Oral history interview with Joanne Shane Plummer, 2000

Biographical Note

Joanne Shane Plummer was born on September 17, 1939 to a secular Jewish family in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Queens, New York. Plummer's family was very politically active, and she grew up among family friends such as anarchist Emma Goldman and feminist labor leader Rose Pesotta. Plummer attended Queens College and became involved with the NAACP chapter on campus; She later joined New York Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In CORE, Plummer became one of the leaders of the Freedom Highways project, which sought to investigate racial segregation in Howard Johnson's restaurants along the Southeastern Seaboard. After the civil rights movement, Plummer entered a career in social work. Her work included placing patients who had been mistreated at the Pennhurst State School and Hospital into group homes, and she later worked with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare

Scope and Contents

Plummer begins this interview by discussing the events of her youth and her parents' careers and Communist political leanings. She explains her experience growing up in the McCarthy era and encounters with anti-Semitism and bullying. She discusses the racial makeup and demographics of her Sunnyside, Queens community. She shares stories about the 1949 Peekskill riots, where locals attacked attendees of a Paul Robeson concert. She compares anti-Black racism to anti-Semitism and looks at the involvement of Jews in the civil rights movement. She discusses her early background and relationship to the International Lady Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). She discusses her experience at Queens College and the NAACP chapter there. She characterizes her time working as a ghostwriter and relays how she became involved in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) through interviewer Sheila Michaels decades prior. She shares her interactions with and impressions of Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and Malcolm X. Plummer also discusses her experience with arrest, the Freedom Highways Project, and reflects on conflicts leading to her exit from the civil rights movement. She shares details of her professional and political life after leaving and how she eventually transitioned into a career of social work. Plummer discusses Roy Innis' leadership of CORE and Black Nationalism. She talks about her biracial son Robert and how he has understood racial identity. She also examines well as her experiences as a single mother. Lastly, Plummer discusses the importance of civil rights activism to both her career and her identity

Subjects

• Anti-communist movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Civil rights movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Civil rights workers--United States--History--20th century.
• Congress of Racial Equality.
• Innis, Roy, 1934-2017.
• Interviews.
• Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017, interviewer.
• Oral histories.
• Plummer, Joanne Shane--Interviews.
• Sunnyside (New York, N.Y.)
• United States--Race relations--History--20th century.