Films for Change: "Shared Legacies"

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View documentary on African American and Jewish collaboration in the ‘60s and since. Panel asks: can that legacy continue in HoCo?

The documentary Shared Legacies depicts inspirational African American and Jewish collaboration in the ‘60s Civil Rights era, shows that connection changing, and calls for it to be renewed in light of “divisive seeds of hate taking root anew in the American landscape.”

Watch the movie at home (link provided), or at 5pm at the HCLS Miller Branch before the panel. Pick your preference when you reserve a spot.

In the live panel event, participants and panelists from the African American and Jewish communities ask:

Can the legacy continue? How can our communities move forward with a shared agenda to promote racial equity in Howard County and fight for an inclusive economy, education and healthcare for all, and the equitable dispensation of justice? Is there a joint role in the era of mass-incarceration and the post-January 6th America? Can we move from friction (like that surrounding Ye and Kyrie Irving) to relationship and shared action?

The discussion will be informed by the local report recently released by HCLS: Inequity Within: Issues of Inequity Across Communities.

Presented in partnership with the African American Community Roundtable, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Howard County, The Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission, and the Howard County NAACP. Sponsored by the Horizon Foundation.

This event is part of the Films for Change is a series of documentaries about racial equity, each followed by panels featuring local leaders and organizations. This series is sponsored by the Horizon Foundation, a health philanthropy leading community change so everyone in Howard County can live a longer, better life.

PANELIST AND MODERATOR BIOS: 
 

Panelists:

Rabbi Craig Axler

Rabbi Craig Axler is the rabbi of Temple Isaiah in Fulton, MD. A Philadelphia native, he spent 9 years in the Philly area before being called to serve Temple Isaiah in 2012. Active in local interfaith relations, he is committed to the connections that make Howard County a great place to live and learn.

Sydney Barnes

Sydney Barnes is a senior at Atholton high school in Columbia, Maryland. She is currently in her second year as an Elijah Cummings Youth Fellow. The program’s mission as stated is “to invest in promising teens from Maryland’s 7th congressional district and prepare them to serve as open-minded leaders with the skills, community ties, and global exposure critical to success in a diverse society.” Importantly, the teens are inspired to “bridge-building” between the African-American and Jewish communities. Sydney has several passions including creative writing, performing arts, and social justice activism. Alongside other activities, she is a member of the Jack and Jill of America, Columbia MD Chapter, and has served as teen Legislative Chair. She is also in her second year as a Community Service Co-chair.

Kaia Godsey

Kaia Godsey is currently entering her final semester at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. In high school at Mr. Hebron in Howard County, Kaia’s passion for advocacy manifested through programs like the Elijah Cummings Youth Program. Kaia’s hope for tomorrow is to continue her work for the community by developing public policies that will serve all, equally and fairly, under the law. Her future plans include a graduate degree in public policy/health and/or sociology. She also enjoys using her gifts of poetry and spoken word to shed light on community issues and share perspectives.

Rev. Dr. Rickey Harvey Jr.

Rev. Dr. Rickey Harvey Jr. is Assistant Pastor at St John Baptist Church. He was born in Memphis, TN, where he was raised in the admonition of the Lord. He is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Accounting. During his undergraduate time at RIT, he answered the call to Christian ministry and has since directed his life towards fulfilling the call of God to serve others. A second-generation Baptist minister, Rickey began his preaching ministry under the pastorate of his father, Rev. Dr. Rickey Harvey of the Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Rochester, NY. Currently, he proudly serves as the Assistant Pastor of St. John Baptist Church in Columbia, MD, where Rev. Dr. Robert A.F. Turner is Senior Pastor. His ministry is a refreshing combination of both traditional and contemporary worship styles, enabling him to have anointed impact on seasoned saints as well as youth and young adults.

Rev. Dr. Barbara J. Morton

Rev. Dr. Barbara J. Morton has lived in Columbia, Maryland for 14 years. Dr. Morton served two terms as the National President of The Charmettes, Inc., an organization of over 500 African American women, with chapters, located throughout six states and Washington, D.C. advocating for cancer awareness, education, and research. She is also an advocate for educational equity for the young people in the Howard County Public School System. Dr. Morton serves as the Chair of the Religious and Faith Committee of the Howard County NAACP.

