Dorothy (Dottie) Zellner Oral History

Dorothy “Dottie” Zellner (born in 1938) discusses growing up in Manhattan as the daughter of immigrants in a Left, Jewish family in Manhattan. She recalls being a young child during the second World War, when Nazi hatred of Jews and the potential for Germany to attack the United States were experienced as imminent threats. Zellner discusses how McCarthyism affected her family in the late 1940s through the 1950s, and her experience at Music and Art High School, which she attended from 1951-1955. She then touches on her time at Queens College, where she became editor of The Crown newspaper and attended a youth festival in Moscow in 1957. The bulk of the interview is dedicated to her time in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and lessons from the movement for today’s political climate. She participated in the sit-ins in 1960 and worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for five years. She discusses James Forman, Julian Bond, Rita Schwerner, Fannie Lou Hamer, and meeting her husband, Bob Zellner. She also talks about what it was like to live in the segregated south as a white Northern woman working in an interracial organization.