Zev Aelony | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1938-02-21)February 21, 1938 |
| Died | November 1, 2009(2009-11-01) (aged 71) |
| Alma mater | University of Minnesota |
| Occupation | Owned a small business representing electronic security manufacturers |
| Known for | Organizer of Minnesota civil rights student group (SFI),Freedom Rider,CORE Soul Force member, one of the Americus Four who faced a death penalty for helping citizens legally vote |
| Movement | Civil Rights Movement Peace Movement |
| Spouse | Karen Olson Aelony |
| Children | Bjorn, Ephraim, Phill, Jared |
| Parent(s) | Janet and David Aelony |
| Website | veganwolf |
Zev Aelony (February 21, 1938 – November 1, 2009) was an American activist involved in theCivil Rights Movement. He was an organizer of the civil rights student group Students for Integration, a CORE Soul Force Member, aFreedom Rider, and one of the Americus Four who faced adeath penalty for helping citizens legally vote.
Zev Aelony was born on February 21, 1938, inPalo Alto, California, to Janet and David Aelony.[1][2] His father, David Aelony, emigrated from Odessa in the Soviet Union to theUnited States in 1925, eventually earning hisPh.D. inOrganic Chemistry atStanford University,[1] in 1938.[3] His roommate at a Kibbutz[which?] was a Moslem Arab. From that time, he championed equality for all ethnic groups in the state of Israel.
Aelony grew up inMinneapolis,Minnesota.[4] He studied Russian and played football at University High School, from which he graduated in 1956.[4] Aelony attended theUniversity of Chicago for two years and then lived at theKibbutz Shoval in Israel for a year.[4] Upon his return to theUnited States, Aelony spent the summer of 1959 at Koinonia, aChristian community in southwestGeorgia.[4] He continued his education at theUniversity of Minnesota, where he graduated in 1961 with a major inpolitical theory and a minor inanthropology.[4] He met his wife, Karen Olson, at the university.[1] They were married for 43 years, until Aelony's death in 2009.[4] They had four sons together: Bjorn, Ephraim, Phil, and Jared.[4]
To support his family, Aelony and his wife owned a small business sellingsecurity products forcommercial buildings.[4] As a matter of principle, they did not sell any equipment designed to injure people, such asguns orknives.[5] Aelony became an advocate forcivil rights andsocial justice beginning in his teen years.[4] From his earliest years he was an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and non-violent resistance to injustice. At theUniversity of Minnesota, he helped found Students for Integration, a group dedicated to gaining housing and employment for black and minority students.[4] Aelony was arrested several times for testing the ban on segregated interstate travel in theDeep South as aFreedom Rider.[4] He was famously arrested and served time ondeath row inAmericus, Georgia, for attempting to register black voters.[4]
Aelony has been described as a soft-spoken and peaceful man who practicednonviolence and continued to fight forjustice throughout his lifetime.[4]
The Aelony family wasJewish, which contributed to Zev Aelony's belief inpeace andnonviolence.[5] He lived at theKibbutzShoval in Israel from 1958 to 1959.[5]
While there, he read an editorial about the communalChristian settlementKoinonia inGeorgia which was founded byClarence Jordan in 1942.[6][7] At the time, Koinonia Farm gained notoriety as a target ofracial bigotry, and was even bombed.[4][5] Aelony spent the summer of 1959 in Koinonia working with and learning about the people there, who impressed him.[5]
In addition to his native English language, he spoke Hebrew, German, and Russian. His German skills were put to the test in 1963 when the European press, many of whom did not speak English, descended on the CORE workers. His explanation to the press in German of what they were trying to accomplish was published widely in Europe and contributed to the pressure on Washington to uphold the Supreme Court ruling against discrimination in public transportation in interstate commerce.[citation needed]
Aelony's father, David, was animmigrant and was involved in the opposition to the rise ofNazism inGermany, where he had relatives.[5] David Aelony spoke fluently inEnglish,German,Hebrew,Yiddish, andFrench, and also knew parts of otherSlavic andGermanic languages as well asSpanish andItalian.[5] David Aelony began welcomingrefugees into his home when he met them on the streets.[3][5]
One of the turning points in Zev Aelony's life occurred around the age of 18, when his family was invited to a Minneapolis picnic because of his father's work with therefugees.[5]Jewish refugees fromEurope andJapanese-Americans who had been in the detention camps out west attended the picnic.[3][5] Zev Aelony was shocked to meet kids who came out ofconcentration camps in the United States, a place where he believed things like that did not occur.[5]
Aelony was not completely naïve aboutsegregation and first became involved incivil rights campaigns in high school.[5] During this time in the mid-1950s, he participated in the distribution ofNAACP postcards bearing the slogan "Completely Free by ’63," though to him this goal seemed too distant.[5] The hatred Aelony witnessed towards the Koinonia community for practicingracial equality drove him towards participation in the Civil Rights Movement.[4] In September 1959, he attended a ten-dayCORE training seminar inMiami,Florida.[5] The seminar focused onnonviolence training and was attended by many people involved in theFreedom Rides, includingPatricia Stephens Due and her sister Priscilla Stevens.[5][6] The seminar was held at the Sir John Motel, one of the few places inMiami that allowed blacks and whites to stay together.[5] Thenonviolence training consisted of techniques in organizing and training, and also emphasized the need to understand the people who were againstintegration.[5] Aelony came to believe that it was important to understand why people do things rather than just dividing them into categories of good and bad.[5]
