JWA - Jewish Women in Civil Rights - Florence Howe

In Focus: Jewish Women in Civil Rights

			Civil Rights
		Interview
		Biography
		Jewish Women's Encyclopedia: Florence Howe

Interview: Florence Howe

Florence Howe with stepsons Daniel Lauter (left) and David Lauter and daughter Alice Jackson, Baltimore, 1965-1966.
Courtesy of Florence Howe.

In August 1964, Florence Howe coordinated and taught at the Blair Street Freedom School, one of nine such schools in Jackson. There were more than forty other schools in twenty other towns. She recalls that, initially, she was very impatient with southern culture and the movement's way of doing things:

I couldn't understand why we would talk round and round and round and round and round everything and never make a decision and why everybody spoke very slowly. I wasn't attuned to the South and I couldn't understand why we couldn't get on with things. And I was saying that and Staughton [Lynd] and Howard [Zinn, both historians and the Freedom School Project directors] talked to me each privately to say a) to shut up and b) to have some patience. I was a little nutsy. But you'll see…. It didn't take me long.

How to Cite This Page
Jewish Women's Archive. "JWA - Florence Howe - Interview." <http://jwa.org/discover/infocus/civilrights/howe/index.html>.