Rabbi Israel Dresner (1929–2022), civil rights activist who was a Freedom Rider
legacy.comRabbi Israel Dresner was a civil rights activist who protested segregation alongside his friend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968).Dresner began his life of activism young, well before he became a rabbi, as World War II raged overseas.
He was arrested at the age of 18 for protesting the British government’s refusal to let a ship carrying Holocaust survivors land in Palestine.
It was the first of many arrests for the man who would come to be called “the most arrested rabbi in America.”After serving in the U.S.
Army and becoming a rabbi in the 1950s, Dresner joined the Freedom Riders in the first Interfaith Freedom Ride in 1961. There, 10 clergy members rode interstate buses into the segregated South to challenge their disregard for the federal law stating that public transportation must be integrated.
Read more on legacy.com
