Rosenberg, Susan (Susan Lisa), 1955-

Susan Rosenberg was born in New York City in 1955, the daughter of Emanuel and Bella Rosenberg, both of whom were progressive leftists. Her father was a dentist who practiced in Spanish Harlem and her mother was a theatrical producer; they regularly took their only child to rallys in support of the civil rights movement and to demonstrations againt the war in Vietnam. Rosenberg grew up on the Upper West Side and attended the very liberal Walden School from grade school through high school by which time she was actively engaged in the anti-war movement. After high school, she initially attended Barnard College but transferred to the less elitist City College, earning a degree in history. She later went to Canada to become a doctor of Chinese acupuncture and holistic medicine.

Rosenberg worked first as a drug counselor in Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx and by the early 1980s was working at the Harlem Institute of Acupuncture where the ancient Chinese practice was used to treat drug addiction. The Institute was founded by the Black Nationalist Mutulu Shakur who had worked alongside Rosenberg at the Lincoln Hospital. Like Shakur, Rosenberg was much involved in several radical political movements of the day. She was active in the New Afrikan and Puerto Rican independence movements and even more active in the May 19 (in honor of the birthdays of both Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh) Communist Organization, a coalition of sorts consisting of one faction of the former Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army.

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