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Forward by Martin Luther King III I will never forget my first introduction to the work of Rabbi Marc Schneier and the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. I had just been named the fourth president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization co-founded by my father, Martin Luther King, Jr. One of the first letters of congratulations was from Rabbi Schneier. It included an invitation to speak on the state of Black/Jewish relations in the United States at Yeshiva University.A friendship grew from that invitation. As I interacted more with Rabbi Schneier and learned more about the work of the Foundation, I learned that Rabbi Schneier had a burning desire to advance relations between our respective races. Moreover, as a man of God, he was convinced that while we may have respective differences in our communities, we had much more in common as part of the brotherhood of man. My discussions with my friend, Rabbi Schneier, often centered around the American civil rights movement and the work of my father. I was impressed that Marc not only knew intimately the history of my father’s work with the civil rights movement, he was also well-versed in the history of my father’s connections to the Jewish community. In time, he revealed that he had devoted much time and energy to research of the two. Shared Dreams is the culmination of that effort. While much has been written about the work of my father, Rabbi Schneier has gone to great lengths to compile the complex story of the cooperation, and some times angst, between blacks and Jews during the civil rights movement in the context of Martin Luther King, Jr’s life. From the account of his friendship with men like the incomparable Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and his advisers, Stanley Levison and Harry Wachtel, to anti-Semitic sentiments within the movement itself, Rabbi Schneier examines different aspects of the relation between my father and the Jewish community. As such, he outlines a compelling image of relations between the two communities. The history of Americans of African descent and Jewish descent is a story of two groups of people who have suffered uncommon persecution but who have persevered with uncommon faith. This is our common ground. We share the dream of a beloved community where one can live without the threat of racism, poverty, or violence. We share the dream of a beloved community where the worst of the human spirit is defeated by our best. In Shared Dreams, Rabbi Schneier reiterates our commonality, as upheld by by Martin Luther King, Jr., and fuels the reader to continue to work for the advancement of race relations among all God’s children. Martin Luther King, III
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