Jennifer Meeropol is the granddaughter of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and the daughter of RFC Founder, Robert Meeropol. Jenn became the Executive Director of the RFC on September 1, 2013. Prior posts on this page were written by Robert (unless otherwise noted), and represent his opinions, which are not necessarily shared by the RFC.On September 11th, 2008 my email inbox was flooded with files containing almost 1000 pages from the National Security Archive. This material was the long-awaited release of the testimony of 43 of the 46 witnesses subpoenaed by the Grand Jury that investigated my parents’ case.
I recently was contacted by Lori Styler who is working on a documentary film entitled Dreamers and Fighters, about the New York City teacher purges during the McCarthy period. I’d been part of a panel entitled “Children of the Blacklist” at a conference some years earlier commemorating the New York Teachers Union. Lori remembered my participation and asked if I would contribute a short statement to the website they are building to promote the film: www.DreamersandFighters.com.
Monday, September 4th, 1990 was the first day I spent as the Executive Director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children. As September 4th approaches each year, I find myself reflecting on one of the biggest turning points of my life.
At the time it seemed like a leap into the unknown. And it also felt like a terrifying responsibility. A small group of financial backers, a portion of whom were also friends had placed their faith in my ability to build a progressive public foundation that would provide for the educational and emotional needs of the children of targeted activists.
I was too young to remember the first time I met David and Emily Alman, but I know that by the time I was five years old they were two of my favorite people. Emily died in 2004 at the age of 86, after a distinguished career that led her first to Chair the Sociology Department at Douglass College of Rutgers University, before “retiring” to practice law for 25 more years. David, a novelist, businessman and social activist is still with us at 91.
I first wrote about the case of the San Francisco 8 in my Executive Director’s report in the Summer/Fall, 2007 issue of Carry It Forward, the RFC’s newsletter. In 1975 a judge dismissed all charges against three Black Panthers because they had been tortured into “confessing” to slaying a San Francisco police officer in 1971.