Jane Alpert - Sam Melville

Sam Melville

After graduating from Swarthmore, Alpert took a job as an editor in a publishing firm and she started graduate work at Columbia University. Alpert met Sam Melville at the CAC (Community Action Coalition). Melville and Alpert became more involved with politics and they became romantically involved as well. The pair was involved with several bombings. Melville and Alpert quickly moved in together. Alpert moved to the Lower East Side to live with Melville at his apartment. "On the Lower East Side Alpert began writing for Rat." In her book, Alpert says that Melville was able to turn insults into compliments. “His voice suggested helpless lust, as though his accusation of wanton sexuality were also an admission of my power over him." Alpert became drawn into the world of radical politics which she had always watched from the outside. “If Sam had been the most conventional, straight-laced businessman, I would have found his affection hard to resist. The combination of sexual love and radical ideology was more than irresistible. It consumed me. After a few weeks with Sam, it was obvious to me that I was going to quit graduate school." Alpert was involved with several bombings and was the person who wrote communiqués in 1971 that were released to the press.

Alpert lived underground while Melville was incarcerated. Alpert learned that her former romantic partner had died at Attica Prison, in New York in 1971. She wrote an epitaph that was published in the Rat.