Oral history interview with Susan Brownmiller, 2000

Biographical Note

Susan Brownmiller was born 1935 in Brooklyn, New York to a middle class Jewish family. She attended Cornell University in 1952 and, upon leaving in 1954, began her career as an actress in New York City. Brownmiller studied acting at the Jefferson School of Social Science and politics at the allied Institute of Marxist Studies. In early 1960, Brownmiller became a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She served as a civil rights researcher at Newsweek and participant in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. Brownmiller worked as a news writer and television reporter with NBC and ABC in Philadelphia and New York, as well as a staff contributor to The Village Voice. Brownmiller was a major contributor to the second wave feminist movement and wrote the influential book, "Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape." She became involved with the organization New York Radical Women in 1968, and founded Women Against Pornography in 1979

Scope and Contents

Susan Brownmiller begins the interview by describing her experience as a student at the Jefferson School's Institute of Marxist Studies and its influence on her politics. She notes Herbert Aptheker and Harold Collins as teachers. Brownmiller identifies the 1960 Greensboro Lunch Sit-Ins as her first engagement with the civil rights movement, and describes forming a related picket line at 59th Street and Lexington. Brownmiller describes the activities of New York CORE between 1960 and 1963 and discusses CORE leaders Darwin Bolden and Gladys Harrington. In 1963, Brownmiller got a job with Newsweek researching for civil rights coverage, and Brownmiller became more involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Brownmiller describes her shift from CORE to SNCC, CORE's Boycott of the 1964 World's Fair, and an interview with SNCC founder Charles (Chuck) McDew. Brownmiller describes the resistance she faced at Newsweek when she registered for the Freedom Summer in 1964. She describes her orientation for Freedom Summer activities in Memphis. She and friend Jan Goodman volunteered to be placed in Meridian, Mississippi where activists had previously been murdered. She recalls strategy; her work canvassing in Meridian; the activities of Ben Chaney; her host family, the Falconers; and her role in arranging a rally for Martin Luther King Jr. in Meridian. Following Freedom Summer, Brownmiller quit Newsweek to work for SNCC in Jackson, Mississippi. Brownmiller describes her life in Jackson at great length. Also discussed is: her experiences working with MacArthur Cotton, Ella Baker, Stokely Carmichael, Jack Innis, Victoria Gray Adams, and poll watching local cotton allotment elections. Brownmiller also discusses her career in media, at NBC in Philadelphia and at the Village Voice. She also describes meeting Jan Goodman through the East Harlem Reform Democrats

Subjects

• African Americans--Suffrage--Mississippi.
• Brownmiller, Susan--Interviews.
• Civil rights demonstrations--United States.
• Civil rights movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Civil rights workers--Mississippi--History--20th century.
• Congress of Racial Equality.
• Interviews.
• Jefferson School of Social Science (New York, N.Y.)
• Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017, interviewer.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)
• United States--Race relations--History--20th century.
• Village voice (Greenwich Village, New York, N.Y.)