Photo from the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, Associated Press

When our delegation went down to Alabama for the 57th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches this month, we were living up to the best of the Workers Circle’s activist tradition. It turns out this wasn’t the first time that the Workers Circle marched in Alabama with Black Americans to defend voting rights – in fact, the Workers Circle was there at the original Selma to Montgomery march 57 years ago!

On Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, the world watched in horror as Alabama police brutally beat peaceful civil rights marchers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama as they attempted to make their way to Montgomery to demand voting rights. The President of the Workers Circle, Jacob T. Zuckerman, took immediate action on behalf of the organization, sending a telegram to President Johnson urging the Government initiate steps to obtain an indictment against Gov. Wallace for “precipitating the beating of Negro civil rights marchers” in Selma.

Then the Workers Circle put muscle behind their words and answered Dr. King’s call for leaders across the nation to come to Selma to march. That march stepped off on March 21 and culminated with a rally with tens of thousands in Montgomery, Alabama on March 25, 1965. 

Among the marchers was Irving Gordon, an optician who served as Chairman of the Atlanta Workers Circle and the entire Southern Region of the Workers Circle during this time. Upon his return from Alabama, Gordon spoke at a press conference in New York on behalf of the Workers Circle where he emphasized, “liberal and progressive Jews in the South are not afraid to participate in the civil rights movement.” 

Soon after “at a ceremony yesterday in the offices of the Nations Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Workmen’s Circle (sic) received a life membership plaque from the NAACP.” Then-President Jacob Zuckerman and other Workers Circle officials were there in person to collect this significant award.

We are inspired by the Workers Circle’s longstanding commitment to racial justice and to voting rights in particular. Now, just as then, the Workers Circle stands shoulder to shoulder with Black Americans and other communities of color in defending the right of all Americans to take part in our democracy, and to have their voices heard!