliens.

15:49

At six fifteen that evening, there

15:52

was another call, this time to the

15:54

rabbi's home, where his wife Denise answered

15:57

they call. The call said, I'm

16:00

one of them that bombed your church. I'm

16:02

calling to let you know there's a bomb under

16:04

your house and it's lit. You've

16:06

got five minutes to get out and save your

16:09

life. While Denis and the neighbor got

16:11

themselves and their children out of the house, it

16:13

turned out to have been an empty threat. Yeah.

16:15

The police came and did a full scan

16:18

of the house and found nothing. But how

16:20

terrifying and horrible. UM

16:23

and that same group, the Confederate Underground,

16:25

had attacked a synagogue in Charlotte, North

16:27

Carolina, the prior November. The

16:29

dynamite that they used in that attack failed

16:32

to detonate, and between that failed attempt

16:34

and the explosion at the temple in Atlanta. The

16:36

Confederate Underground had bombed four other

16:39

temples and Jewish community centers,

16:41

while their second attack in Gastonia,

16:43

North Carolina, on February nine,

16:47

had also been thwarted by faulty

16:49

dynamite. Their third and fourth bombings,

16:51

carried out just hours apart on March

16:53

six, sixteenth, at the Orthodox

16:55

Temple Bethel in Miami, Florida and

16:58

the Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tennessee,

17:00

both caused building damage.

17:03

The fifth attack, at the Bethel Synagogue

17:05

in Birmingham, Alabama, on April was

17:08

unsuccessful, this time to diffuse failure,

17:10

and the following day there was another failed attack

17:12

at the Jewish Community Center in Jacksonville,

17:14

Florida. I

17:16

feel like this highlights the

17:19

fact that, like the series of

17:22

bomb threats at Jewish community centers that is

17:24

ongoing today, has

17:26

layers of being terrifying beyond just

17:28

the fact that it's a bomb threat, right,

17:31

It's a bomb threat that's part of a

17:33

history of bomb threats and bombings

17:35

specifically against Jewish

17:38

centers and houses of worship. Because

17:41

of those attacks and a protest

17:43

demonstration outside the Atlantic Constitution

17:45

offices in July, where protesters

17:48

carried signs reading free America

17:51

from Jewish Domination. The

17:53

Temple and all synagogues

17:55

throughout the South had increased their security,

17:58

but this was not enough to deter terrorists.

18:02

The other thing that happened as a result of

18:04

the previous attacks was

18:06

actually an improvement in coordination across

18:08

police forces from jurisdictions throughout

18:10

the South, and so after the attack

18:12

on the Temple, the law enforcement network

18:15

activated immediately. More

18:17

than seventy five detectives worked in conjunction

18:19

with agents from the FBI and the Georgia Bureau

18:22

of Investigation in an unprecedented

18:24

effort to search for suspects in the crime.

18:27

Five days after the bombing, on October

18:29

seventeenth, ninety five

18:32

men, all associated with the

18:34

white supremacy groups, the National

18:36

States Rights Party and the Knights of the

18:38

White Camellia were indicted

18:40

for the blast. Wallace Allen, Robert

18:43

Bowling, George Bright, Luther Corley,

18:45

and Kenneth Griffin, and they eventually

18:47

let one of the men go, but the first

18:49

of the five men that they tried was George

18:52

Bright, and his trial started on December

18:54

one, with Judge Derwood te Pie

18:56

presiding. The case against

18:58

Bright was the strong is the prosecutors

19:01

believed, and the hope was that a conviction

19:03

in his case would make it easier to convict

19:05

his cohorts. They're kind of relying

19:07

on a domino effect to take place. The

19:10

evidence against Bright included a note

19:12

found in his home that threatens terror

19:14

against the Jewish population, anti

19:16

Semitic literature found in his home,

19:19

and testimony from an FBI informant

19:21

who said that he had been in a meeting with

19:23

the other men in May of that year where

19:25

they planned the temple attack. Additionally,

19:29

the man we mentioned earlier who protested

19:31

a lecture giving given by Rabbi

19:34

Rothschild and then heckled him from the crowd

19:36

was also George Bright. He

19:39

had also been part of the anti Semitic

19:41

protest outside the newspaper offices.

