Rabbi who marched with King inspires Queens legal leaders
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Back row, from left: Queens County Bar Association President Marie-Eleana First, Brandeis Association President Adam Orlow, Queens County Women’s Bar Association President Adrienne Williams, Hon. Howard Lane, Macon B. Allen Black Bar Association President Jawan Finley. Front row, from left: Rabbi Moshe Shur and Hon. Mogjan Lancman, chair of the Brandeis Association. Eagle photos by Caroline Ourso.
By Caroline Ourso
Rabbi Moshe “Mickey” Shur, a Civil Rights activists who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed members of the Queens legal community Wednesday, delivering a succinct but powerful message about conquering hate and overcoming injustice.
As Shur spoke inside Queens Civil Court, he recounted his time spent registering voters in Georgia during the Civil Rights movement, describing how he felt a moral imperative that he could not brush off.
Shur left New York alongside King and devoted his youth to galvanizing black citizens around Atlanta, encouraging them to register and busing them to court houses on voting day.
Shur emphasized that his naivety emboldened him, recounting meetings with Ku Klux Klan members and encounters with police.
“I was thrust into this new world and had no clue about what I was getting into, but we were young,” Shur said.
His efforts eventually attracted negative attention from the Klan, and he survived a drive-by shooting in his home.
Rabbi Moshe Shur speaks about his experiences during the Civil Rights Movement.
Shur’s efforts were met with violence from law enforcement, as well. He received death threats from police in South Carolina and was arrested for protesting voter suppression.
“We just did these things because we were supposed to do them,” Shur said of himself and co-activists, many of whom were also Jewish.
When asked about the recent hate crimes against Jews in the New York area by other minority groups, Shur reminded the audience that division between groups feeds the cycle of hate and decreases people’s power to implement true, systemic change.
“That’s what hate feasts on — getting two minorites to work against each other,” Shur said.
Shur, who is an adjunct professor of history at Queens College and runs a program called “In the footsteps of Dr. King,” suggested introspection, individual responsibility and internal community policing as ways to further Dr. King’s quest for racial equality in Queens.
“Dr. King was one person, and he galvanized the world,” Shur said.
Jawan Finley, the president of the Macon B. Allen Black Bar Association, echoed Shur’s sentiments in her closing statement and brought the message even closer to home for all of the lawyers and judges present.
“When you see something that’s wrong, you just have to do what’s right,” Finley said. “If it’s the law that’s wrong, we need to fix it.”
