Henry Schwarzschild

Henry Schwarzschild (November 2, 1925 – June 1, 1996) was an activist for civil rights and human rights. He joined the Civil Rights Movement and became involved in the fight against capital punishment. He founded the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP) and the Lawyer's Constitutional Defense Committee and headed the American Civil Liberties Union's Capital Punishment Project.

Schwarzschild was born in Wiesbaden, Germany. At 13, he moved to New York City in 1939 with his parents, right before World War II. After serving in the army in the war as a member of the Counterintelligence Corps from 1944 to 1946, he went to the City College of New York, where he received a bachelor's degree and then did graduate work in political theory at Columbia University After serving in the army, it is said that he had the "appearance of a durable veteran from ancient wars, penetrating eyes intolerant of bombast and passivity, facial lines that mobilize easily to express by turns infectious good humor, remembered pain, resignation, impatience."

He married Kathleen Jett, and the couple had two daughters, Miriam and Hannah. In the 1950s, he worked as an executive of the International Rescue Committee, the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.

In 1960, he and his wife were in Lexington, Kentucky, and he overheard people talking about a sit-in at a lunch counter on the campus of Berea College. He decided to join in the sit-in and ended up being the only white person involved. It was the beginning of his fight for civil rights. Soon after he began his fight for black civil rights, he was arrested on June 21, 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi for his participation in the freedom rides. Once he was released, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote on his imprisonment forms, "your courageous willingness to go to jail for freedom has brought us closer to our nation’s bright tomorrow." From that point on, he and King attended many events together, with both of them speaking and making movements towards civil rights. In 1961, Schwarzschild embarked on his own speaking tour across America to try to recruit people to their cause. He went on to make many public statements on civil liberties, capital punishment, racial justice, and many other issues.

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