Description
Helen Arnstein Salz was a writer, poet, and one of the founders of the Presidio Open Air School. Born in 1883 in San Francisco, she began writing poetry as a child and published many poems in her lifetime. In 1918 Salz and Flora Arnstein opened the Presidio Open Air School in San Francisco. During the 1930s, she taught English at the school when it started to offer help to European refugees in their transition to American life. Additionally, Salz was an executive board member of the Northern California Branch of the ACLU. In this interview, she discusses the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, her family, the Presidio Open Air School, her portraits and poetry, and the Northern California Branch of the ACLU. This interview is part of a group of interviews documenting literature, publishing, and printing in the Bay Area.