Brownsville: Do You Remember When We Used To Sing, Sha la la la

Sam Stein, my late father in laws' brother, passed away last month. He was a nice man, a proud father and grandpa and a lifelong progressive. His widow Dottie was a Brownsville girl. She tells many stories about how she and her friends were shadowed and questioned by FBI agents during the red scare of the early 50's. Here's a blurb of the book above:"This book tells the stories of the Jewish women who came of age in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in the 1940s and 1950s. Through in-depth interviews with more than forty women, Carole Bell Ford explores the choices these women made and the boundaries within which they made them, offering fresh insights into the culture and values of Jewish women in the postwar period. Not content to remain in the past, The Girls is also a story of women who live in the present, who lead fulfilling lives even as they struggle to adjust to changes in American society that conflict with their own values and that have profoundly affected the lives of their children and grandchildren. I began teaching in Ocean Hill Brownsville in 1968. Veteran (white) teachers fled the school district during the controversial strike of that time, but a Brownsville born and raised "girl," Nancy Levin Brezenoff, stayed and became my mentor. Here's a Brownsville slide show using an interview with a famous Brownsville Boy, Alfred Kazin.