Freedom Place runs just four blocks—from 66th to 70th Streets between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive.
It’s quiet and mostly residential, sided by various fortress-like post-war apartment houses.
Yet it didn’t exist until 1967, when it was carved out of a piece of what was then dubbed the “Lincoln Center urban renewal area” to honor three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964.
Two of them, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were New Yorkers.
This unassuming plaque is on the corner of Freedom and 70th Street. In the early 1990s there was talk of building a monument to the murdered men, but it never happened.
Tags: Andrew Goodman, Civils rights workers murdered, Freedom Place, James Chaney, Lincoln Center urban renewal, Michael Schwerner, Upper West Side plaque
Ephemeral New York 
April 24, 2009 at 1:45 pm |
Wow. I grew up in MS and know this story very well. Had absolutely no idea this street existed! Now I have to plan a trek up there and make it a point of interest when I have visitors from home.
citysnapshots.wordpress.com
April 24, 2009 at 4:03 pm |
I’d heard of the street before, but the MS murder connection was totally new to me.
July 22, 2010 at 8:35 pm |
The commorative plaque has been moved to the AYH Hostel backyard, at Amsterdam and 103 Street. The plaque was threatened with construction of Riverside SOuth, and Mrs. Goodman wanted it to be in a place where young people could be found.
December 12, 2014 at 4:34 pm |
Freedom Place is not near Riverside Dr., but Riverside Blvd.
June 26, 2016 at 10:46 pm |
The plaque is NOT at 103rd/Amsterdam. It’s at Freedom Place,
just saw it today: 6/26/16