I grew up as a Southern Jewish farmgirl on a chicken farm outside Danville, VA. My father was a refugee from Austria and my mother was a proud liberal from NYC. My earliest memories are of my mother sitting patiently with our poor, working class white neighbors and explaining the injustice of segregation.

My earliest activism was in high school when I and a friend attended a 1962 rally with Rev. Shuttlesworth and we were the only white people there,