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Jewish, Black Students at Cornell Encourage Their Peers to "Vote for Hope"
October 05, 2004Comments (0) | Add | E-mail this to a friendBy Dan Greenwald
Forty years ago, two Jewish students and one black student came together to register new voters in segregated Mississippi. There they were murdered and never made it home.
Last week, more than two dozen Jewish and black students at Cornell University came together to remember them and issue a new call to their peers to take advantage of the right that previous students died to win.
"Vote for Hope" was a two-part "celebration of voting rights," with a rally on Ho Plaza and a screening of the 1988 film "Mississippi Burning," based on the investigation of the three murdered students.
The event was organized by several student organizations, including the Cornell Israel Public Affairs Committee, Sababah, and Tzedek under Cornell Hillel's umbrella, and Black Students United and the NAACP Cornell chapter, independent black student organizations. Some organizers also used their status as RAs to involve their residence halls as well, and Cornell's Campus Life department helped in funding promotional posters for the event.
At the non-partisan rally, speakers repeatedly invoked the names of the three students -- James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, a Cornell student in the class of 1961. Shawna Evers, vice president of the Cornell chapter of the NAACP, declared, "If you're a citizen over 18, and you don't vote, I don't want to hear you complain about the results of this election!"
But perhaps the most moving moment of the rally was when Brock Pooler, a member of the Navy ROTC, took the podium spoke of his friends in Iraq and reminded students that voting was not just a hobby, but rather potentially a matter of life and death for him and his friends. He, too, asked students to vote.
"Mississippi Burning" left more than a few students left crying by its end. And while it was almost midnight by the time the movie ended, students stayed around to discuss ways for black and Jewish students to work together in the future.
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner never made it home from Mississippi, but their message is alive and well in upstate New York.
Dan Greenwald is a student at Cornell University.
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