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Families of Rights Workers Voice Grief and Hope; Father of Andrew Goodman; Quotes Lincoln — Weeps; After News Conference

Families of Rights Workers Voice Grief and Hope; Father of Andrew Goodman; Quotes Lincoln — Weeps; After News Conference
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August 6, 1964, Page 16Buy Reprints
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With a paraphrase from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the parents of Andrew Goodman expressed yesterday their grief and their hope for the future.

“It is for us the living to dedicate ourselves that these dead shall not have died in vain,” quoted Robert Goodman, father of the young civil rights worker whose body, with those of Michael H. Schwerner and James E. Chaney, was found Tuesday near Philadelphia, Miss.

In different words these feelings were also expressed by the widow of Mr. Sehwerner.

Andrew Goodman, 20 years old, Michael Schwerner, 24, and James Chaney, 22, were engaged in a voter registration drive in Meridan, Miss. Mr. Goodman and Mr. Schwerner were from New York. Mr. Chaney, a Negro, was from Mississippi.

Yesterday Andrew Goodman's parents, Robert and Carolyn, faced an array of news cameras and reporters in their eighthfloor apartment at 161 West 86th Street, an apartment whose walls are covered with paintings and lined with books.

Mrs. Goodman, who wore a black dress, seemed slightly more composed than her husband. She held her husband's arm as, in a halting voice, he read a statement.

“Our grief, though personal, belongs to our nation,” Mr. Goodman said. “The values our son expressed in his simple action of going to Mississippi are still the bonds that bind this nation together — its Constitution, its law, its Bill of Rights.”

“Throughout our history,” Mr. Goodman said, “countless Americans have died in the continuing struggle for equality. We shall continue to work for this goal and we fervently hope that Americans so engaged will be aided and protected in this noble mission.”

Mr. Goodman, an engineer, said he and his wife were in Washington four weeks ago and made a “pilgrimage” to the Lincoln Memorial.

“Full of the awe of a great nation that surrounded us,” he said, “we turned to read, emblazoned in black letters on white marble: ‘It is for us the living to dedicate ourselves that these dead shall not have died in vain.’”

After the news conference Mr. Goodman wept in the arms of friends. The Goodmans have two younger sons.

The parents of Michael Schwerner could not be reached for comment, but their lawyer, William M. Kunstler, said Mrs. Schwerner had told him she was sure her son had not died in vain.

Mr. Schwerner's widow, Rita, who was also a civil rights worker in Meridian with her husband, issued a statement through Mr. Kunstler. She said:

“It is my hope that the work that Mickey, Andy and James were engaged in will not only continue but that the efforts to liberate the Negroes of Mississippi in particular and of the South in general from the consistent and brutal violation of their civil rights will be redoubled.”

Michael Schwerner had a history of being impatient for action in every phase of civil rights.

After graduating from Cornell University and the Columbia School of Social Work, he spent 16 months as a full‐time group leader of children at the Hamilton‐Madison Settlement House on the Lower East Side of New York. He worked largely with children with acute emotional problems.

He went into the civil rights movement in April, 1963, and with seven others founded the; downtown chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. In November he applied to work in CORE'S Mississippi program. He arrived in Mississippi in January.

Andrew Goodman, quiet and with a special interest in the theater, had just completed his junior year at Queens College when he announced his interest in civil rights.

He had signed up for the summer project with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee but was so quiet and unassuming that friends doubted he would go into the South. However, he had previously surprised his friends by being arrested for demonstrating on the opening day of the World's Fair.

His parents, when he was first reported missing, said they, had reared him in an atmosphere of believing in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They said that when he told them he wated to go to the South in the civil rights drive, “we understood.”

The national director of the Congress of Racial Equality, James Farmer, held a news conference yesterday at CORE headquarters, 38 Park Row. He called the slaying of the three young men “a triple lynching.”

He said he had been told by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the men had been “beaten and shot.” He said he had “an idea” who the killers were, but he would not elaborate.

Mr. Farmer said the voter] registration drive in Mississippi would be stepped up. Workers will be recruited to replace the summer volunteers when they leave, he said.

He said CORE planned to create a Schwerner ‐ Chaney Goodman Memorial Community Center in Meridian. A drive to collect funds for the center will be headed by Jackie Robinson, the former baseball star; Robert Rose, builder, and Paul Willen, architect, Mr. Farmer said.

Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the National Assocation for the Advancement of Colored People, declared:

“The wanton lynch‐murders by lawless elements in Mississippi have added to the state's already bloody record, which is being spread this summer before a shocked nation and the world.”

Mayor Wagner expressed grief in a statement issued at City Hall. He extended his sympathy to the families of the slain men.

Flags on the Queens College campus were lowered to half staff yesterday in tribute to Andrew Goodman. They will remain at half staff until sundown tomorrow.

‘Forces of Extremism’

Whitney M. Young Jr., executive director of the National Urban League, said in Louisville, Ky., of the slayings:

“No incident could make the cry of state's rights ring more hollow. It illustrates that the forces of extremism do not limit themselves to the destruction of the weak or of those in the minority, but of whomever they disagree with.”

The Rev. Arthur Thomas, associate director of the National Council of Churches' Commission on Religion and Race, said in a speech at the Overseas Press Club here that despite the slaying of the three workers — who were trained at the commission's school for civil rights workers in Oxford, Ohio —the campaign for voters registration has bene a “spectacular success.”

Mr. Thomas said he would recommend to the council that the campaign be continued after Sept. 1, when it has been scheduled to end.

The press club also heard Dr. Robert Spike, executive director of the Commission on Religion and Race, who said that the drive was going “extremely well.” He said that the project was being expanded on a yearround basis and that “we're looking forward to staying in Mississippi for a long time.”

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