Loading...
Creator
Goodman, Andrew, 1943-1964
Call number
Sc MG 825
Physical description
1.38 linear feet (5 boxes)
Language
English
Preferred Citation
[Item], Andrew Goodman Memorial collection, Sc MG 825, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library
Repository
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.

Andrew Goodman, along with hundreds of other students, was a volunteer in the Mississippi Summer Project launched in June 1964 to register Black Mississippi residents to vote and to establish Freedom Schools. The Andrew Goodman Memorial collection consists primarily of news clippings and other printed material related to the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner.

Biographical/historical information

Andrew Goodman, along with hundreds of other students, was a volunteer in the Mississippi Summer Project launched in June 1964 to register Black Mississippi residents to vote and to establish Freedom Schools. He along with another white activist, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney, an African American resident of Mississippi and Project volunteer, were shot to death on June 21, 1964. The disappearance and murder of the three men led to the intervention by President Lynden Baines Johnson and an FBI investigation. By 1967, nineteen members of the Ku Klux Klan were arrested by the FBI and charged with violating the civil rights of the three activists. Forty-one years later, on June 21, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, a Klan member and part-time preacher, was found guilty of being the mastermind behind these murders.

In 1966, Carolyn and Robert Goodman founded the Andrew Goodman Foundation, in order to use their son's sacrifice for positive ends. From that time until her death in August 2007, Carolyn Goodman directed the Foundation to raise money for and support organizations whose work expressed the values for which Andrew Goodman stood, such as universal civil rights and social justice. Over the years the Foundation has coordinated a number of projects, in particular, the Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner Coalition of 1989, which commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Freedom Summer and the death of the three civil rights workers by sponsoring the "Historic South-North Freedom Caravan" in June 1989. Hundreds of people travelled from Philadelphia, Mississippi, the location of the church that had been fire-bombed by the Klan and that the three young men had visited just prior to their murder, to meet with officials and townspeople. This event was used to support additional legislation for voter registration.

Scope and arrangement

The Andrew Goodman Memorial collection consists primarily of news clippings and other printed material related to the 1964 murder of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner, and subsequent events. There are also personal papers concerning Goodman, and letters of sympathy and remembrance written to the family.

The Andrew Goodman Memorial collection is arranged in four series:

  • Personal
    1943-1964

    This series consists of a small group of Andrew Goodman's personal papers. Of particular significance are items pertaining to Goodman's participation in Freedom Summer such as his application and a postcard postmarked June 21, 1964, written to his parents the day after arriving in Mississippi. Related papers include his cancelled check for a donation to SNCC, and printed material on the civil rights movement.

  • Disappearance and murder
    1964-1966

    This series contains statements, letters, an interview, a copy of the indictment of the murderers, and associated items directly related to the disappearance and death of the three men, Goodman in particular. Of special note is a transcript of an interview (June 27, 1964) with Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, about Buford Posey, a white Mississippian who suspected that the Ku Klux Klan had killed the three men; and a statement (November 24, 1964) furnished to the FBI by Horace Doyle Barnett, one of the murderers, detailing exactly what had occurred. There are also sympathy letters from many political and civil rights leaders, and detailed articles about the disappearance and murder.

  • Memorial activities and legacy
    1965-2010

    This series covers a wide array of events that commemorated the lives of the three men. Most of the material consists of news clippings and other printed matter on the memorial activities that were sponsored by the Andrew Goodman Foundation, and one of its projects, known as the Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner Coalition of 1989. Additionally, the emergence of Carolyn Goodman as an activist for justice is documented in clippings and speeches that she delivered.

  • Aftermath
    1989-2008

    This series contains news clippings and other printed material about the Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania in 1989, serving as a counterpoint to the Coalition, which sponsored the South-North Freedom Caravan that same year. Other events discussed in this series include the Edgar Ray Killen trial and the documentary film, Neshoba, about the attempts at reconciliation in Neshoba County where the murder and Killen's trial took place.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Gift of David Goodman, 2009-2010.

Revision History

Finding aid updated by Lauren Stark. (2020 November 9)

Processing information

Processed by Janice Quinter, October 2010.

Separated material

Transferred to the Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division: audio and moving image materials. For more information, please contact the division at schomburgaudiovisual@nypl.org or 212-491-2270.

Transferred to the Photographs and Prints Division: photographs

Using the collection

Location

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Second Floor