By Andrew Coen
The recent arrest of former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen in the 1964 killings of two civil rights activists, including Goodman's 20-year-old son, Andrew, and a black man in Mississippi, has given the former Five Towner some peace after more than four decades of frustration and anger.
On June 21, 1964, Goodman and fellow civil rights activist Michael Schwerner, volunteers sent to Mississippi during the "Freedom Summer" to register blacks to vote, were killed, along with James Chaney, whom they were trying to register. Their bodies were buried in a dusty dam outside the Mississippi town of Philadelphia. Many historians credit the slayings with helping to speed up national support for the civil rights movement, which eventually led to blacks' gaining the right to vote throughout the South.
In a recent phone interview, Goodman said that just before her husband died in 1969, he told her justice would arrive one day and to just be patient. After a four-decade wait, Mr. Goodman's prediction came true, but the 1964 tragedy still haunts the former Five Towner. "I never lost faith," said the 89-year-old Goodman, who graduated from the former Woodmere High School at the height of the Depression. "I want [Killen] to think about what he did and what he caused to happen."
The arrest of Goodman's son's suspected killer came after a grand jury in Philadelphia, Miss., indicted Killen on three counts of murder in the slayings.
Mrs. Goodman grew up in the Five Towns before her family moved to Far Rockaway. She attended NYU before transferring to Cornell to study home economics. She has lived in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for the last 50 years.
Many historians say that the 1964 slayings helped achieve the goals the activists were hoping to accomplish during their trip to Mississippi, speeding up the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mrs. Goodman is finishing up a documentary on her son's murder and how it impacted the civil rights movement, and has spoken often at schools, including a recent appearance in the Glen Head school district. "I just love people and love reaching out to them," she said.
After the arrest of Killen, Goodman said she received letters from all over the world, including one from Australia, sent by those who were touched by her son's story. She said her son was inspired to head south to register blacks to vote by his grandfather. "[His grandfather] told him that if you believe in something, to not just talk about it, but to do something," said Goodman. "My children would sit in front of the television and say, 'Oh my god, what is happening to this country?'"
A professor at Queens College, which Andrew Good attended before his murder, also heavily influenced him, according to his mother. "He remembered what his grandfather told him," she said Goodman of her son's motivation to head south to fight the injustice and racism that blacks faced there.
Despite being relieved that her son's suspected murderer was finally arrested, Goodman has no plans - or desire - to attend the upcoming trial in Mississippi. She also said she would not like to see Killen executed if he is convicted, since she is against the death penalty. But his arrest, coupled with Goodman's drive to educate the public, will no doubt keep her son's memory alive.
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