....June 2, 1:55 PM
	Carolyn Goodman Honored At Queens College This plaque on the Queens College clock tower commemorates Goodman, Chaney and Schwermer. Tribune photo by Ira Cohen By BRIAN M. RAFFERTY On Thursday, 40 years after her son was brutally murdered in Mississippi, Carolyn Goodman will come to speak at Queens College. Andrew Goodman was a student at Queens College in 1964 who went down South to get blacks registered to vote. Within 24 hours of stepping foot in Mississippi he was dead. In January, Mississippi resident and former Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Killen was indicted in Goodman’s murder and a trial was scheduled, but later postponed. Though there has been some change in the story of Andrew Goodman in recent months, the truth that his mother has had to bear all these years has been rough. “I think there are a number of people that were involved,” she said in a phone interview in February from her Manhattan apartment. “I feel this man (Killen) had committed a murder – no question. Justice is what I want.” Though justice may be waiting down the road, recognition is what Carolyn Goodman will get at Queens College Thursday morning. She will speak as investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell and Philadelphia Coalition co-director Leroy Clemons get president’s medal from the college during the commencement ceremony. “I want this man to be treated like everyone else,” Goodman said of her son’s accused killer. “If he is found to be a murderer, then he will be treated like a murderer.” Goodman, James Earl Chaney and Michael Schwerner were chased down by Klansmen in a their car after visiting a recently burned black church. Chaney, a black man, was beat to death; Schwerner and Goodman were shot in the chest and killed. Their bodies were found 44 days after the murders and were buried in earthen dams. The slayings sent shockwaves throughout the nation in 1964 and helped deepen support for the Civil Rights Act, which was singed by President Lyndon Johnson in the aftermath of the incident. The murder of the three civil rights workers was later made into the movie Mississippi Burning. Before her son left for Mississippi, Carolyn Goodman felt concern for his safety but believed in the importance of the work. “I couldn’t say it was terrible for others and keep him from doing something,” she said. “I remember saying, ‘If that’s what you have to do, then that’s what you have to do.’” “I remember packing bandages for him,” Goodman said. “I knew it was a risk, but life is a risk. I never thought he would be killed.”