Jane Alpert - Early Life

Early Life

Alpert was born in May 1947 and grew up in the New York City area. Her grandparents, who were Jewish, came from Russia to escape the pogroms. One of her grandfathers gave up his orthodox faith after coming to America and became a socialist in the 1930s. Jane Alpert’s mother graduated from high school at fourteen and then graduated from Hunter College at eighteen. When she was three years old her parents had their second child, Andrew. Andrew was born with several birth defects, including a severed optic nerve that caused him to be legally blind. According to Jane, "Skip (Andrew) survived, with above-average intelligence, but almost blind, with respiratory difficulties and permanently stunted physical growth. I remember him as a large, inert lump who took all my mother's time and attention."

In 1956, her father took a job as vice-president of the Linz Glass Company in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. “It was there that Jane Alpert first became aware of the fact that she was an outsider, not only because she was Jewish, but also because she was from the city and unaccustomed to country ways." When she was twelve they moved back to New York and she felt like an outsider once again.

Jane Alpert graduated from Forest Hills High School two years before her graduating class and attended Swarthmore College. She continued to do well academically, read constantly, and began to make friends. Among other influential books were those of Ayn Rand. Alpert was involved in her first demonstration in the fall of her first year of college. Alpert had attended Columbia graduate school but had not been active in the movement there. In April 1968 Alpert became involved in the Strike Committee’s Community Action Committee that started the Columbia Tenants Union. The committee attempted to mobilize more community residents to actively resist Columbia’s “gentrification” policies.