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Voices of Feminism Oral History Project: Schneir, Miriam

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Voices of Feminism Oral History Project: Schneir, Miriam Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Northampton, MA MIRIAM SCHNEIR Interviewed by KATE WEIGAND May 21–22, 2004 Pleasantville, NY This interview was made possible with generous support from the Ford Foundation. © Sophia Smith Collection 2004 Sophia Smith Collection Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Narrator Miriam Schneir (b. 1933) grew up in New York City. A 1955 graduate of Queens College, she worked as an early childhood educator before she became a full-time writer. Schneir co-authored with her husband, Walter Schneir, Invitation to an Inquest (1965), which exposed the injustices in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. Her anthology Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings (1972) was a pioneering contribution to the discipline of women’s history. Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present (1994) collected and published important texts from feminism’s second wave which document the movement’s breadth and diversity. Interviewer Kate Weigand (b. 1965) has a Ph.D. in women’s history and U.S. history from Ohio State University. She is author of Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Abstract In this oral history Miriam Schneir describes her childhood in an upwardly mobile New York Jewish family and her experiences in the leftwing environments of Antioch College and New York City in the conservative 1950s. The interview focuses on her political awakening in the 1950s, her research on the Rosenberg case, her personal and professional connections with a variety of well-known progressive activists and feminists, and the ways she both shaped and was shaped by the feminist movement. Schneir’s story details the overlapping personal and political networks that fed the emerging women’s movement and illustrates the contributions made by women who were outside the conventional liberal/radical feminist divide. Restrictions DVD 4, 11:40 — 20:20 is restricted until publication of the work she discusses there or until her death, whichever comes first. Format Interview recorded on miniDV using Sony Digital Camcorder DSR-PDX10. Five 60-minute tapes. Transcript Transcribed by Luann Jette. Audited for accuracy and edited for clarity by Kate Weigand. Transcript has been reviewed and approved by Miriam Schneir. Sophia Smith Collection Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Bibliography and Footnote Citation Forms Video Recording Bibliography: Schneir, Miriam. Interview by Kate Weigand. Video recording, May 21–22, 2004. Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection. Footnote: Miriam Schneir, interview by Kate Weigand, video recording, May 21, 2004, Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection, tape 2. Transcript Bibliography: Schneir, Miriam. Interview by Kate Weigand. Transcript of video recording, May 21–22, 2004. Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection. Footnote: Miriam Schneir, interview by Kate Weigand, transcript of video recording, May 21, 2004, Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection, pp. 23–24. Sophia Smith Collection Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Miriam Schneir, interviewed by Kate Weigand DVD 1 of 5 Page 1 of 70 Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Sophia Smith Collection Smith College Northampton, MA Transcript of interview conducted MAY 21–22, 2004, with: MIRIAM SCHNEIR Pleasantville, New York by: KATE WEIGAND WEIGAND: This is Kate Weigand. I’m here in Pleasantville, New York, with Miriam Schneir. It’s May 21st, and – SCHNEIR: In 2004. WEIGAND: That’s right, May 21st, 2004. I guess I’d like to start out just talking about your childhood and your family background, who your parents were and where they came from. SCHNEIR: Well, my parents were — it’s hard for me to describe them. They were very loving parents and we were a sort of comfortable, middle-class family who lived in Queens, New York City. I was born there and lived there for many years. My mother came from Cleveland and we made frequent trips back to Cleveland several times a year. My mother never really adjusted to the idea of being a New Yorker. She, if someone stopped her on the street and said, “Where’s Fifth Avenue?” She’d say, “I don’t know. I’m from Cleveland.” And that was after she’d lived here 40 years. But my father was born in New York City. He had a sort of candy, cigarettes and stuff distributorship where he distributed to small, little candy stores in New York. His father had come here from Lithuania. My mother’s family had come from Poland, but both of my parents were born in this country. My grandparents were orthodox Jews but my parents were non- practicing Jews. I had one sister, Charlotte, who was three and a half years younger than me and I think I had a rather protected childhood. My parents were not political and they were not culturally sophisticated. My father subscribed to Liberty Magazine, an old rightwing publication, and didn’t read any leftwing publications at all. My mother didn’t read much at all. Their relationship was — I would say my father worked constantly. He was in a retail business and then later on, during World War II, he had to sell his cigarette business because cigarettes were a commodity that was very [hard] to obtain and you had to be on the black market. My father Sophia Smith Collection Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Miriam Schneir, interviewed by Kate Weigand DVD 1 of 5 Page 2 of 70 wouldn’t get involved in that so he sold the business. He was a very ethical person and the whole family went to Florida for a year — and that was very nice — and then we came back and he got a liquor license and opened a little retail liquor store in Queens and he worked there for quite a few years — long hours, the way retail businesses are. And so my relationship with him during all the years I was growing up was really quite peripheral. He was rather peripheral in my life. My mother was this strong figure who really raised us and my father was sort of the threat, you know, If you don’t behave, your father will be home and I’m going to tell him. And he had red hair and a terrible temper. So, the important intellectual thing that happened to me during my childhood was that around the fourth grade, they gave examinations to all the children, and those whose IQ — I think they were kind of an IQ test — but those whose IQ were sufficiently high were offered the opportunity to go to a special school for what was called IGC classes, intellectually gifted children. My mother allowed me to go to this class. It was a big thing because I had to take a subway and a bus and I was only in the fourth grade, so it was a big project. But fortunately, although she was quite overprotective, actually, she did allow me to do this. And in that class I met the person who has been my lifelong friend, Cynthia Fuchs-Epstein, who is a sociologist, a feminist sociologist, and her family, who were very important to me. Her mother was kind of an eccentric, but a great admirer of Eleanor Roosevelt, and she would have Eleanor Roosevelt’s “My Day” column up on her refrigerator every day. She’d clip it and post it and I always read it. I spent a lot of time at their house, and they were very important in my — all through the years. At a certain point, I skipped a grade or something and I got a grade ahead of Cynthia, and so I went to Antioch and then she followed a year later, so we were in college together. I knew her husband, whom she met in Ohio also. There were some periods of time when we kind of fell a little bit out of touch, the way you do with a friend, but then we always came back together, and currently we’re very close friends. Walter and I often go out to their house in East Hampton on Long Island. We go out there for long weekends and then we often spend a month or more together in Mexico over the winter. So, Cynthia — I remember arguments with Cynthia when we were in high school over the whole subject of women’s rights. Cynthia was much more advanced than I was, as you can gather from my background. WEIGAND: So this would have been — I’m trying to think – SCHNEIR: I graduated from high school – WEIGAND: In the ’50s? SCHNEIR: In 1950, yeah, in 1950. And Cynthia was already aware of Simone De Beauvoir, probably through her family, and she used to argue with me and Sophia Smith Collection Voices of Feminism Oral History Project Miriam Schneir, interviewed by Kate Weigand DVD 1 of 5 Page 3 of 70 I would insist that I didn’t think [DeBeauvoir’s approach] was a good idea, and then we would really have arguments on the subject. My experiences really hadn’t presented any problems to me. WEIGAND: So, in school and in your family, you didn’t feel like being a girl limited what you could do? SCHNEIR: No. Remember, I had a very female-oriented family, just my sister, my mother, and myself. In the classes that I went to, I suspect that most of my teachers were old feminists from the first wave of the movement anyway. I remember one in particular who I’m sure was. And so there was never any sense in my mind of being discriminated against, you know? Also, I think that I had a certain non-combative spirit.
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