Mother of civil rights martyr at Pride rally
'Living is all about taking risks'
By Leslie Feinberg
New York
Under a blazing June sun, an 86-year-old woman climbed to
the stage at New York's Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Trans Pride rally June
23. Thousands cheered her, many rising to their feet to
applaud. Her name is Dr. Carolyn Goodman, a woman who has
worked for social justice most of her life.
The ovation also acknowledged an excruciating loss in Dr.
Goodman's life. The Ku Klux Klan murdered her son, Andrew
Goodman, in 1964. Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael
Schwerner--three civil rights workers--were shot to death on a
deserted road in Neshoba County, Miss. The Klan, with the help
of county officials, carried out the lynchings.
The deaths of these three young men--Black and white youths
struggling together against Jim Crow apartheid--stunned the
country and the world. The movie "Mississippi Burning" is based
on this painful milestone in the civil rights movement. Many
would argue that the outrage provoked by their brutal killings
helped speed up winning the 1965 anti-racist Voting Rights
Act.
Workers World asked Dr. Goodman where her life's path forked
into social activism.
Goodman, raised in "that whole era of the Depression," grew
up in Long Island. "In those days it was the country--potato
land." She describes herself as "a very perceptive little kid,"
who noticed economic inequity.
She later went to school in upstate New York and met her
future husband, Robert Goodman. "He was organizing the farmers
up there because they were being robbed by the big farm
companies in the early thirties. We were organizing there as
undergraduates and got kicked out of school for awhile. So it
went."
Goodman continues: "Then we got into the whole period of
fascism and Hitlerism. I became very active in the Joint
Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee rescuing young children escaping
from Franco's Spain. Much of what I did was at risk in those
days. That was my life," she remembers.
"My son was raised in that milieu."
Conviction and courage
Goodman's voice softens as she recalls her son Andrew. "He
decided he wanted to go South to register Black voters. It was
a time when television was in its infancy, but we had seen the
[police] dogs and the sheriffs and what was happening to the
civil rights workers."
Andrew was 20 years old at the time. Since he was under 21,
he needed parental permission. She says she and her husband
discussed the values with which they'd raised their children:
"We can't just talk about it, we have to mean what we say. We
have to give Andy our permission."
She remembers that her son later called and said, "Mom, I'm
not going to Canton, I'm going to Meridian." She says, "Canton
at that time in Mississippi was relatively safe. But we knew
what was happening in Meridian. My heart sank. I wasn't happy
at all, but there's no way that I wanted to convey that to
Andy.
"Well, there he went," she says in a quieter timbre. "And
there are certain memories I have of the moment he left, taking
his little duffel bag with him and taking little things in case
he was picked up. Memories of the fact that as a musician he
had taken recordings. I got all that back when they found their
station wagon. I got back Andy's duffel bag, the recordings,
all seared and burnt. All these memories will never leave
me."
Goodman's voice strengthens. "On the other hand, there's
something about Andy's having gone that will always help my
spirits to soar. He was like these people [at the Pride rally]
who have the courage of their convictions."
Goodman says of the Pride rally, "I have a lot of admiration
for the people there." She remembers the 1969 Stonewall
Rebellion against police repression that ignited the modern
lesbian, gay, bi and trans movement and how hard it was to be
"out" before then.
She sees a relationship between the civil rights struggle
and the LGBT movement. "I think there's a strong
connection--the kind of courage that it took to do what
lesbian, gay and trans people did. They were asserting their
rights to be people in the way that Andy saw that Black people
were not slaves to their society--they had rights. And people
at Stonewall were not slaves to the society either. These are
all civil and human rights."
Goodman says she has seen change in her lifetime since the
civil rights movement: "We can now not only stand up together,
we can sit down together."
She adds, "As far as the gay and lesbian and trans movement
is concerned, I think there have been changes there, too. I
think it came later, and I think it's in process, but I'm
optimistic about it."
Goodman stresses, "I think the future lies with the young
people. Let's encourage them and reach them and let them know
they are the future. And it's up to us to endow them with that
knowledge and to open up their resources."
What would she say to someone who is frightened by the
murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner?
Goodman doesn't miss a beat: "I would answer that if one is
satisfied with the state of the world as it is at this moment,
and you're happy with the status quo, why then don't take the
risk. But if you don't cross the street from this side to that
side, you might just melt there.
"Every time you cross the street you take a risk," she
concludes. "You've got to take a risk in order to live; that's
what living is all about. If you want to live, to breathe the
air, to feel like a person, to feel like you have a reason to
be in the world--take a risk."
Reprinted from the July 11, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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