Aelony worked with a group of students to help find housing forPersian students.[5] This population had difficulty securing housing because it was rumored that they rubbed their skin witholive oil, which ruined the bedding.[5] If the minority students were told an apartment complex was full, white students would go ask for a room there to test the fairness of the renters.[5] The students would then talk to the renters, who were often embarrassed and would agree to rent to the minority students.[5]
Meanwhile, thesit-in movement, which encouraged local studentactivism, began to spread throughout the nation, and Students for Integration organized support at the university.[citation needed] In the summer of 1961, there was a call for moreFreedom Riders to help demonstrate the rights of allAmericans to equal accommodation onpublic transportation as the law required.[6]
Zev Aelony and five others, including Claire O’Conner, Gene Uphoff, Dave Martin, Marv Davidoff, and Bob Baum, set off on a bus journey withNew Orleans as the final destination.[6] The first part of the ride was uneventful, and the group did not experience anyviolence.[5] They stopped inNashville to stay at the Freedom House withDiane Nash and Rodney Powell, and they joined in apicket of agrocery store there.[5] TheFreedom Riders continued on their journey and were arrested when they arrived inJackson, Mississippi.[5][6] Police Chief Captain Ray met them inside the door of the black waiting room, and they were taken to the Jackson City Jail.[5] After a couple of nights they were transferred to the Hines County Jail, and when that facility filled up they were moved toMississippi's notoriousParchman Farm.[5][8] While there, Aelony participated in ahunger strike with several others, and he was isolated for a period of time for writing "you’ll reap what you sow" on the back wall with a spoon.[5] In retrospect, the federal government seemed slow to respond to the request from civil rights workers to enforce the interstate commerce clause decision by the supreme court, both for political reasons, for caution, and until international pressures arose to demonstrate US commitment to democracy, freedom of travel, and equality under the law. Aelony's interview in May 1963 in German with a West German filmmaker played extensively on TV in Europe, contributing immediately to the political pressure from Europe.[9]
In the spring of 1963, Aelony became a part of the Journey of Reconciliation.[6] The Journey of Reconciliation began whenWilliam Moore, a white Mississippian postman whose wife was black, set off on foot fromChattanooga, Tennessee, to deliver a letter toMississippiGovernorRoss Barnett asking him to acceptintegration.[citation needed] When Moore was shot dead,[10] five members ofCORE and five members ofSNCC responded to his wife's request that the journey be carried on.[citation needed] The group, an equal mix of black and white males, was arrested for "walking into the state ofAlabama in a manner designed to incite abreach of the peace".[6]
In 1963, Aelony was asked to go back toSumter County, Georgia, where Koinonia is located, to the town ofAmericus to assist with avoter registration drive there.[citation needed] Aelony worked withSNCC and the local Sumter County Movement to help blacks register to vote.[citation needed] He taught protest standards topicketers at a local restaurant, and he also showed the group's photographer how to take pictures that would be useful in court.[citation needed] He performed similar activities in Ocala, Florida. When Aelony took a sample picture, a deputy arrived and asked him to stop photographing. Aelony said "it's a free country", and was immediately arrested.[citation needed] He was taken to jail inOcala.[citation needed] Officers told the inmates he was aFreedom Rider, and left him unattended in the jail "bullpen", where he was beaten unconscious and kicked until a woman visitor called attention to the abuse.[11] Aelony was eventually released after the intervention of Minnesota's governor, who was attending the Governor's Conference in Miami, and he returned to Americus.[citation needed] The arrests in Americus continued to take place; hundreds of people who were a part of the voting rights drive were taken to a camp outside of town.[6]
Aelony attended the march as a non-participant observer and was arrested on a charge ofinsurrection against the state ofGeorgia.[12] This charge carried thedeath penalty under Georgia's 1871 Anti-Treason Act.[12] Three otherCORE fieldworkers, Ralph Allen, Don Harris, and John Perdew, were arrested in Americus as well.[12] With Aelony, this group became known as the Americus Four while they spent time ondeath row.[12] Their arrest originally went unnoticed in theUnited States, but attracted attention inEurope andAfrica.[12] As public concern grew, awareness spread within theUnited States and eventually put pressure on the federal government to attend to the arrests inGeorgia.[3] The Americus Four were ultimatelyexonerated.[13] Shortly afterward, he suffered a myocardial infarction and was hospitalized at Grady Hospital, by a local black physician who cared for the CORE workers. Thus, Aelony integrated the black ward at Grady Hospital. He was examined there by the famous academic cardiologist,Professor Willis Hurst, who felt his heart attack was related to his beating in Ocala, Florida. He was then advised to terminate his dangerous protest work in the deep South.
Aelony continued to be politically active[11] in his hometown ofMinneapolis throughout his life. He worked on the political campaign ofKeith Ellison, aMuslim who ran forCongress on a peace platform.[13] In 2006, Ellison became the firstMuslim elected toCongress; he was also the firstAfrican-American fromMinnesota to be elected to theHouse of Representatives.[14]
Aelony died ofmetastaticcolon cancer on November 1, 2009, at his home.[4] He was 71 years old.[4]
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