By Trent Spoolstra
JCRC Director
Trent Spoolstra, Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining other Jewish Community Relations Directors from across the country in the Jewish Council for Public Affairs Taste of Civil Rights tour of Atlanta. I’d spent many hours driving through Atlanta as a child with my father and siblings on our way to Florida, so having the chance to finally see the city and take in some sites was a real treat.
Our travel group packed a lot into its 24-hour visit. But my two favorite experiences were setting foot in The Temple in Midtown and Ebenezer Baptist Church in the city’s historic Sweet Auburn neighborhood. Both of these institutions are steeped in history and are significant contributors to social justice. Besides being major pillars in the local Jewish and African American communities, I learned they share a sobering reality: security crises.
In 1958, Atlanta’s The Temple was bombed by white supremacists angered by the congregation’s outspoken support for the civil rights movement. Though the bombing damaged the building, thankfully no one was killed or injured.
The same could not be said for Ebenezer. Sixteen years after the incident at the synagogue, Alberta Williams King, along with a church deacon, was shot and killed by a deranged individual. This event took place after she’d lived through her son Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April 1968, and her other son A.D. (who at one time served as a pastor here in Louisville) being found dead under dubious circumstances a year later. Security still remains paramount for both congregations, which are the spiritual homes for hundreds of Atlanta-area families.
I learned about these two terrible occurrences against the backdrop of the arson attack on Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi on January 10 – just a few days before I left for my trip. I couldn’t help thinking about additional attacks on religious sites in our country over the last year, including the shooting at Minneapolis’s Annunciation Catholic Church in September which left two children dead; the attack on a Latter Day Saints Church in Grand Blanc, Michigan that killed four members and left eight others injured, and the occurrence closer to home last summer when a gunman shot dead two women at Richmond Road Baptist Church in Lexington, Ky. Each was a stark reminder how houses of worship then and now bear the brunt of senseless violence and targeted hatred.
The creation of Safe Louisville several years ago to help protect our Jewish community has taught us that while we must do everything in our power to make our Jewish institutions safe and secure, we are safer only when all places of worship are safe and secure as well. To that end, JCRC and Safe Louisville began reaching out to other faith-based groups to share our expertise and provide training. Our efforts have evolved via the Kentucky Antisemitism Task Force into a broad interfaith coalition spanning numerous major faith organizations. Working with other faiths has already deepened relationships not just regarding safety and security, but in additional aspects of community work.
Besides these initiatives, the Jewish Community Relations Council has deepened our involvement in government affairs over recent months, principally through building new relationships with state elected officials, and by monitoring key legislation during this year’s General Assembly session. I am proud to say that the multi-year effort to deepen relations with interfaith organizations, in conjunction with our increased efforts in government affairs, has produced significant gains. These efforts have allowed our JCRC to become a vital part of a diverse coalition of religious groups from across the Commonwealth. We have made a consistent, persuasive case to the legislature to award security grants to Kentucky’s faith-based organizations.
Federal initiatives such as the Non-Profit Security Grant Program provide vital financial assistance organizations need to protect their institutions from danger. Indeed, state governments across the nation have stepped up to allocate funding for their own security grants.
Our legislators here in Kentucky have the opportunity to do the same.
If this proposed allocation is approved, houses of worship and other religious-based institutions could use these grants as we have in the Jewish community: funding training sessions for congregants, purchasing cameras and other equipment, and hiring security guards.
Securing houses of worship remains just as important today as it was six decades ago during the height of the Civil Rights era. In a time when it seems that so many issues divide us, the need for security remains one topic that people from all walks of life can agree on. In that spirit, let us hope our elected officials agree and allocate the security grant funding vital to enabling Kentucky’s religious institutions to protect themselves from future attacks. We owe nothing less to everyone who steps through their doors.
Trent Spoolstra is the Jewish Communiy Relations Council Director at the Jewish Federation of Louisville and the Trager Family JCC. He welcomes you to contact him about community related issues at [email protected].