Andrew Goodman | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Goodman in 1964 | |
| Born | (1943-11-23)November 23, 1943 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | June 21, 1964(1964-06-21) (aged 20) |
| Cause of death | Murder |
| Education | Walden School University of Wisconsin-Madison Queens College, New York City |
| Occupation(s) | Social worker, Civil rights activist |
| Mother | Carolyn Goodman |
| Awards | Presidential Medal of Freedom (Posthumous; 2014) |
Andrew Goodman (November 23, 1943 – June 21, 1964) was an Americancivil rights activist. He was one of threeCongress of Racial Equality (CORE) workersmurdered inPhiladelphia, Mississippi, by members of theKu Klux Klan in 1964. Goodman and two fellow activists,James Chaney andMichael Schwerner, were volunteers for theFreedom Summer campaign that sought to registerAfrican Americans to vote in Mississippi and to set upFreedom Schools for black Southerners.
Andrew Goodman was born on November 23, 1943, inNew York City, the second of three boys born to Robert, a writer and civil engineer, andCarolyn Goodman, a psychologist and social activist.[1] He grew up in the city'sUpper East Side.[2] Goodman wasJewish, like fellow civil rights activistMichael Schwerner, alongside whom Goodman would be murdered.[3] Goodman's neighborhood was a racially-mixed community of white and black families.[4]
The Goodman family was involved in intellectual and socially progressive activism and were devoted tosocial justice. His mother Carolyn was a lifelong labor activist. In her youth, she helped farm workers to organize and was active in community efforts to support theRepublican faction during theSpanish Civil War in the 1930s.[5]
Andrew followed his parents' activist bent from a young age. At the age of 14, Goodman traveled toWashington, D.C., to participate in the1958 Youth March for Integrated Schools. During the march, approximately 10,000 high school age students promoted thedesegregation of American public schools after theU.S. Supreme Court'sBrown v. Board of Education landmark decision in 1954 struck down the constitutionality of racial segregation in public schools. The next year, Goodman and a friend went to West Virginia to live in a coal mining town and sought to advocate to the governor over the poor working conditions there. At 17, Goodman traveled to Western Europe to understand the impact of largescale agribusiness on small farmers.[4] Goodman also participated in a 1960 protest at a New YorkWoolworth's as part of thesit-in movement protesting the segregationist policies of thefive-and-dime store.[2]
In 1961, Goodman graduated high school from the progressiveWalden School, where he had attended from the age of 3. At Walden, he was involved in the theater program. He also arranged forBrooklyn DodgerJackie Robinson, a neighbor of his and the first African-American to play inMajor League Baseball, to speak at the school.[4] After Walden, Goodman enrolled the Honors Program at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison and considered a drama major, but withdrew after one semester after falling ill with pneumonia. He returned to New York City to improve his health and was selected for a role in theOff-Broadway playThe Chief Thing by Russian dramatistNikolaí Evreninov.[1]
Goodman then enrolled atQueens College, New York City, and majored in anthropology.[1] At Queens, he was a friend and classmate ofPaul Simon. He developed an interest in poetry. One of his poems, "A Corollary to a Poem byA. E. Housman", was posthumously discovered by his college professorMary Doyle Curran and published in theMassachusetts Review and theNew York Times.[6] With Goodman's brief acting experience, he originally planned to study drama but switched to anthropology. Goodman's growing interest in anthropology seemed to parallel his increasing political seriousness.[1] Throughout college, Goodman acted with an Off-Broadway repertory company.[4]
The senators could not persist in this polite debate over the future dignity of a human race if the white Northerners were not so shockingly apathetic.
