Oral history interview with Lucy Komisar, 2001

Biographical Note

Lucy Komisar was born in 1942 and raised on Long Island. Komisar attended George W. Hewlett High School, and Queens College, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in History in 1964. She worked with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Student Association (NSA) during the 1960s. Komisar became involved in civil rights activity after a February 1960 Yale College colloquium where Al Lowenstein addressed the Greensboro, North Carolina student-led sit-ins. She was the editor of the Mississippi Free Press from September 1962 to August 1963. She subsequently became a freelance investigative journalist

Scope and Contents

In this interview with Sheila Michaels, Lucy Komisar discusses her awakening to issues of race, her involvement with civil rights organizations, her parent's reaction to her involvement in the civil rights movement, her college experience, and involvement in the feminist movement. Komisar recounts her involvement with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Student Association (NSA). Komisar participated in sit-ins at Woolworth's, Beth-El hospital, and ABC/Paramount in New York City. Komisar was a participant in the Route 40 Freedom Rides, attended the founding conference for SNCC at Shaw University in 1960, and the NSA Congress in the summer of 1962. Komisar worked on the student newspaper in both high school and college. She discusses planning a career as a language teacher after realizing that gender discrimination would keep her from pursuing her interest in journalism. Komisar discusses the details of how the Mississippi Free Press was run, its location and the support received from the community and its subscription and distribution process. Komisar also discusses changes within the civil rights movement in the mid to late 1960s. She describes how she became more attuned to discrimination against women and developed an interest in foreign policy and international human rights

Subjects

• Civil rights demonstrations--United States.
• Civil rights movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Congress of Racial Equality.
• Interviews.
• Komisar, Lucy, 1942---Interviews.
• Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017, interviewer.
• Oral histories.
• Second-wave feminism.
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)
• United States--Race relations--History--20th century.
• Women journalists--Interviews.