Episode 24: Carole Bell Ford
Carole Bell Ford is an educator, historian and writer. As you’ll hear in this interview, I first came across her book The Girls a few years ago while researching for a (still upcoming) project. An oral history of the Jewish women who came of age in the then-Jewish neighborhood of Brownsville in the 1940s and 1950s, Carole explores the choices these women made and how these choices were informed by postwar American society as well as Jewish immigrant culture—a subject she understands intimately, as one of “the girls” from Brownsville herself. A very interesting and engaging look at these women’s lives, I became even more interested in Ford once I realized that The Girls was published the same year she retired from a long career as a teacher, professor and educator. For many years she worked at Empire State College, a SUNY school for adult students that is centered on individualized study—there she taught in addition to developing curriculum and special programs. She started a second whole career after retirement and has since published four books, three histories and one travel book.
Much of the reason I started this podcast was to learn from cultural creatives about what choices they’ve made and where it’s led them—the ups, downs and zigzags of life—really as a way of showing that life rarely follows the path that you expect and that it can bring you somewhere far more interesting. Carole’s choices led her away from the narrow options available to her in Brownsville at the time, eventually leading her to get her master’s and her doctorate, live in Europe, start writing and launch a whole new career. Women’s studies and history were much of the focus of her studies in school and the classes she taught, and understandably are the focal point of her writing. In addition to The Girls she has written about a grassroots campaign run by women to change a family court system and about how teenage female holocaust survivors built new lives in America.
Now 87 and based in New Paltz with her husband of over 50 years, Carole has lived a long and full life. We talk extensively about the Brownsville of her childhood, the opening up of women’s lives and options in the last 70 years, her careers and relationships, the appeal of oral history and more. For anyone interested in women’s history and Brooklyn history, this is an essential listen.
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Carole Bell Ford books for your library:
