Henry Schwarzschild has been lending his ardor, eloquence, and sense of principle and moral outrage to the fight for social justice for more than 40 years. Having witnessed the rise of Nazism – he fled Germany right after Kristallnacht and came to the United States in 1939 – he vowed, “whatever the cost, I would not live in a period of major social, moral events and be a bystander.”
Henry was an activist in the civil rights movement: as a Freedom Rider to Mississippi in 1961; as a marcher and organizer with Martin Luther King, Jr.; and, from 1964 to 1970, as executive director of the Lawyer’s Constitutional Defense Committee, a lawyers’ civil rights group with offices in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida. From 1972 to 1976, he directed the ACLU’s project on Amnesty (for Vietnam War resisters) and in 1976 he founded the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. He led the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project for 15 years. Henry has called himself “An American Jew acting out of quasi-theological promptings.” From his embrace of Jewish values, he has championed the rights of Palestinians and opposed injustice everywhere.
He serves on the boards of directors of the Jewish Peace Fellowship, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, and is on the National Advisory Committee of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.