In unfairness to them both, while Hermon Johnson, Jr. Museum director, and Darryl Johnson, Sr. CEO, Mound Bayou Movement, provided a captivating history of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, I couldn’t shake an image nearby. I mean, never in my life could I imagine sitting less than ten feet from the wooden desk and tattered leather chair where once sat the late civil rights activist Medgar Evers cranking out letters on a black typewriter. I walked over to the desk, inhaled, and fought back a desire to touch either it or the chair.
So, what brought me to this indelible moment in my life, one that evoked such an incompatible mix of emotions, among them shock, anger, pride and above all…. inspiration?
Continue reading Near Medgar Evers’ Chair: Mound Bayou (Part 1) – by Terry Howard
It was an honor to share my perspective as a Jew and diversity professional at Chattanooga’s MLK interfaith service commemorating The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That event was years ago but my passion for diversity is a lifelong legacy from my father, a US World War II military intelligence officer whose letters describing Naziism reside in Cincinnati’s American Jewish Archives. Having dedicated decades to tikkun olam, Hebrew for ‘repair of the world,’ I resonate to this day to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words, “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man – the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.”
With Hoffman’s message in mind, we should magnify our efforts to preserve the languages, cultures and traditions that have made our diverse world so memorable, including Yiddish.