Mendy Samstein

The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Jehudah Menachem Mendel "Mendy" Samstein (July 25, 1938 – January 24, 2007) was an American civil rights activist.

Born in Manhattan, he majored in European history at Brandeis, and later earned a master's degree in the same subject from Cornell. He was studying for a Ph.D. in history at the University of Chicago when he quit to join the civil rights movement in the South. He became a full-time organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or SNCC, pronounced "snick"). Stokely Carmichael, later chairman of SNCC, called Samstein "one in a million".

Later on, Samstein also organized protests against the Vietnam War. He had a variety of jobs, including working as a teacher, as a psychoanalyst, and running a summer camp. In 2000, he and other civil rights veterans protested the handling of the presidential vote in Florida.

Samstein was married to Nancy Cooper, a fellow civil rights activist. He died from carcinoid cancer at his home in New Lisbon, New York, aged 68.

External links

SNCC Digital Gateway: Mendy Samstein, Documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out
Obituary at New York Times