Reverend Martin Luther King addresses an assembly of rabbis at the
Concord Hotel in Sullivan County on March 25, 1968. Rabbi Everett Gendler,
chairman of the convention is at left. (courtesy the Rabbinical Assembly archives)
KIAMESHA LAKE – Ten days before civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, he addressed Jewish rabbis at the Concord Hotel in Kiamesha Lake.
King was there to honor his long-time friend, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who marched with him from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1961.
Sullivan County Historian John Conway recalled the visit.
“It was probably one of those events that would have gone completely
unnoticed because it wasn’t anything unusual in Sullivan County
at that time for very well-known people to be in and out of the county
at the hotels,” Conway said. “We had celebrities from every
walk of life virtually at the hotels at one time or another, but the fact
that 10 days later he was assassinated kind of shined a spotlight on that
it was prior to Memphis, it was the last speech that he gave so in an
historical perspective, it became pretty important.”
Dr. King’s address was to the annual Rabbinical Assembly Convention.
Conway noted that the African-American experience and Jewish experience were not uncommon as it played out in Sullivan County.
From about 1895 to 1920, Jewish families moved from New York City to
the Catskills in droves and in large part changed the face of Sullivan
County, buying up struggling farms, closed down hotels and “they
remade the area in many ways, certainly made the resort industry during
that time,” but Conway noted they were not welcome in many places.
“But there were these restrictions that they faced,” Conway said. “They weren’t welcomed in a lot of places and it is well-known historically that we had restricted resorts where many hotels would advertise no Hebrews accommodated so they had this empathy for the segregation and the Jim Crow laws that the African-American community was facing and I think it was kind of natural that Dr. King would speak at a rabbinical convention because there was this relationship between these two cultures.”
As Dr. King took the podium at the Concord, the audience sang the civil rights song, “We Shall Overcome” in Hebrew.