— Andrew Goodman, in a 1964 school paper[7]
In the spring of 1964, his junior year at Queens College, Goodman attended a talk by Mississippi civil rights activistsAaron Henry, head of the state'sNAACP branch, andFannie Lou Hamer. Henry and Hamer were recruiting students under the age of 21, who with the permission of their parents, would participate in theFreedom Summer project to help register African Americans to vote in Mississippi and to set upFreedom Schools.[4]
In June 1964, Goodman left New York to teach at aCongress of Racial Equality (CORE) training session for Freedom Summer volunteers at theWestern College for Women (now part ofMiami University) inOxford, Ohio. In Ohio, Goodman met fellow New Yorker 24 year oldMichael Schwerner, an experienced volunteer with CORE, and 21 year oldJames Chaney, a CORE activist in Mississippi. The three trained hundreds of Freedom Summer volunteers, mostly students, how to navigate the racism and violence they would encounter in Mississippi. At the training, Schwerner learned that one of the Freedom Schools in Mississippi that he had helped to organize at the Mount Zion Methodist Church inPhiladelphia had been burned down by theKu Klux Klan (KKK). To investigate, the three men left Ohio for Mississippi by car on June 20.[8]
On June 21, their first full day in the state, the trio drove from their home base ofMeridian for Philadelphia, a community about an hour from Meridian, to visit the church ruins and meet with church members.[1] When they were driving back to Meridian, they were pulled over byNeshoba County, Mississippi Deputy SheriffCecil Price (a KKK member), for allegedly driving 65 miles-per-hour in a 30-mile-per-hour speed limit zone. Price arrested the three men and took them to the Neshoba County jail, where Chaney was booked for speeding, while Schwerner and Goodman were booked "for investigation". Chaney was charged a $20 fine and the three men were released before 10:25pm and instructed to leave the county. However, while Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were in custody, Price contacted local KKK leader and ministerEdgar Ray Killen and informed him of the three activists in custody. According to a subsequent U.S. Department of Justice investigation, Killen then gathered other KKK members and devised a plot to attack the three as they left the jail.[7]
Price followed them in his patrol car. At 10:25, Price sped to catch up with the station wagon before it crossed the border into the relative safety ofLauderdale County. Price ordered the three out of their car and into his. He drove them to a deserted area on Rock Cut Road while followed by two cars filled with other Klansmen.[9] Price turned the trio over to the Klansmen who, after beating Chaney, shot and killed Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. Anautopsy of Goodman, showing fragments of red clay in his lungs and grasped in his fists, suggests he was probably buried alive alongside the already dead Chaney and Schwerner.[10]
TheMississippi State Sovereignty Commission was strongly opposed to integration and civil rights. It paid spies to identify citizens suspected of activism, especially people from the North and West who entered the state. The records opened by court order in 1998 also revealed the state's deep complicity in themurders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, because its investigator A. L. Hopkins passed on to the Commission information about the workers, including the car license number of a new civil rights worker. Records showed the commission, in turn, passed the information on to theNeshoba County Sheriff, who was implicated in the murders.[11]
The murders changed the course of the Civil Rights Movement:
Willie Blue, a surviving participant in theFreedom Summer movement said: "Goodman's richer than whipped cream. He wasn't supposed to die in Vietnam; he sure wasn't supposed to die in Mississippi. When America's brightest are murdered for doing something fundamentally American, suddenly the world knows about Mississippi. It was another nail in the segregated coffin."[12] The FBI entered the case after the men disappeared. They helped find them buried in an earthen dam. The US government prosecuted the case under theEnforcement Act of 1870. The Neshoba County deputy sheriff and six conspirators were convicted by Federal prosecutors of civil rights violations but were not convicted of murder. Two defendants were acquitted because thejury deadlocked.
JournalistJerry Mitchell, an award-winning investigative reporter for theJackson Clarion-Ledger, had written extensively about the case for many years. Mitchell, who had already earned fame for helping secure convictions in several other high-profile civil rights era murder cases, including the assassination ofMedgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the Birmingham, Alabama16th Street Baptist Church bombing, and the murder ofVernon Dahmer in Mississippi, developed new evidence, found new witnesses and pressured the state to take action. Barry Bradford, an Illinois high-school teacher later famous for helping clear the name of civil rights martyrClyde Kennard, and three students, Allison Nichols, Sarah Siegel, and Brittany Saltiel, joined Mitchell's efforts.
Bradford and his students' documentary, produced for the National History Day contest, presented important new evidence and compelling reasons for reopening the Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner case. They also obtained an interview withEdgar Ray Killen, which helped persuade the state to open the case for investigation. Mitchell was able to determine the identity of "Mr. X", the mystery informer who had helped the FBI discover the bodies and smash the conspiracy of the Klan in 1964, in part using evidence developed by Bradford and the students.
On January 7, 2005,Edgar Ray Killen was arrested. He was found guilty of three counts ofmanslaughter – not murder – on June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years to the day after the murders. He was sentenced to sixty years in prison—twenty years for each count, to be served consecutively. He appealed the verdict, but the sentence was upheld on April 12, 2007, by the Supreme Court of Mississippi.[3] He died in prison on January 11, 2018, at age 93.
On June 20, 2016, just one day ahead of the 52nd anniversary of the murders,Attorney General Hood announced an end to the federal and state investigations into the 'Mississippi Murders', officially closing the case.[13]
In 1966, Andrew's parents, Robert and Carolyn Goodman, started The Andrew Goodman Foundation to carry on the spirit and purpose of their son's life. After the death of Robert Goodman in 1969, Carolyn continued the work of the Foundation, focusing on projects like a reverse march to Mississippi and a 25th Anniversary Memorial. The memorial, which took place at St. John The Divine Church in NYC, was attended by 10,000 people and was presided byGovernor Mario Cuomo,Maya Angelou,Pete Seeger,Aaron Henry,Harry Belafonte, and others closely associated with the Civil Rights Movement. After Carolyn's death in August 2007, David Goodman, Andrew's younger brother, and Sylvia Golbin Goodman, David's wife, took up the work of the Foundation.
For nearly 50 years, the organization was a private foundation acting in the public interest. With their eyes set on the future, the Board of Trustees of The Andrew Goodman Foundation elected to turn the organization into a public charity in 2012. In 2014, on the fiftieth anniversary of the murders, the Foundation officially launched Vote Everywhere program designed to support college students who are continuing the work of Freedom Summer.
