Mordecai (“Mortie”) Cohen was born in 1917 in St. Matthews, South Carolina, a cotton-trading town with a train station, about 20 miles from the state capital of Columbia. In an interview recorded in 1995, Cohen describes an incident from his childhood:

The neighbor across the street, she had seven children and she had the minister come to baptize them. While they were being baptized, I headed over there. Ms. Violet told the minister, “There’s a Jewish boy here, Mortie Cohen’s coming over here, what do we do?” He said, “A little water won’t hurt him.” I was baptized.