Schiller, Helen, “Helen Schiller video interview and biography,” Digital Collections, accessed April 19, 2025, https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24623.
Helen Shiller, a Jewish American born in 1947 in Long Island, New York. Her father had immigrated to the United States from Latvia and her mother from Belarus. She moved to Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood in 1972, living on N. Malden Street. Initially she drove a cab and worked as a waitress. At an early age, she became active in the anti-Vietnam War movement while attending college at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In Chicago, she helped to organize the Intercommunal Survival Committee with Rev. Walter “Slim” Coleman. The organization functioned as a sort of white support arm of the Black Panther Party and later evolved into the Heart of Uptown Coalition, a group dedicated to providing essential services to the poor. She also edited Keep Strong magazine.