David Goodman smiles. His brother, Andrew Goodman was one of the three civil rights workers murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964 (the incident that inspired the film “Mississipi Burning”). Only two days after their disappearance, it was Bob Zellner who took Rita Schwerner to Mississippi to find out what had happened to her husband and the two other young men. David looks around him. “Well, there’s a lot of my extended family in this room. I have my story here too.”
“We all have our story” interjects his endeared “Aunt Maya”, “Black, White, Asian, Buddhist, Jewish, male, female, rich or poor. We all want to forget but we need to be relentlessly reminded that we are all human. That we have more in common than that sets us apart.
“And that’s what this movie is about” echoes Eve Pomerance, producer of the film and red-diaper baby daughter of British “Freedom Summer” author and activist Sally Belfrage. “People will come to learn about the 60’s Movement, people will come for the entertainment, but they will leave with this message. This is why we need to make this happen.”
