History
Snyder grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, where at age 9 his father abandoned the family. After a stint in a correctional facility for breaking into parking meters, Snyder worked in job counseling on Madison Avenue in New York City, as well as selling appliances and construction work. In 1969 he left his wife and children and started hitchhiking west. Police found him in a stolen vehicle, and he was arrested and convicted of grand theft auto. He served two years in federal prison, 1970–1972, for violating the Dyer Act, which outlaws the interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle. Snyder ended up in Danbury Federal Correctional Institute in Danbury, Connecticut, where he served time with Philip and Daniel Berrigan. Following meetings with them and prolific reading, especially of the Bible, Snyder started participating in hunger strikes and work stoppages over prisoners' rights issues.
Read more about this topic: Mitch Snyder
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)