The Yiddish Book Center's

Wexler Oral History Project

A growing collection of in-depth interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds, whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.

"Jews are Not Safe Unless Everybody's Safe": Jewish Activism in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement

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Patricia Barbanell—Civil Rights activist and art teacher—recalls feeling compelled to join the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi in the 1960s because of her Jewish identity and discusses the difficult conditions there as she remembers an encounter with a Southern Jewish bookstore owner.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Patricia Barbanell.

This excerpt is in English.

Patricia Barbanell was born in New York, New York in 1943.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

"It Was Like Going Back in History Because it was That Kind of an Old Jewish Community": Living in Lower East Side, NY in the 1960s

2 min 40 sec

"Show Me Where You're Going to Go and I'll Follow I Hope": Encouragement to Younger Generations from a Former Hippie

1 min 55 sec

Coming to Terms with Jewish Identity in the Face of Antisemitism during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement

3 min 24 sec

"He Burned Them All... He was That Scared": Burning Communist Books in fear of Antisemitic Persecution during the McCarthy Era and The Red Scare

2 min 10 sec

"They Show Up on the Boardwalk Complete in Nazi Uniforms": Encounter with the American Nazi Party during the 1964 Democratic Convention

2 min 45 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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