Oral history interview with Sarah Elbert, 1976

Biographical Note

Sarah Elbert (1937-) was a Marxist historian and professor of history at SUNY Binghamton

Scope and Contents

New York City; education: Cornell University; family life, divorce, Evanston, Illinois; influence of A.S. Neill's book Summerhill; women's changing role in the 1960s; active in Unitarian Church; civil rights: Congress of Racial Equality, CORE, Mississippi Summer; peace movement: Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy; communal living; return to Ithaca, completion of undergraduate degree, 1965; involvement with SDS, Students for a Democratic Society; Master of Arts in Teaching, Cornell, 1968: focus on Afro-American History; social studies teacher, Dewitt Junior High School: controversy over refusal to salute the flag, the teaching of Richard Wright's Black Boy; anti-Vietnam War organizing: burning of draft cards, Sheep's Head Meadow, 1967, burning of draft files, Catonsville, 1968, marries draft dodger; personal and political relationships; black take-over of the Straight, 1969; influences of Martin Luther King, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Benjamin M. Spock, Dan Berrigan; Catholic presence in Ithaca peace movement; Freedom Seder, 1969; reflections on Cornell contribution to movements of the 1960s

Subjects

• Elbert, Sarah--Interviews.
• Historians--Interviews.
• Interviews.
• Klejment, Alice, 1918-1988 interviewer.
• Oral histories (literary works)

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 2019