Mitchell Zimmerman

Mitchell Zimmerman was born on October 15, 1942 in New York City. He grew up in a mostly white working-class neighborhood in the South Bronx where he attended integrated public schools. He attended City College of New York and later Princeton University as a graduate student in political science, In August, 1963, he traveled to DC to attend the March on Washington. In 1964 Zimmerman was recruited as a volunteer for the Mississippi Freedom Summer project, first working in the SNCC office in Atlanta where he supported the case against the Pickrick, a restaurant owned by Lester Maddox, future Governor of Georgia. He spent time that summer in northern Mississippi working on voting rights advocacy. He returned to the South the following year working with the Arkansas Project on voting and integration rights from the fall of 1965 to the fall of 1966. Zimmerman moved to California with his wife where they raised three children. In 1979 he became an attorney working both as a technology lawyer while continuing pro bono work supporting civil rights, opposing the death penalty, and a range of other issues. He currently resides in Palo Alto, California.