Oral history interview with Nick Salvatore, 2000

Biographical Note

Nick Salvatore is the Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. Salvatore was born in 1943 in Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York. Salvatore worked as a messenger boy and Teamster depot worker. He became active in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Civil Rights struggle in the summer of 1963. In 1964 and 1965, Salvatore worked with End the Draft, an Anti-Vietnam organization, and organized with the Harlem Parents Committee around the New York School Boycotts. He also co-founded a leadership camp for Harlem youth and served as chair of Hunter College's Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Salvatore graduated from Hunter College in the Bronx in 1968, and then studied under Leon F. Litwack at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving his PhD in 1977. Salvatore is the author several books including: Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (1982), which received the Bancroft Prize in History and the John H. Dunning Prize; We All Got History: The Memory Books of Amos Webber (1996), which received the New England History Association's Outstanding Book Prize; and Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (2005). He resides in Ithaca, New York with his wife, Ann Sullivan

Scope and Contents

Salvatore discusses his Catholic, working-class upbringing in Brooklyn, New York and its impact on his sociopolitical outlook. He describes the strength of his mother, a secretary responsible for three children after the sudden death of her husband in 1945, and his enrollment at Brooklyn Preparatory School. Salvatore describes working as a messenger on Wall Street and his fellow messengers, anarchists who first exposed him to radical politics. He describes his attendance of a 1963 sit-in at City Hall. Salvatore describes Brooklyn CORE and his work as a depot helper with the Teamsters from 1963 to 1965. In the next segment of the interview, Salvatore describes his involvement with Brooklyn CORE and the Harlem Parents Committee, which organized around the New York School Boycotts. He also recalls his co-founding of Patterson Camp, a summer camp in Bucks County, Pennsylvania for Harlem youth in the summer of 1965. Salvatore next focuses on his experience with the draft, antiwar organizing, and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He details his qualms with the tactics employed by SDS, and explains his decision to stop engaging with SDS after a demonstration in 1967. He discusses his time at University of California, Berkeley Graduate School and his advisor, Leon F. Litwack. He describes his writing and teaching career at Cornell University, as well as his travels in Mississippi, and teaching American history

Subjects

• Camps.
• Civil rights demonstrations--United States.
• Civil rights movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Congress of Racial Equality. Brooklyn Chapter.
• Interviews.
• Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017, interviewer.
• Oral histories.
• Peace movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Salvatore, Nick--Interviews.
• Students for a Democratic Society (U.S.)
• United States--Race relations--History--20th century.