Viral Photo From NYC Subway Captures America At Its Best

A photo from Jackie Summers is going viral over Facebook, and people are loving it!

It was Sunday when Jackie Summers, a New Yorker posted a photo on Facebook and Twitter that is going viral. The picture shows a Jewish man and woman sitting on a New York City subway car next to a Muslim woman in a hijab holding a baby.

Summers wrote on his caption: “A Taoist (me) gives up his seat so a Hasidic couple could sit together. They scoot over so a Muslim mother could sit and nurse her baby, on Easter Sunday. This is my America: people letting people be people.”

Until now the Facebook post has gained over 100k reactions and 73k shares!

People commented on the photo to celebrate the diversity that it reflects, and what that means for the country.

Some of the cheerful comments were:

“THIS, is what makes America great and these days I’ve been struggling to find ways to feel good about America. We, the people…Thank you for restoring a little of my faith in humanity today, Jackie.”

Another one was:

Jackie’s photo and accompanying story made my day. Returning to this post in my feed and seeing folks work stuff out in the subsequent comments — in a civil and thoughtful fashion, mind you — gives me hope. *raises glass*”

Summers says the photo he took on the train simply captures an everyday moment in his city and country. He also didn’t ask the riders’ permission to take or post the image, as he said that would have “felt forced and staged.”

“The moment is extraordinary in its ordinariness: common courtesy as an afterthought is the NYC and the America I was raised to believe in,” Summers told The Huffington Post in an email. “Given the age of divisiveness we live in, it seems people are looking at this photo as a reason to put issues like race, religion, and sex aside to focus on more important issues relevant to peaceful coexistence.”

We all know president Donald Trump ‘stirred’ the multicultural diversity, but recently several interactions on the New York City subway have garnered nationwide attention for highlighting diversity and division in the U.S.

In February, for example, subway riders were photographed cleaning swastikas off of a train’s walls, and in March, a young Latina woman was filmed shutting down a fellow rider’s xenophobic rant.

“As the grandchild of immigrants, my ancestors believed America to be a place where the possibility of equity existed,” Summers said. “While it’s clear we still have a long way to go to achieve that goal, I and people like me across this nation are fighting every day to see that end.”