www.richardjespers.com
  • Home
  • Books
  • Journals
  • Blog

Mississippi Martyr

8/25/2015

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
One big vice in a man [sic] is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones.
Bret Harte
Born August 25, 1836

My Book World

Picture
Williams, Michael Vinson. Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 2011.

I turn fifteen on June 11, 1963, a day before NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, Medgar Wiley Evers, is assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, in front of Evers’s own home in Jackson, Mississippi. If the item is mentioned in the local media where I live in Wichita, Kansas, I am probably oblivious to it. Yet Evers’s death seems to kick off a series of political assassinations that take place in the United States in the 1960s:  John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, and others. In spite of all its many charms—Motown, the Twist, the miniskirt, mod clothing, the Sexual Revolution—the decade is really a rather dark period.

Evers’s story, through the years, is one that echoes in my mind—as it is occasionally referenced on TV, in the news, or even a film—yet I never quite have the narrative of events straight, the motivation for such a heinous act. But after reading Mr. Williams’s book, I can never look at the 1960s in quite the same way. The life of Medgar Evers is a remarkable one, a life that is often overlooked in the larger scheme of things, for example, that Mississippi is the wealthiest state among all the southern states, up until the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, that its wealth and position are entirely dependent on the institution of slavery and that when it is abolished, the South, including illustrious Mississippi, descends into poverty.

Contrast that status with the Mississippi of today, which holds the dubious distinction of being one of the poorest states, with the poorest level of per capita spending on education. What a descent, and yet it helps to explain why, even a hundred years after the Civil War—that’s at least four generations—white Mississippians still hate Negroes in the 1960s, want to keep them suppressed. Yes, for those one hundred years, people with dark skin are still enslaved by draconian laws that keep them confined to their own schools, their own restaurants, their own libraries (if such exist), or their own sections of public places such as train stations or washrooms. And certain (not all) white Mississippians believe that to continue such segregation is not only all right but that it is somehow ordained by God. And furthermore, certain white Mississippians feel justified in using lynching to justify their rage over the stupidest kinds of slights imaginable: winking at a white woman, slapping a white boy, a fifty-cent debt.

Imagine your family trying to move about your daily life—school, work, church, social intercourse—and always being afraid you might offend or displease someone with white skin. You’re often told you don’t belong in this line, this room, this particular place, and often, in spite of certain signs—Coloreds Only—you’re not always sure, until someone with no uncertainty informs you, either by way of verbal abuse or physical, sometimes violent, actions. This is the kind of society that Medgar Evers is attempting to change in his work as NAACP field agent. Several times in his life, Evers could leave the state of Mississippi for attractive job offers in more enlightened spots in the country, but he loves his home state, its geography, its people, so very much that he chooses to stay and fight.

Unlike MLK, Evers is not necessarily swayed by the use of peaceful means. He keeps a revolver in the glove box of his car, as he often travels late at night, arriving home in the dark after having attempted, somewhere else in Mississippi, to help others negotiate the filthy waters of prejudice and desegregation. Evers speaks out, both verbally and in print. His assassination does not happen out of the blue. Prior to this event, he narrowly escapes being hit by a police car. His household receives threatening phone calls. For a time he does accept or ask for protection, and for a time he receives it. But finally, Evers realizes he can never be free to do what he needs to do for the African-Americans of Mississippi if he must constantly have body guards surrounding him, and besides, it becomes too expensive of a proposition and he begins to eschew the offers.

And you may be thinking, All this is old ground, covered a thousand times in the past. Why don’t we just move on and forget about it?

If that’s what you think, consider these passages from forty-year-old writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article in The Atlantic’s September issue, in which the author addresses his son in light of his own fears:

“And yet I am still afraid. I feel the fear most acutely whenever you leave me. But I was afraid long before you, and in this I was unoriginal. When I was your age the only people I knew were black, and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid” (85).

And Coates’s fear is not only present in Baltimore where he grows up, but in the North, when he visits a grandmother:

“I felt the fear in the visits to my Nana’s home in Philadelphia. You never knew her. I barely knew her, but what I remember is her hard manner, her rough voice. And I knew that my father’s father was dead and that my Uncle Oscar was dead and that my Uncle David was dead and that each of these instances was unnatural. And I saw it in my own father, who loves you, who counsels you, who slipped me money to care for you. My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us. Everyone had lost a child, somehow, to the streets, to jail, to drugs, to guns. It was said that these lost girls were sweet as honey and would not hurt a fly. It was said that these lost boys had just received a GED and had begun to turn their lives around. And now they were gone, and their legacy was a great fear” (85).
For many African-Americans the fear that Mississippians internalize in the 1960s rages on unabated, stoked by trigger-happy police, by photo ID laws that have more to do with white skin still asserting control over black skin than voter fraud. The real fraud may be that white power continues to rage over black lives, that many of us don’t realize it, think it’s all in the past. Mr. Williams’s biography, Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr, helps us to see that there is still much change that must occur before we are a truly free country. Williams’s research is painstakingly thorough, and his insight into Evers’s life and the 1960s is crystal clear.
NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2015

Comments are closed.
    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
    My Long-Playing Records My Long-Playing Records
    ratings: 1 (avg rating 5.00)


    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011



    Categories

    All
    Acting
    Actors
    African American History
    Aging
    Alabama
    Alaska
    Aldo Leopold
    Andy Warhol
    Arizona
    Arkansas
    Art
    Atrial Fibrillation
    Authors
    Authors' Words
    Barcelona
    Biography
    Blogging About Books
    Blogs
    Books
    California
    Cancer
    Cars
    Catalonia
    Colorado
    Cooking
    Creative Nonfiction
    Culinary Arts
    Deleting Facebook
    Ecology
    Education
    Environment
    Epigraphs
    Essays
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Fifty States
    Film
    Florida
    Georgia
    Grammar
    Greece
    Gun Violence
    Hawaii
    Heart Health
    Historic Postcards
    History
    Humor
    Idaho
    Iowa
    Journalism
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Literary Biography
    Literary Journals
    Literary Topics
    Literature
    Maine
    Massachusetts
    Memoir
    Michigan
    Minnesota
    Mississippi
    M K Rawlings
    Musicians
    Nevada
    New Hampshire
    New Mexico
    New Yorker Stories
    Nonfiction
    North Carolina
    Novelist
    Ohio
    Pam Houston
    Parker Posey
    Photography
    Playwrights
    Poetry
    Politics
    Psychology
    Publishing
    Quotations
    Race
    Reading
    Recipes
    Seattle
    Short Story
    South Carolina
    Spain
    Susan Faludi
    Teaching
    Tennessee
    Texas
    Theater
    The Novel
    Travel
    Travel Photographs
    True Crime
    #TuesdayThoughts
    TV
    U.S.
    Vermont
    Voting
    War
    Washington
    Wisconsin
    World War II
    Writer's Wit
    Writing


    RSS Feed

    Blogroll

    alicefrench.wordpress.com
    kendixonartblog.com
    Valyakomkova.blogspot.com

    Websites

    Caprock Writers' Alliance
    kendixonart.com

    tedkincaid.com
    www.trackingwonder.com
    www.skans.edu
    www.ttu.edu
    www.newpages.com
    www.marianszczepanski.com
    William Campbell Contemporary Art, Inc.
    Barbara Brannon.com
    Artsy.net
WWW.RICHARDJESPERS.COM  ©2011-2025
                    BOOKS  PHOTOS  PODCASTS  JOURNALS  BLOG