Turkel, Annsheila interview

Permanent Link:: http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI14103458/00001

Material Information

Subjects / Keywords:: Oral histories -- Miami Beach (Fla.)
North and Central America -- United States -- Florida -- Miami-Dade -- Miami Beach
Civil rights
Genre:: Video Recordings
Spatial Coverage:: United States -- Florida -- Miami Beach

Scope and Content:: Annsheila Turkel moved to Miami Beach from New York with her husband Leonard in 1956. The Turkels became close friends with a group of Jewish couples who were social activists, at first helping to elect Miamian Jack Orr to the Florida legislature, then starting the Miami chapter of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) with John O. Brown, a Black doctor in Liberty City, as chapter head. She talks about the meetings, the marches and participating in the first known sit-in protest at a lunch counter in the country in April 1959, a year before the Greensboro, North Carolina sit in. For the most part, she recounts, the general Jewish community was not supportive of their activism but they continued to be the “social conscience,” aghast at the overt discrimination they saw in Miami compared to New York. ( en )