Queens College students were active participants in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s , including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 . The most well-known student activist was Andrew Goodman , who was slain in Mississippi in 1964 with two other young men , James Chaney , and Michael Schwerner ; all three were trying to register African Americans to vote in the South . Schwerner and Chaney were on the organizing staff of CORE ; Goodman was a Freedom Summer volunteer . The three activists were stopped and arrested for allegedly driving over the speed limit on a Mississippi road . After being brought into the sheriff 's department and released , the three young men were stopped by two carloads of Ku Klux Klan members on a remote rural road . The men approached their car , then shot and killed all three young men . The murders received national attention , and six conspirators were brought to trial and convicted by federal prosecutors for civil rights violations . The Chaney-Goodman-Schwerner Clock Tower of Rosenthal Library , a highly visible borough landmark , is named in their honor
slain in Mississippi
Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner
Queens College, City University of New York