6/24/2004 12:10:00 PM Andrew Goodman's mother remembers/About the 1989 interview
Dr. Carolyn Goodman in 1989 was a practicing psychologist in New York City. She is the mother of slain civil rights worker Andrew Goodman and was here on June 21, 1989, for the 25th anniversary of the murder of her son and James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. Then-Democrat editor Stanley Dearman, who was in New York in April 1989, interviewed Dr. Goodman.
Dearman said at that time:
“Because I knew I would be in New York City the third week in April I thought about the possibility of interviewing Carolyn Goodman while I was there.
“I had recently read that Dr. Goodman would be in Philadelphia on June 21. The announcement I had read said a caravan would begin in Philadelphia in a reverse freedom ride which would end in New York with the goal of registering 50,000 new voters in that city.”
“Lang Ghee, of Philadelphia, Pa., in a telephone conversation with Dr. Goodman had mentioned that I would be in New York and would like to interview her. I called Dr. Goodman on Monday of last week and got an answering machine. I left my name and number and Dr. Goodman returned my call.
“I made arrangements to interview her in her apartment on Thursday morning at 8:30. Dr. Goodman gave me about an hour of her time before going to her office.
“She has lived in the same apartment on West 86th St. in which her three sons grew up.
“Dr. Goodman greeted me in the foyer of her apartment which leads into the living room.
“The room looked familiar; I had seen it on television news in 1964 when Dr. Goodman and her husband were interviewed after the disappearance of their son.
“It’s a comfortable room with most of the wall space filled with paintings, mostly modern.
“In one corner is a bookcase from floor to ceiling which contains numerous volumes of poetry, the two-volume set of Prouse’s Remembrance of Things Past and Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury and As I Lay Dying.
“In the other corner is an ebony grand piano on which are displayed numerous photographs of her three sons and seven grandchildren.
“What began as an interview turned more into a conversation as it progressed.
“Dr. Goodman is a kind, gentle woman, very articulate, with dark blond hair.
“I began by referring to the recent motion picture, ‘Mississippi Burning.’”
