Civil Rights Tour 2022

In spring 2022, Rabbi Mona Alfi and 38 fellow congregants traveled to Atlanta, Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham and Memphis for a five day civil rights tour. We learned together about the American history that shapes us and informs the civil rights issues we confront today. 

Rabbi Alfi has been recognized locally and nationally for her social justice work, including receiving T’ruah’s “Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award.” In 2015, she and her son Ezra joined more than 150 Reform rabbis on the NAACP’s Journey for Justice from Selma, Alabama to Washington, DC to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. 

We were inspired on our tour by congregants Dorothy and Brian Landsberg. The Landsbergs met while working to secure voting rights for African Americans in Alabama in the 1960s. Brian later worked on some of the first cases to desegregate public accommodations, advance fair employment and fair housing, and transform the schools of the Deep South from the most segregated to the most integrated in the nation by the mid-1970s. Dorothy and Brian have continued working for racial justice and they currently co-teach a course at McGeorge School of Law on Voting Rights Then and Now. Though they were not able to join us on the tour, they graciously shared insights from their more than 50 years of working for civil rights through pre-trip events and a Zoom session during the tour.