Jewish civil rights activists hail Obama win

In wake of Obama victory, Jews who took part in Freedom Rides of early 1960s foresee work ahead.

By ALLISON HOFFMAN, JPOST CORRESPONDENT IN NY
harlem hails obama 248.88 (photo credit: AP)
harlem hails obama 248.88
(photo credit: AP)
Jews who took part in the historic Freedom Rides of the early 1960s - including the first one in 1961, the year president-elect Barack Obama was born - told The Jerusalem Post with breaking voices that they felt an overwhelming sense of elation in the wake of Obama's victory as America's first black president.
"What happened here is incredibly important in the world," said Faith Holsaert, 65, a native New Yorker who was jailed after going to Georgia in the autumn of 1962 to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
"We had all become so ground down and believed that you couldn't change things, but we see that we can," said Holsaert, who now lives in North Carolina and spent Tuesday canvassing for Obama's narrow victory there.
Yet Holsaert said it was only the beginning.
"This morning I got up thinking there are two things we have to do: We have to keep him safe, and we have to keep him honest, and that's a big challenge," said Holsaert, who cast Obama as a Kennedy-esque figure rather than as a leader in the mold of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Like other veterans of the civil rights struggle, Holsaert was also realistic about the political realities facing the future Obama administration - and about the lingering effects of a sometimes vitriolic campaign for the Jewish vote.
Dorothy Zellner, who was on the SNCC staff from 1962 to 1967 and volunteered Tuesday at an Obama phone bank, said the momentousness of the day struck her as she spoke to an 87-year-old woman in Virginia who recalled having to pay a poll tax.
"I immediately welled up, as I am now," said Zellner, 70.
But her joy was tempered by disgust at the tenor of much rhetoric that went back and forth in the Jewish community leading up to the vote. Debates about whether Obama or his Republican rival, John McCain, would be better for Israel took on a nasty racial undercurrent ahead of the election, with smears about Obama's religion circulating widely on the Internet - including an e-mail Zellner received the day before the vote, claiming Obama was a Manchurian candidate for Arab interests.
"I have never seen people behave like this - we have to examine the rhetoric in the Jewish community," Zellner said.
But she added that the large Jewish majority for Democrats, including Obama, proved that the voices that worried her did not represent the mainstream of American Jewry.
"What has happened, how we voted - this is who we truly are," she said. "Our grandparents who jumped out of the windows in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, who built the unions, those of us who were on the front lines in the fight against racism - maybe this is a first step toward going back there."
For the thousands of African-Americans who gathered Tuesday night on 125th Street in Harlem to hear Barack Obama named America's first black president, however, victory was reason enough to set aside the hard questions for at least a few hours and instead repeat in wonder the chant, "Yes, we did!"
Charney Bromberg, who led Freedom Rides to Mississippi in the 1960s, put it in less awestruck terms.
"You want one word? It's 'Whoopee!'" Bromberg, the retired executive director of Meretz USA, told the Post earlier in the day, before the historic result was announced.
In Harlem, the air of quiet, almost anxious anticipation evaporated instantly into tears and the sound of church bells ringing as Obama's victory was declared a few minutes after 11 p.m., once the results from California and other Western states came in.
"We can do it, we did do it - God bless America and God bless President Barack Obama!" cried Rep. Charles Rangel, Harlem's powerful Democratic congressman, as a Jumbotron screen showed Rev. Jesse Jackson dissolving into tears from Chicago.
A moment of reverent silence fell over the crowd as one speaker tried to lead the crowd in a solemn call and response, his voice wavering as he intoned, "I see! The promised land!" But the audience - a hodgepodge of black, white, young and old, with even a few Jews wearing kippot here and there - seemed more receptive to the disco classic "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" blaring on speakers and to the bright sound of a live brass band wending its way through the crowd, which braved fat, intermittent raindrops to stay outside for Obama's victory speech.
Silence came only when Obama took the stage in Chicago - but only after a burst of shushing from those closest to the screen broadcasting the campaign event.
Afterwards, the crowd melted into a joyous impromptu march down 125th Street, drawing grins from cops and thumbs-up from trapped bus drivers as the crowd erupted into cries of "Obama!" at irregular intervals.
Everywhere, there were Obama pins and Obama hats and even a sequined Obama shirt; savvy vendors hawked laminated Obama posters at the edge of the plaza where the rally was held, alongside beaded necklaces and other trinkets.
"Obama is the first figure we've seen since Kennedy who has the mental agility and the ability to get people to really rethink the possibilities of America," Bromberg added. "But the truth is that there have been broad changes over time that have happened at every level in the United States."
One young mother in the crowd wasted no time making sure her tiny son knew he was going to grow up in a different world than she'd ever imagined, kneeling down moments after the race was called to jubilantly tell the boy, "See, you can be anything you want, baby!"