Becca Niburg

Becca Niburg is an immigration attorney who concentrated on gender-based violence including working with survivors of intra family violence and human trafficking. She is a member of Beth Shalom Congregation and is their representative to People Acting Together in Howard (PATH). She is a former at-large board member of and co-chair of the Legal Redress committee for the Howard County branch of the NAACP.

Moderator: John Wesley

Author and Composer John Milton Wesley was born in Mississippi's delta region in 1948 in a small town called Ruleville. His grandad (Will Sanders) was a sharecropper and a "Master Barbecuer" and counted among his customers the wealthiest members of the state's white and Jewish communities. The list included Mississippi's governors J.P. Coleman, Ross Barnett, Senators John C. Stennis, and James Eastland, and before then, notorious racist MS Senator Theodore Bilbo. Wesley picked and chopped cotton from five (5) years old on their various plantations.  

His grandmother Sarah Sanders graduated from Alcorn College, A. & M College in Lorman, MS, with a degree in Nursing and Early Childhood Education. She was a close friend and colleague of well-known Civil Rights Activist Fannie Lou Hamer, and they worked together for the same wealthy Jewish families. Hamer served as Wesley's "God Mother” from birth until her death on March 14th, 1977. Ms. Hamer was the cook, and Wesley's grandmother Sarah was the "Nanny-Nurse." Wesley's granddad sharecropped on land owned by wealthy Jewish landowners and sat watching at the local airfield over their "crop-duster" airplanes at night. Growing up in this environment, Wesley grew close to Jewish families and their children. From an early age, he was aware of the relationships between Blacks and Jews during Mississippi's most turbulent era of the Civil Rights Movement, the '50s and '60s. Their families were close. Wesley often accompanied Ms. Hamer and his grandmother to work. He witnessed up close the interactions, lifestyles, and the impact of "the movement" on Black and Jewish relationships, especially following the arrival of Civil Rights activists Robert "Bob" Moses and others in the early days of the "National Voter Registration Campaign" 1962, which started in the Mississippi delta. 

 By this time, the dynamics of the quiet community Wesley was born in had changed due to the murder of 14-year-old Chicago born, Emmett Till less than ten miles away in Drew, MS. Soon after their trial, and acquittal, the murderers of Till Roy Bryant, his wife Carolyn, and brother-in-law J.W. Milam, moved into the "General Store" on the corner across the street from Wesley's boyhood home. As a result, there was a dramatic shift in his hometown in the relationships between Blacks and Jews.  

Wesley moved to Jackson, Ms. on June 12th, 1963, the night Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers (who had been Wesley's grandmother's Life insurance agent back in Ruleville) was murdered in his driveway. 

 These murders were turning points in the relationships between Blacks and Jews in Mississippi and the nation. 

Wesley would finish high school in Jackson and receive a vocal music scholarship to Tougaloo College, where he majored in Political Science and English Literature, became active in the "movement," and became a published author and professional musician after college. 

At Tougaloo, Wesley studied under a "Repatriated German Jew," Robert "BoBo" Brezinsky, who had been forced to move to America after Jews were expelled from Germany in the '40s by Hitler. Brzezinski was one of many such Jews who once in America went to work at Historically Black colleges and universities educating the "Talented 10th," as spoken of by Black scholar W.E.B. DuBois. Brezinsky, whose friends included biographers Herbert Aptheker (W.E.B. DuBois) and Silvio Bedini (Benjamin Banneker), who would expand Wesley's knowledge of the actual dynamics of the Black and Jewish relationships in America.  

While a student at Tougaloo (1966-1970), Wesley received a Fellowship in 1969 to Yale University in his significant fields of study (Political Science and English Lit.)  Upon graduation, he became a Reporter/Anchor for WLBT-TV 3 News in Jackson, MS. In 1972, he received a Fellowship to Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism's "Minority Journalism Program" (MJP,72); he moved to Columbia, MD in 1973. 

Wesley's writing has since been published (prose and poetry) in nine anthologies worldwide in three languages (Spanish, Arabic, and Farsi.  He has been published in 149 of America’s 200 Black newspapers, the Washington Post Outlook Section, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, Essence Magazine, and the Afro-American Newspapers. He has been a guest on all of the major significant television and Radio networks, including CNN, BET, FOX, National Public Radio,  Radio One, the Xinhua Network in China, the Stavanger Aftenblad in Amsterdam, and French TV3,  and his music is now in rotation in seven countries. 

He serves as the Public Information Officer for the Baltimore City Office of Equity and Civil Rights. He lives in Columbia, MD