Milton Grafman

Milton Grafman
Born	Milton Louis Grafman 21 April 1907(1907-04-21) Washington, D.C.
Died	28 May 1995(1995-05-28) (aged 88) Birmingham, Alabama
Resting place	Elmwood Cemetery
Nationality	American
Other names	Rabbi Milton L. Grafman
Education	University of Pittsburgh University of Cincinnati (Bachelor of Arts)
Alma mater	Hebrew Union College (doctorate of Divinity Degree)
Known for	Rabbi Milton Louis Grafman was an Alabama clergymen who wrote "A Call For Unity" and got involved because he thought that Dr. Martin Luther King unjustly labeled these clergymen as racist.
Religion	Jewish (United States) Temple Emanu-EL Lead
Spouse	Ida Weinstein Grafman
Children	Ruth Grafman Fromstein Stephen Grafman

Milton Louis Grafman (April 21, 1907 - May 30, 1995), an American rabbi who led Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama from 1941 until his retirement in 1975; he then served as Rabbi Emeritus from 1975 until his death in 1995. He was one of eight ministerial signers of a public statement to which Martin Luther King, Jr. responded in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Education

Born in Washington D. C., Grafman spent his boyhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he studied at the public schools and at the University of Pittsburgh. He entered the University of Cincinnati in 1926 and earned his Bachelor of Arts. From there he went on to Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College where he was ordained as a rabbi in 1933. In 1958 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree by the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion.

Work

Rabbi Milton L. Grafman served for a congregation/The Temple Adath Israel in Lexington, Kentucky from 1933 until 1941. After that, Grafman arrived to take up the pulpit at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama on December 7, 1941.

Legacy

Grafman was one of the founders of Spastic Aid of Alabama, later United Cerebral Palsy, serving as its first president. He established the Institute for Christian Clergy in Birmingham—an annual gathering that promoted the understanding and cooperation of Jewish and Christian ministers. His extensive personal Judaic book collection was presented after his death to Alabama's Birmingham Southern College.

Civil Rights Years

In 1963 during Grafman’s tenure as the rabbi of Birmingham’s Temple Emanu El, he joined with a group of other prominent Alabama clergymen to address the then turbulent civil rights movement in Alabama’s largest city. Birmingham at the time was described by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as perhaps the most segregated city in the United States—a city where racial intolerance and anti-Semitism were rampant with an active Ku Klux Klan, National States Rights Party and White Citizens Councils.

On January 18, 1963 within a matter of days of Governor Wallace’s “Segregation Forever” gubernatorial inaugural address on the steps of the Alabama Capital in Montgomery, these ministers issued a joint statement “Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense” in which they warned that “inflammatory and rebellious statements can lead only to violence, discord, confusion and disgrace….” They also stated in language extraordinary for Birmingham in 1963 “[t]hat every human being is created in the image of God and is entitled to respect as a fellow human being with all basic rights, privileges and responsibilities which belong to humanity.”

Three months later in the lead up to Dr. King’s planned massive April demonstrations in Birmingham, various of these ministers, including Rabbi Grafman, issued a second statement on April 12, 1963 sometimes referred to as a “Call for Unity” reaffirming the January statement in the very first sentence of their April statement as prologue to this second statement. In this second statement the ministers expressed their view that the planned demonstrations at that time were “unwise and untimely” given the significant progress being made in Birmingham. Eugene “Bull” Connor by then had been voted out of office, albeit his unsuccessful appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court was then pending. (The court ruled against Connor on May 23, 1963—only 41 days after the ministers’ April statement.)

The ministers were not alone in their publicly stated views. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy spoke to the same rationale as did the Reverend Billy Graham, and many newspapers throughout the country including the Washington Post. Responding to the minister’s April 12, 1963 statement, Dr. King penned his now revered “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while incarcerated during the ongoing Birmingham demonstrations. The Letter read as a stinging personal rebuff to the ministers. Although addressed to them, it was never sent to any of them as it was intended for a much broader audience. The Letter was embraced by civil rights advocates throughout the country, and quickly become perhaps the most articulate and moving document of the civil rights years.

The ministers as the named addresses were seen by readers of the Letter, and by those who thereafter read and studied it over the years, as obstructionist and/or worse—men who despite their religious callings were perceived to lack support for a brotherhood of mankind. This perception was compounded by the fact the Letter failed to mention their minister’s January statement, and was silent as to the Attorney General, Reverend Graham, and others who spoke to the same view point they did. The Letter even criticized the ministers and others for not speaking out against Governor Wallace—an assertion as to the minister that was incorrect as seen in their January statement.

As the Letter gained increasing, and then overwhelming approval, Rabbi Grafman was criticized even within the Jewish community by those who garnered their information solely from within the four corners of the Letter. Such criticism continued with some frequency throughout the remaining thirty-two years of Rabbi Grafman’s life. The critics did not appreciate and/or apparently lacked knowledge of Rabbi Grafman’s role before and after the Letter, or his record of working toward racial harmony in opposition to those who advocated hatred and bigotry toward African Americans, and in response to rampant anti-Semitism as well.