19:44

The jury in the case actually came to a

19:46

deadlock. There were nine in favor of conviction

19:48

and three that were opposed, and none were willing

19:51

to budge, so on

19:53

the tenth day of the legal proceedings,

19:55

Judge Pye declared a mistrial. A

19:58

second trial soon followed, but this time

20:00

Bright was acquitted. There's actually a whole weird

20:02

side story where his um

20:05

lawyer was found in contempt of court and

20:08

I think actually ended up doing some jail time,

20:10

but he got his client off. Uh.

20:13

It sounded like a circus. But

20:15

because of the failure to secure a guilty

20:18

verdict in what they thought was clearly their strongest

20:20

case, prosecutors eventually it

20:22

took quite some time, but they eventually dropped the charges

20:25

against the other alleged conspirators.

20:28

No other suspects were ever charged for the bombing,

20:30

so there was absolutely never any

20:32

justice in this case. Well, and this is also

20:35

pretty circumstantial evidence.

20:39

It is clear evidence that he

20:42

was anti Semitic, but like

20:44

not a conclusive thing directly connecting

20:47

him to the bombing um

20:50

So well, that's a somber

20:52

element of this case. It does, as we

20:54

mentioned at the top of the show, have some truly

20:57

hopeful elements to it, and we will talk

20:59

about those after a quick word from one of our

21:01

sponsors. All

21:12

of that outreach that Rabbi Rosschild had been

21:14

doing in Atlanta's diverse communities, as

21:16

uncomfortable as it sometimes made people, was

21:18

really repaid in the aftermath of the bombing.

21:21

People from all walks of life rallied

21:23

around ross Child in his congregation. Religious

21:26

and civic leaders in Atlanta and then

21:28

in the US and then around the globe

21:30

contemned the attack. The help

21:33

came in both verbal condemnation of

21:35

the attack and in financial support for

21:37

the temple to rebuild. The

21:39

mayor of Atlanta at the time,

21:41

William be Heartsfield and Amy will recognize

21:43

if you have ever flown in or out of Atlanta,

21:46

said in an interview right after the attack, quote,

21:49

my friends, here you see the

21:51

end result of bigotry and intolerance,

21:53

and whether we like it or not, those practicing

21:56

rabble rousing and demagoguery are

21:58

the godfather of the

22:00

cross burners and the dynamiters.

22:03

Yeah. There's actually footage of of him

22:06

making that pronouncement on television and

22:08

in his Southern accent. It's quite charming. The

22:10

editor of the Atlanta Constitution, Ralph McGill,

22:13

another name you'll recognize if you've been in the city. We

22:15

have a street named after him, wrote a

22:17

series of editorials on the bombing, which eventually

22:19

earned him a Pulitzer Prize, in which he said, quote,

22:22

you cannot preach and encourage hate

22:24

for the Negro and hope to restrict

22:26

it to that field. When the wounds

22:28

of hate are loosed on one people, then

22:30

no one is safe. Donations

22:32

came from rich and poor alike, including

22:35

one which was sent in by Fulton County

22:37

Prison Chaplain Bill Allison. The

22:40

money, the chaplain explained, had

22:42

been contributed by the prisons black population,

22:45

who had taken up a collection to donate.

22:48

The chaplain received a letter of thanks from

22:50

Rathschild which said, quote, of all

22:52

the gifts which we have received, this

22:54

one certainly is one of the most meaningful

22:57

and heartwarming. The

22:59

social hall at the temple was named Friendship

23:01

Hall to acknowledge the many people from

23:04

all over Atlanta and the world who stood

23:06

by Rothschild and his congregation

23:08

and helped them rebuild, and the rabbi's

23:11

first sermon after the bombing, he shared

23:13

this message of hope quote. This despicable

23:16

act has made brighter the flame of

23:18

courage, and renewed and

23:20

splendor the fires of determination

23:22

and dedication. It has reached

23:24

the hearts of men everywhere, and

23:27

roused the conscience of people

23:29

united and righteousness. All

23:32

of us together shall rear from

23:34

the rubble of devastation a city

23:36

and a land in which all men are

23:39

truly brothers, and none shall make

23:41

them afraid. The

23:43

following year, on the anniversary of the bombing,

23:46

the temple had been repaired and

23:48

red, white, and blue stained glass windows

23:50

filled the space that had been the whole caused

23:53

by the blast, and in a statement

23:55

to the press that was made on that anniversary, Rabbi

23:57

Rosschild said that the windows quote sim

24:00

belies the basic faith of the people.

