Carolyn Goodman - Activist, mother of slain civil rights worker
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
Carolyn Goodman, a social activist in her own right, came to national attention in 1964 when her son was killed in Mississippi while supporting the efforts to register black voters. The campaign was called “Freedom Summer.”
Together with black Meridian, Mississippi resident James Chaney and fellow New Yorker Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman left Chaney’s home on June 21, 1964 to deliver books and was not heard from again. Early that evening the trio was stopped by Neshoba County deputy Cecil Price; Chaney was arrested for allegedly driving 35 miles per hour over the speed limit and Goodman and Schwerner were booked “for investigation.” All were denied calls and concerned friends and colleagues were lied to when they called the Neshoba County jail to find out if the three were being held there.
Later that evening James Chaney was fined $20 and all were released and escorted to the edge of town. Shortly after, and far from where Price said he last saw them, the three were ambushed by Ku Klux Klan members who beat Chaney severely and shot him three times. Goodman and Schwerner were both shot once in the heart.
After the slayings Carolyn Goodman was asked, in a New York Times article, if she had it to do all over again would she let her son go to Mississippi. She said, “I still feel that I would let Andy go to Mississippi again. Even after this terrible thing happened to Andy, I couldn’t make a turnabout of everything I believe in.”
At the trial of her son’s killer, Dr. Goodman read a postcard her son wrote on June 21, 1964, the last day of his life.
“Dear Mom and Dad,” it read, “I have arrived safely in Meridian, Miss. This is a wonderful town, and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. The people in this city are wonderful, and our reception was very good. All my love, Andy.”
The slayings were one of the events that led to the Selma to Montgomery march and the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They were recounted in the well known movie, Mississippi Burning , a 1988 production starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe.
Justice for the three was a long time coming but forty-one years later to the day Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter in the infamous case on June 21, 2005.
Goodman’s life of activism may have been inspired by her father who hired one of the first black attorneys to work at a white New York law firm. It began in earnest during the 1930s when she worked to organize local farmers’ cooperatives and aided exiled Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War.
Carolyn Goodman (then Drucker) married Robert W. Goodman, a civil engineer, in the late 1950’s and their apartment was the scene of many interesting gatherings whose guests included Alger Hiss and Leonard Bernstein. Goodman remained an activist throughout the rest of her life. She and her husband Robert established the Andrew Goodman Foundation, which supports a variety of social causes.
Goodman’s husband Robert died in 1969 and her second husband, Joseph Eisner, died in 1992.
Carolyn Goodman, a clinical psychologist, died August 17, 2007 at home in Manhattan, New York. She was 91.
For more information:
Read an interview with Carolyn Goodman
Visit The Andrew Goodman Foundation
Read the DeadNotForgotten.com obituary of Fanny Lee Chaney, James Chaney’s mother
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In the days when the institutions of racial segregation were sounding their death rattles everything was radicalized so it is no surprise that a person who took a moderate position on the controversy would be seen as a radical. That’s when Richmond Flowers, a moderate on the issues of racial segregation, was elected attorney general of Alabama in 1962, the same year George Wallace won his first term as governor of the state. It didn’t take long before the two were at odds.
I have received many inquiries regarding the cause of Yolanda King’s death. Having made periodic searches since her death for autopsy results, I have now found that no public autopsy was performed and none is planned. A private autopsy was performed but the family has declined to release the results. They continue to say, as they did at the time of her death, that they believe she died from heart disease.
Justice is sometimes a long time coming but Fannie Lee Chaney got at least a taste of it when Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005. One count was for her son, James Chaney, who was killed on June 21, 1964, in central Mississippi’s Neshoba County. Killen is currently serving a 60-year prison sentence.
Yolanda King, the eldest daughter of Martin Luther King, died May 15, 2007 after delivering a speech to the American Heart Association in Santa Monica, CA. She was 51 years old. No official cause of death has been announced at the time of this writing. Family members think that her death may be related to heart disease.