Examples: (1) In 1955, Rabbi Grafman refused to speak at a religious emphasis week at the University of Mississippi after the Mississippi state legislature revoked an invitation to another minister (who Rabbi Grafman did not know and never met) because of favorable comments of that minister respecting the NAACP.

(2) In 1961 the Rabbi spoke out publicly on television and otherwise in opposition to the City’s decision to close all the public parks, golf courses, and swimming pools rather than integrate them.

(3) Urged his Temple Emanu El congregation not to give in to fear in a city suffering from “moral apathy.” Stating at religious services on Friday evening September 13, 1963 (two days before the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing):

"You cannot yield to terror and violence….If you yield once and you yield a second time [and] you yield a third time. And then there is nothing more to yield…you have already been captured."

(4) The depth of his feelings was expressed in the Kadish (the Jewish prayer for the deceased) which Rabbi Grafman recited in prayer at Rosh Hashanah services (Jewish New Year) two days after the bombing:

"Let us bow our heads in silence. In memory of Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, James Robinson, Virgil Ware wantonly killed, insanely slain, brutally murdered, whose deaths we mourn, whose families we would comfort and the shame of whose murders we would and we must have our city [Birmingham] atone."

On September 23, 1963, less than a week after the church bombing, Rabbi Grafman and other Birmingham ministers met at the White House with President John F. Kennedy to discuss the extremely troubled situation in Birmingham. At this meeting, Rabbi Grafman asked the President if black FBI agents could be assigned to Birmingham.

Subsequent to the installation of the new city government (with Bull Connor now legally ousted), Rabbi Grafman was appointed to the first bi-racial committee in Birmingham working to smooth the way for integration in Birmingham. Several years latter Rabbi Grafman played an instrumental role in the decision of the overwhelmingly non-Jewish Birmingham Ministerial Association’s to afford membership eligibility to all ministers in the city. A resolution was pending to integrate the Association to which there was some opposition. As recalled by the Association’s president, Rabbi Grafman stated during this meeting:

"How many of you have read that series of little books called the New Testament? I have. How many of you ever walked in the footsteps of Jesus Christ? I have. When you read those books and when you walk in His path, you will have your answer."

The resolution passed unanimously. Subsequently, Rabbi Grafman became the first and only Rabbi ever elected to the presidency of the Birmingham Ministerial Association.

When the First Baptist Church of Birmingham split over whether to integrate, the breakaway group formed the Baptist Church of the Covenant committed to an integrated church for all people. Pending the establishment of their own church facility, Rabbi Grafman offered his congregation’s synagogue for the newly formed church worship services. This offer was graciously accepted and the church members thereafter held their services at Temple Emanu El for some time until their own church edifice was constructed.

Rabbi Grafman’s role during the civil rights period in Birmingham perhaps is best summed up by Richard Arrington, Birmingham’s first black mayor who stated:

"[Rabbi Grafman] has a high level of credibility among all segments of the community, black as well as whites. He has a long record of working to bring about change and a reputation for being concerned about justice."

At Rabbi Grafman’s funeral in May 1995, Ozell Billingsley, an African American attorney and civil rights activist involved in securing Dr. King’s release from the Birmingham Jail, attended and then returned to the Grafman home to pay his personal respects to the family.

Personal life

Twenty years later he died of cancer in Baptist Montclair Hospital in Birmingham at aged 88 in 1995. He was survived by his wife of 64 years, Ida Weinstein Grafman, his two children Ruth and Stephen, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

References

• “Milton Grafman”. http://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Milton_Grafman N.D. N.P. 11/10/10.

• “ New York Times- Obituaries”. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/31/obituaties/milton-grafman-88-a-rabbi-active-in-civil-rights-struggle.html. N.D. N.P 11/10/10.

• "Rabbi Milton Grafman". http://library.bsc.edu/tools/special_collections/libpage.html. N.D. N.P. 11/10/10.

• “Light For All The Bermingham Sun”.http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-05-31/news/1995151060_1_temple-emanu-el-rabbi-birmingham-jail. N.D. N.P .11/13/10.

• “Birmingham Public Library”. http://www.birminghamarchives.org/JewishHistory1.htm.N.D. N.P. 11/10/10. * "Milton Grafman at bhamwiki.com
• Bass, S. Jonathan (2001) Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Baton Rouge: LSU Press. ISBN 0-8071-2655-1
• Photo and image of Milton Grafman provided by Stephanie at http://www.jewishpostcardcollection.com

Persondata
Name	Grafman, Milton L.
Alternative names	Rabbi Grafman
Short description	Grafman was born in 1907. He took part in the stuggle for racial equality in the early 1960s. He joined ten ministers in denouncing George Wallace's "Segregation now, segregation forever" speech. He and seven other clergymen tried to delay Martin Luther Kind Jr. in his protest in Birmingham. Thus getting MLK Jr's response back in the form of "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
Date of birth	April 21, 1907
Place of birth	Washington, D.C.- growing up in Pittsburgh
Date of death	June 9, 1995
Place of death	Baptist Montclair Hospital, Birmingham