Dr. Shawn Parry-Giles

University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland
A Protestant Perspective

We published a unit on Rabbi Heschel’s 1963 speech “Religion and Race” with our online Voices of Democracy project. I believe it is one of our more powerful units in our growing collection of speeches and essays because of Heschel’s strong commitment to civil rights in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. His words are as profound and meaningful in 2023 as they were in 1963. The image of Heschel and King marching together is a poignant reminder that we need to work collectively and find commonality if we are to create more just and nonviolent communities.

Let us dodge no issues, let us yield no inch to bigotry, let us make no compromise with callousness.

—From his 1963 speech on “Religion and Race”