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June 11, 1999/27 Sivan 5759, Vol. 51, No.37
Civil-rights activists looking to re-create 'Freedom Summer'
DANIEL KURTZMAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - To the outside world, they seemed an unlikely trio: a black Catholic from Mississippi and two Jews from New York. But their fates were drawn together in the summer of 1964 by a common commitment to the struggle for equality and social justice.
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were among hundreds of students who volunteered to work on the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, aiding voter-registration campaigns and desegregation efforts. They disappeared on June 21 after traveling to Neshoba County, Miss., to investigate the burning of a black church. Their disappearance prompted a national search and a wave of outrage that helped secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Their bodies were found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam, shot and savagely beaten by the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Thirty-five years after their deaths, civil rights activists are seeking to honor their memories and celebrate the progress that has been made in the struggle for social justice by re-enacting the freedom rides of the early 1960s.
By focusing on the sacrifice blacks and Jews made together to advance the cause of freedom, activists are also hoping to recapture a bit of the spirit of' 'Freedom Summer' and rebuild the historically strong ties between the two communities. The commemoration, slated to begin next week, is being organized by the Chaney Goodman Schwerner Unity Coalition, which includes an array of civil-rights groups, religious leaders, academics and lawmakers.
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and Julian Bond, chairman of the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, are serving as co-chairs of the coalition. In addition to the commemoration, organizers have set a legislative agenda to address issues such as police brutality, sentencing disparity, voter participation, health care, affirmative action, hate crime prevention and the disproportionate use of the death penalty against African Americans.
Saperstein said the event is not only intended to remind America of what he called a "moment of extraordinary moral achievement," but to inspire young people to work for social justice and to remind people of the special relationship between the black and Jewish communities.
"We share the bitter history of being the two quintessential victims of Western civilization, the two classic outsiders," said Saperstein, a longtime member of the NAACP's board. "But over and above that, we share a common set of values and vision about what this country can be that has linked us together at the forefront of so many battles for social justice."
Jay Greenfield, a retired Jewish attorney from New York, was at the forefront of that battle during Freedom Summer. Greenfield, now 66, was a young civil rights lawyer who volunteered to work in Louisiana following the disappearance of the workers in 1964. That summer, seeking to integrate a rural Louisiana restaurant, he obtained the first civil injunction in a private case under the Civil Rights Act. He said he sees the fight for freedom "as a logical extension of the Exodus," adding, "I don't think Jewish Americans have ever fully appreciated the extent to which that is so."
"Freedom Ride 1999," as it has been dubbed, will begin in New York City with an ecumenical service on June 15, and a send-off ceremony hosted by the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, on June 16. It will include stops at predominantly black universities and sites such as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala.
The caravan will gather riders along the way, many of them black and Jewish college students. Four or five busloads carrying more than 200 people are expected to arrive at Chaney's gravesite in Philadelphia, Miss., on June 21 - 35 years to the day after he and his two companions were murdered.
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