Moshe Shur (c.) and Peter Geffen (r.) met with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. as student volunteers for voter registration during the summers of 1965 and 1966. Photo Courtesy of Queens College
Eighteen Queens College students were set to return to the Kissena Boulevard campus on Thursday after a field trip none of them will soon forget.
Rabbi Moshe Shur, an adjunct professor of Jewish studies at the Flushing school, led the diverse collective “In the Footsteps of Dr. King,” Shur’s pilot program that takes students to Atlanta, Ga. and Birmingham, Ala., in an effort to bridge a generational disconnect by deepening their understanding of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights era in a personal way.
The students, who were chosen based on the quality of their application essays, not only visited museums, memorials and historically important sites, participated in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day march, and viewed the recently released film “Selma,” but also met with people who played an active role in the civil rights struggle, including Barbara Emerson Williams, daughter of the Rev. Hosea Williams, King’s assistant, whose family foundation established Hosea Feed the Hungry in Atlanta.
The students—Muslim, Christian, Jewish, African-American, and immigrants from many nations, according to the college—also met with Peter Geffen, a Queens College alum who along with his close friend Shur volunteered in a 1965 and 1966 summer initiative begun by King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference to register disenfranchised voters in six southern states.
Throughout the trip, students used video, photography and writing to record their experiences, which they will share in a campus-wide presentation this spring semester.
Queens College has a long association with the Civil Rights movement. Last month, the White House awarded the Medal of Freedom posthumously to QC student Andrew Goodman, who was murdered with James Chaney and Michael Schwerner on June 21, 1964 in Mississippi for their voter-registration work. The college’s clock tower is named in their honor.
For more information, visit the school’s civil rights archive at http://archives.qc.cuny.edu/civilrights/
By Michael V. Cusenza
