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Interview: Miriam Cohen Glickman
In Meridian, in 1963, Miriam Cohen Glickman discovered that "the local Black community assumed I was Black because there was no concept that a white girl would be down there…. They used the term bright for light-skinned." She also remembers that "the local people considered the Jewish people not to be white if the Jewish people treated them decently." Glickman connected with and reflected deeply on her experience with southern Black religious practice. She wrote in the December 17, 1963, issue of Brandeis University's student newspaper, The Justice: The summer in Albany was the first meaningful religious experience in my life. I must have prayed hours each day-for what else were my thoughts about my friends in jail but prayer? Too, there were the mass meetings when an old woman cried out in hysterical seizure (in good Baptist tradition), "Jesus, Jesus, we need you Jesus! Come to Albany, Jesus!… Have mercy, Jesus!" Again and again she intoned her plea, to Jesus- the symbol of her suffering. A part of me was with her, for I too cried out to something outside myself, my own suffering (in jail) and my reactions to the suffering of others was more than I could bear within. The unrehearsed cry of those who have suffered too much had meaning for me that prayers of rote recitation never had. Miriam Cohen, "Integration in the Deep South: Death Goes On," The Justice, December 17, 1963, 4-6.
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