33 Facts About Zev Aelony

Zev Aelony was an American activist involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Zev Aelony was an organizer of the civil rights student group Students for Integration, a CORE Soul Force Member, a Freedom Rider, and one of the Americus Four who faced a death penalty for helping citizens legally vote.

Zev Aelony was born on February 21,1938, in Palo Alto, California, to Janet and David Aelony.

Zev Aelony's roommate at a Kibbutz was a Moslem Arab.

Zev Aelony studied Russian and played football at University High School, from which he graduated in 1956.

Zev Aelony continued his education at the University of Minnesota, where he graduated in 1961 with a major in political theory and a minor in anthropology.

Zev Aelony met his wife, Karen Olson, at the university.

Zev Aelony became an advocate for civil rights and social justice beginning in his teen years.

Zev Aelony was arrested several times for testing the ban on segregated interstate travel in the Deep South as a Freedom Rider.

Zev Aelony was famously arrested and served time on death row in Americus, Georgia, for attempting to register black voters.

Zev Aelony has been described as a soft-spoken and peaceful man who practiced nonviolence and continued to fight for justice throughout his lifetime.

Zev Aelony lived at the Kibbutz Shoval in Israel from 1958 to 1959.

Zev Aelony spent the summer of 1959 in Koinonia working with and learning about the people there, who impressed him.

Zev Aelony's father, David, was an immigrant and was involved in the opposition to the rise of Nazism in Germany, where he had relatives.

David Zev Aelony spoke fluently in English, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, and French, and knew parts of other Slavic and Germanic languages as well as Spanish and Italian.

David Zev Aelony began welcoming refugees into his home when he met them on the streets.

One of the turning points in Zev Aelony's life occurred around the age of 18, when his family was invited to a Minneapolis picnic because of his father's work with the refugees.

Zev Aelony was shocked to meet kids who came out of concentration camps in the United States, a place where he believed things like that did not occur.

Zev Aelony was not completely naive about segregation and first became involved in civil rights campaigns in high school.

The hatred Zev Aelony witnessed towards the Koinonia community for practicing racial equality drove him towards participation in the Civil Rights Movement.

Zev Aelony came to believe that it was important to understand why people do things rather than just dividing them into categories of good and bad.

Zev Aelony worked with a group of students to help find housing for Persian students.

In 1963, Zev Aelony was asked to go back to Sumter County, Georgia, where Koinonia is located, to the town of Americus to assist with a voter registration drive there.

Zev Aelony worked with SNCC and the local Sumter County Movement to help blacks register to vote.

Zev Aelony taught protest standards to picketers at a local restaurant, and he showed the group's photographer how to take pictures that would be useful in court.

When Zev Aelony took a sample picture, a deputy arrived and asked him to stop photographing.

Zev Aelony said "it's a free country", and was immediately arrested.

Zev Aelony was eventually released after the intervention of Minnesota's governor, who was attending the Governor's Conference in Miami, and he returned to Americus.

Zev Aelony was examined there by the famous academic cardiologist, Professor Willis Hurst, who felt his heart attack was related to his beating in Ocala, Florida.

Zev Aelony was then advised to terminate his dangerous protest work in the deep South.

Zev Aelony continued to be politically active in his hometown of Minneapolis throughout his life.

Zev Aelony worked on the political campaign of Keith Ellison, a Muslim who ran for Congress on a peace platform.

Zev Aelony died of metastatic colon cancer on November 1,2009, at his home.