24:03

While the bomb attack had the surprise consequence

24:05

of bringing a lot of the Atlanta community

24:08

together, had also highlighted

24:10

the problems that were still so clear

24:12

across the country. There were

24:15

very valid questions raised about

24:17

whether there would be such kindness and

24:19

good pr if the same thing

24:21

had happened at a black church. There

24:24

were already plenty of cases of racist

24:26

violence on the books against African Americans

24:29

that had not been pursued so

24:31

diligently as the temple bombing, or

24:34

at all in some instances. The

24:37

bombing in its reaction also caught

24:40

the segregationist movement off guard.

24:42

While supporters of segregation had long

24:45

seen liberals from the North and the nub

24:47

A CP in the Supreme Court as their enemies

24:49

in what they thought was right, there

24:52

were also efforts at this point to try to

24:54

disassociate from the militant white

24:56

supremacist movements like the National

24:59

States Rights Party, the Knights of the White

25:01

Chamelea, and the kkk UH.

25:03

They wanted not to let that mar

25:05

what they thought was their correct ideology,

25:08

and there were also some claims by white supremacist

25:10

groups that this whole bombing had been staged

25:13

just to incriminate them. There were

25:16

certainly still many battles

25:18

to fight in the civil rights movement, and racial

25:20

equality and frankly anti semitism

25:23

still remain issues today, but the

25:25

bombing at the temple is largely seen as

25:27

a watershed moment that moved

25:30

the civil rights movement forward. When

25:33

Rabbi Rothschild's wife, Janice

25:35

Rothschild Blumberg, wrote about

25:37

the incident later in her life, she tiled

25:40

her writing the Bomb That Healed, and

25:42

in that writing, which appeared

25:45

in American Jewish History magazine,

25:48

Janice also astutely acknowledged

25:50

the racial divide that offered

25:53

the temple a bit of privilege. In the wake

25:55

of this bombing. She wrote, quote to

25:57

churchgoing at Lantin's desecration

25:59

of a house of God was an abomination that

26:02

it was Jewish, made no difference that

26:04

its members were white. Probably did.

26:06

And I also want to say that, uh,

26:10

that particular piece of writing is spectacular,

26:12

and I encourage people to go read it. It's available on

26:15

j Store, because she really captures

26:17

what it was like to be in

26:20

the midst of that sort of weird shock wave,

26:22

and what it was like from receiving that call in

26:24

the morning, how they were dealing with it,

26:26

what her emotions were doing, what the community

26:28

was doing. It's a really really good snapshot

26:31

of that moment in history. Well,

26:33

and you and I, neither of us is Jewish.

26:36

We have not spent our lives confronting

26:38

anti semitism or racism. Frankly,

26:41

so having perspectives

26:44

from people who are coming from

26:47

that side of it is super important. Rabbi

26:50

Rothschild continued for his entire

26:53

life to be an outspoken advocate

26:55

for equality, even more so after

26:57

the bombing them before he

26:59

gave the eulogy for his friend Martin

27:02

Luther King, Jr. At an interfaith memorial

27:04

in Atlanta after the civil

27:06

rights leader was assassinated. He

27:08

died of a heart attack on the last day of nineteen

27:11

seventy three, but the

27:13

temple remains. It's changed and been renovated

27:15

several times to accommodate it's it's

27:18

ever growing, uh community,

27:21

and it is still an active place of worship. It

27:24

is also on the National Park Service National

27:26

Register of Historic Places to Visit.

27:29

I mean, it's a part of Atlanta that we see

27:31

all the time. People drive by it. It is shown

27:34

in the movie Driving Miss Daisy. It

27:36

is. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous structure

27:38

and really lovely. So uh.

27:42

That is the story of the temple bombing, and

27:45

it's one of those things that I feel foolish. I did not,

27:47

even though I live here in Atlanta and I have seen little

27:49

snippets about it, I never really knew

27:51

that much about it. Yeah, And you and I had

27:53

a brief conversation before we

27:55

started recording about having

27:58

even been there's a Jewish History

28:00

museum in Atlanta, and having having even

28:02

been there, and I think gone through their

28:05

exhibition on his Jewish History

28:07

in Atlanta through objects, it

28:10

rang a bell. But I knew so

28:12

little about it at all.

28:15

Yeah, which is a pity. I mean, I know, within

28:17

the Jewish community it is still a very big

28:19

deal and something that they speak about a lot, but

28:21

I had no knowledge of that fact prior

28:24

to digging into this research. Thanks

28:32

so much for joining us on this Saturday.

28:34

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