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During the movement - in Mississippi in the summer of 1964 - three other American young men, black and white, made the ultimate sacrifice - Mickey Schwerner, James Cheney, and Andrew Goodman.

Mickey Schwerner was a full-time civil rights worker. James Cheney and Andrew Goodman were volunteers. Andy Goodman gave up a summer in New York to come to Mississippi in June 1964 - exactly 20 years after Ernie Horowitz landed on Normandy Beach.

James Cheney was born in Mississippi and had already given a year of his young life to what we called the Freedom Movement.

A year later, in 1965, the March from Selma to Montgomery took place, producing its martyrs, too: James Reeb, clubbed to death by hostile whites in Selma's streets; Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit homemaker come south to work in the movement, slain on the highway by the Ku Klux Klan; Jimmie Lee Jackson, killed by an Alabama State Trooper.

In the end, all sacrificed for freedom.

What a diverse group: a young man from Minnesota wounded in France in 1944, young men from New York and Mississippi killed in 1964, a white man from New England, a mother from Detroit, an Alabama black man, killed in Alabama in 1965; five white, two black; three buried in a Mississippi grave, three killed in Alabama, one living still; Jews, Christians, male, female, from North and South - all sharing two traits, bravery and optimism, each representing the best aspects of the American spirit.

They fought against a powerful ideology of racial superiority, at home and abroad. They fought with a powerful belief, based on our nation's founding creed, that all are equal and all are entitled to life, liberty and happiness' pursuit.

They shared a common belief that right would and could conquer might. And in France and in Mississippi and in Alabama they succeeded - against great odds.

They have much to teach us today - lessons like those being learned by students in the tiny town of Whitwell, Tennessee. Their community of 1600 people is white, Christian, and fundamentalist.

There are 425 students in their school: 418 whites, six blacks, one Hispanic, no Asians, not a single Catholic, no Jews. But tolerance is being taught there. The students

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