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....February 4, 2:18 AM |
| Remembering The Dream: Queens College Reaches Out For Black History Month
By By Michael Rehak On May 13, 1965, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood before a crowd of students and area residents at Queens College and said “We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go” in a speech that helped further stir the Civil Rights movement in Queens.
In tribute to King, Goodman and all the others who fought for racial equality, the faculty, staff and students at the CUNY school launched their largest tribute ever to Black History Month this week, hoping to have a similar effect in one of the city’s most diverse boroughs. With Queens College’s direct connections to a number of related historical events, it seems obvious that it would be best suited to providing a wide array of presentations, readings, performances and films that will emphasize all that Black History Month represents. Goodman’s Legacy In June 1964, Queens College student Andrew Goodman, along with fellow civil rights activists James Chaney and Michael Schwerner were kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi while trying to register African Americans to vote. Last month, a former Ku Klux Klan member was arrested and charged with their murder. Michael Schwerner’s brother, Steven, also attended Queens College around the same time. In a 1989 dedication to the activists’ courage, the clock tower on the Rosenthal library foyer was named in the honor of the slain activists. Soon after Goodman’s murder, King spoke in front of a packed auditorium on campus and, according to one history professor who attended the event, King received a standing ovation. “He spoke about Civil Rights in general, but I remember him saying something like ‘I can’t make everybody love me, but I can stop them from hitting me over the head,’” said Frank Warren, a long-time history professor at the college. He added that during the 1960s, the campus was much more politically involved than it is today. Warren recalled that the speech invoked a positive response and enthusiastic effort among the majority of its student body. Along with Goodman, many Queens College students focused their efforts on equality and traveled to southern states, helping to register black voters, as well as organizing a student protest from Queens College to the World’s Fair. Warren noted that although the sentiment of the campus was rather liberal at the time, there were some that were radical about their views and there were still a number who were conservative. As an ongoing event in February, excerpts from King’s speech will be played Mondays and Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. in the lobby of the Rosenthal Library. In addition, the film “Mississippi Burning,” which depicted the kidnapping murders of the three activists, will be shown at the Persia Campbell Dome Feb. 17 at noon and 5 p.m. The documentary film “Eyes on the Prize: Episode 4, No Easy Walk” will also be shown at the dome Feb. 22 at noon, 1 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. The documentary explores King’s initiation of non-violent protest and the powerful role it had in the civil rights movement. Focus On Walker One of the primary focuses of the events scheduled at Queens College will be the book “Meridian,” by Alice Walker, which is a powerful novel about an African American woman’s involvement in a voter registration campaign during the 1960’s. Queens College president, James Muyskens said, “The organizers decided that the book would be the focus of our discussion and they said let’s have a whole bunch of these in the bookstore and try to encourage faculty, students and staff to read it. So it’s kind of like we are all reading the same book, at the same time and in my welcome back presentation, which I do before every semester, I focused on these sets of events, hoping to get a good turnout. We tend not to have requirements, so we encouraged faculty to consider using that book in their classes. I am sure a lot of them will be participating and make their students aware of this.” A presidential roundtable to be held Feb. 9 at 12:15 p.m. at the Student Union in Room 301 will revisit Walker’s novel. Professor Marie Umeh of John Jay College, Queens College professor Tony O’Brien and students from Queens College and Townsend Harris High School will all participate in the discussion. The documentary film “Alice Walker” will be shown Feb. 8 and 10 every 35 minutes from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., also in Room 301. In it, Walker talks about her life, the Civil Rights movement and the importance of women. A committee led by African Studies professor Premilla Nadasen and Maureen Pierce-Anyan, who works in counseling and advisement at the college, organized the month-long effort shortly before the charges were filed last month in the Goodman murder. |
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