By Howie Levy

I learned only in September 2003 of the passing of my friend, classmate and high school fraternity brother, Ken Shilman.  He died from cancer on September 7, 1989, at the age of 47. Despite his size (he was 6'5", mostly likely the tallest of all our classmates), in high school, Ken was soft-spoken, unassuming and gentle fellow, gangly and anything but outspoken or opinionated. In fact, he was so quiet that many of you may not even remember him.

I know little about Ken's life after OHS except as noted on this page, but what little I do know about Ken may surprise some of you.
   

Beginning in the spring of 1961, our quiet, unassuming classmate became actively involved in the civil rights movement when he watched television coverage of the assaults on the early Freedom Rides and then decided to take a bus ride to the South. Soon thereafter, he joined the Young Socialists Alliance (YSA) and in 1962, worked as a hospital workers union organizer in Brooklyn. The YSA was an independent socialist youth group whose leadership, among other things, was appalled by racism and, therefore, sympathetic to the rapidly escalating civil rights movement. It was loosely aligned with the Socialist Worker's (communist) Party in which he later became a party leader for the rest of his life.         

   
You might have read about Ken in a newspaper when he was arrested that year as a Freedom Rider in Mississippi. The following article about Ken is from a June 1961 edition of a Jackson, Mississippi, newspaper:           

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