Suzanne Post, September 16, 2016

Suzanne Post, September 16, 2016

Suzy Post was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1933 during the Great Depression. Both sets of her grandparents immigrated to the United States from Germany in the early 1900s, bringing with them Reformed Jewish traditions. She recalls the Jewish community as a crucial part of her Jewish identity and remembers thinking interfaith marriage was a “horror.” She recounts the lasting impact of her first exposure to the Holocaust, viewing footage of concentration camps at the movies. These images sparked her passion for justice movements and working to help minorities. She became involved with the civil rights movement through participation in the Louisville NAACP. During the 1960s civil rights movement, Post worked to establish the controversial open housing law in Louisville to allow people, regardless of race, to live anywhere they wanted. She was also involved in the 1960s anti-war movements against the Vietnam War, and in the feminist movement. In 1987, Post started a support group called the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty which advocates to end the death penalty in Kentucky. Post concludes the interview by discussing her family’s and Jewish communal life today.

Childhood

Louisville (Ky.)

Jewish leadership--Kentucky--Louisville

Discrimination.

World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps

Race relations--United States

Families.

Jewish children--Kentucky--Louisville

Jews--Identity.

Religion

Jews--Kentucky--Louisville.

Civil rights movements--United States

African Americans--Relations with Jews.

Social movements--United States

video

2016oh402_jk037

Carol Ely

Suzanne Post

Holocaust

Emigration and immigration.

Genealogy

Immigrants

Vietnam War, 1961-1975

African Americans--Social conditions.

Race discrimination

Racism

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Interviews may be reproduced with permission from Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries.