On Wednesday, Oct. 28, Conn students got a glimpse into the history of activism at the College when alumna Karin Kunstler Goldman ’65 talked about her experiences as a student activist in the 1960s during the height of the Civil Rights era. She spoke to a group of students who had gathered at Ernst Common Room in the Blaustein Humanities Center during the common hour between 11:50 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. The event was co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the College, the Dean of Institutional Equity and Inclusion and CCSRE.
Dean of the College Jefferson Singer introduced the speaker. In his introductory remarks, Dean Singer applauded Goldman’s contributions to activism during her time as a student at the College and her subsequent accomplishments during her illustrious career as a lawyer. He specifically noted Goldman’s involvement in organizing the first ever intercollegiate civil rights conference at the College. The event featured such luminaries of the Civil Rights era as Bayard Rustin and Goldman’s own father William Kunstler, a lawyer at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement. Dean Singer also referred to discussions he has had with Interim Dean of Institutional Equity and Inclusion David Canton about the need to more effectively utilize the common hour period by organizing more events for students.
Goldman began her talk by describing the general atmosphere of Conn during her years as a student. In the early 1960s, the College was still exclusively for women. Many of the students were largely apolitical. They were “more interested in taking part in pageants,” an activity encouraged by their families and visiting their boyfriends who studied at Yale, Wesleyan and elsewhere. Effectively, “the College would empty out over the weekends.” A minority of students and professors, however, were more vocal on political matters such as the Civil Rights movement. She especially noted the role of Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Ernest Schlesinger, whose widow, Gabriella Schlesinger, was in attendance.
During her time as a student, Goldman got the opportunity to study away for a semester at Tougaloo College, a historically African-American college in Jackson, Mississippi. She was one of only four white students. Perhaps influenced by the prejudices of his time, former President of the College Charles E. Shain (1962-1974) asked Kunstler to either withdraw from Conn and re-apply after studying at Tougaloo or not go at all. In the end, however, she prevailed over President Shain, “who acknowledged his mistake” of threatening her return.
It was especially fascinating to hear Goldman describe her experiences as a Northern white woman studying in the segregated South. She often found herself to be the only white woman in a group of black students, and she witnessed firsthand how these students faced systemic discrimination in such simple daily activities as visiting the shoe store.
Goldman was also a part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, when many volunteers went to Mississippi to help African Americans register to vote and bring national attention to the brutality of segregation in the Deep South. On Oct. 27, the day prior to the talk, Goldman made an appearance at a New London Hall screening of a documentary entitled Freedom Summer.
Throughout her talk, Goldman made a few references to the film. A major event of the Freedom Summer was the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner by Klansmen. Goldman noted that, as white men, the murders of Goodman and Schwerner attracted nationwide notoriety. Although several African Americans had been killed previously, the public was outraged by the murders. The search for the bodies of Goodman and Schwerner was so extensive that surveyors discovered the remains of several unidentified black victims.
After returning to Conn, Goldman was nominated by President Shain to attend a conference for students from across the United States at the White House. At the conference, she had the opportunity to meet and talk to the daughters of former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. As a result of several such instances of direct engagement with the White House on the part of student activists and others, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law.
Accompanying Goldman to the talk was her husband, Neal Goldman, who attended Yale Law School, and is an attorney. He built upon some of his wife’s remarks by discussing his own observations of the Civil Rights era. In response to a question, he noted major differences in the way that the Civil Rights movement unfolded in various states. In Mississippi, for example, the Civil Rights movement was more spread out and led by student activists there, as compared to Alabama where many of the well-known figures of the Civil Rights movement operatedat the forefront. He urged the students to register to vote and make their voices heard through the electoral system for the sake of the many victims of racially charged violence who had struggled to make the U.S. a nation where all people regardless of skin color are able to vote.
In response to another question about the differences between activism in her time and contemporary times, Goldman said that she was especially impressed by 21st century activists in such movements as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. Leaders of these movements, she said, have done a much better job laying the groundwork for change through education initiatives than did their Civil Rights predecessors. By contrast, she noted, “Our activism was more visceral.” She also commented that contemporary activists benefited from a proliferation of technology, available to aid their efforts.
The film screening and the talk were brilliant opportunities for current students at the College to learn from a direct source about events they may have read or learned about indirectly. The events were occasions to learn about the history of Conn and the U.S. more generally and to recognize how times have evolved. They could more deeply appreciate the efforts of the hundreds of people who worked for change all those decades ago. Further, the insights that the students received from Goldman can potentially help them in their current and future efforts to fight against social injustices in contemporary times.
