Andrew Goodman,Michael Schwerner,and American Jewish Memory

Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, murdered in Mississippi in 1964, have been depicted as “Jewish martyrs” of the civil rights movement. In fact, both men denied that their Jewish ancestry influenced their decision to go to Mississippi. Instead, the imagining of Goodman and Schwerner as Jews emerged out of the need of liberal Jews to show that the fates of Jews and blacks were intertwined.