Oral History- Dr.Galson(Shirin Akhter)

Shirin: When and where were you born?

Dr. Galson: I was born in Mont Clare, NJ in 1950.

Shirin: Do you have like kids?

Dr. Galson: I have two sons. I have a 29 year old son and 23 year old son.

Shirin:  Do you want to talk about what you are doing now?

Dr. Galson:  You mean like career wise? I am a psychologist. I have a full time job with the School of Philadelphia as a school psychologist. And I have a private practice of psychotherapy.

Shirin: How was your experience at school like back in the days? Like how was your experience?

Dr. Galson:  I was a very conscience student.  I worked very hard on my assignments. I really had a drive to do well.  I was very interested in learning.

Shirin: Did kids from different backgrounds get along?

Dr. Galson:  In my school….in my high school……let’s see. I would say the kids from different backgrounds kind of kept to their own selves.

Shirin: So like their own group?

Dr. Galson: Their own group.  There were separate groups.  There was not very much mixing accept on the sports teams.  The people who were  on sports teams related to all different kinds of people and mine interest and my friends were mostly in like the literaray magazine and I’m just trying to think who was working on the literacy magazine and there were some differences in background but not a lot.”

Shirin: What did you experience during the Civil War or Civil Rights?

Dr. Galson: Civil war? I was not alive?

Shirin: I’m sorry.

Dr. Galson:  That was a long time ago.

The civil rights movement

I finished high school in 1958. I wen to a college that was very full of politically active people.In fact, I went to Antioch College, the alumna of my college was Coretta Scott King.  And 50 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr was the commencement speaker. And also the brother of you those civil rights, the three civil rights guys, anyway, these 3 civil rights guys who were killed. Um, one of their brothers went to my college.  So, as you might expect, there was a lot of political activism a lot of participation in various marches and movements related to voting rights struggles. Also ending the war and draft in Vietnam.  There was a draft then and there was a lot of activism around not sending people into the army. And actually Martin Luther King made himself very unpopular with both the civil Rights community with his base of support when he came out against the Vietnam War. And his broader agenda to confront racism and also the military industrial complex at that time wasn’t his most popular stand because  folks thought the most important thing was Civil Rights for all different races but he saw it as.

Shirin:Do you want to talk about what you went through? Did you have race problems?

Dr. Galson: I personally as a white person did not have what I would call race problems. I am Jewish and have encountered very little anti-Semitism. In fact Jewish people were pretty active on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement on behalf of racial equality. I wouldn’t way I had problems personally

Shirin:How old are you?

Dr. Galson: Since I was born in 1950 I am 64 year old. My birthday is not until the end of the year. I’ll be 65 in December.

Shirin: Thank you for your time.

Dr. Galson: It was my pleasure.