Sandra Feldman - Early Life

Early Life

Born Sandra Abramowitz in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York in October 1939, her father was a milkman who played violin until work made his fingers too thick and calloused to play music. Her mother worked part-time in a bakery, but was often ill. The Abramowitz family was extremely poor; at first, Sandra and her two siblings grew up in a tenement, although the family eventually moved into public housing as their finances worsened.

Feldman attended James Madison High School in the New York City public school system. She entered Brooklyn College (which at the time offered free tuition), where she studied English literature.

She became active in socialist politics and the civil rights movement. When she was 17 years old, she met civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who became her mentor and close friend. During her early years in the civil rights movement, Feldman worked to integrate Howard Johnson's restaurants in Maryland. She soon became employment committee chairwoman of the Congress of Racial Equality in Harlem. She also participated in several Freedom Rides, and was arrested twice.

In 1958, while working for the Brooklyn College literary magazine, she met and married Paul Feldman. Paul Feldman later became editor of the socialist magazine "New America" and a member of the Socialist Party's national executive committee. The couple divorced in 1975. They had no children. In 1980, she married Arthur H. Barnes, former president of the New York Urban Coalition, who was the father of two children.