Page 18
The
Portland Observer
Black History Month
February 20. 2013
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The Courage and Vision of Medgar Evens
Our challenge
of keeping the
beacon lit
by
M arian W right E delman
When Myrlie Evers-W illiams
gave the invocation at President
Obama’s January inauguration, she
was in part recognizing the vision
and courage of her late great hus­
band, Mississippi civil rights leader
Medgar Evers, assassinated by a
gun 50 years ago.
Medgar was a huge inspiration
for me. As a 22 year old first year law
student at Yale, I traveled to Missis­
sippi during my first spring break in
1961 to reconnect with my friends
from the Student Nonviolent Coor­
dinating Committee.
I decided to apply to law school
after volunteering for the Atlanta
N AACP and seeing how many poor
black people could not get or afford
legal counsel. Few, if any, white
lawyers took civil rights cases at
that time.
Medgar Evers was the first wel­
coming face I saw when I arrived in
Jackson, Miss. He took me to his
home to meet and have dinner with
Myrlie and their children, and then
drove me up to the Mississippi Delta
where the SNCC headquarters in
Greenwood, Miss, was located,
about 90 miles away. Our first news
upon arrival was about a shooting
which had terrorized the black com­
munity that day.
The next morning I joined SNCC
workers and a group of poor black
citizens who fearfully but coura­
geously decided to go to the court­
house to try to register to vote and
to show that gun violence was not
going to deter them. We were met by
a hostile white mob and burly white
police officers with German Shep­
herds in tow.
I marvel to this day at the courage
of SNCC leader Bob M oses’ cour­
age in not moving when a police dog
lunged at his thigh and ripped his
pants. The would-be registrants
scattered and all the SNCC leaders
were arrested, throwing me car keys
as they were taken off to jail.
I had the phone number o f John
Doar, the assistant attorney general
for civil rights in the Justice Depart­
ment in my jeans and I called him in
a panic from a telephone booth—
trying to describe the lawless scene.
In a steely calm voice, he admon­
ished me to just state the facts and
to control my emotions. I knew then
in every pore of my being how it felt
to be a poor, helpless, isolated, ter­
rified black person in that lawless
state. But I knew in those few hor­
rible minutes that I would survive
law school and come back to Mis­
sissippi to practice law and seek
justice for the voiceless and vote­
less. I had found my calling.
Medgar was a Mississippi na­
tive, a graduate of Alcorn State
University, and a World W ar II vet­
eran who had fought for his country
at the battle of Normandy but was
turned away at gunpoint when he
tried to vote back home.
After he was turned down for
admission at the segregated Uni­
versity of M ississippi’s law school,
he helped lay the groundwork for
James Meredith to become the first
African American admitted to that
university. As the NAACP’s first
field secretary in Mississippi, he
was instrumental in coordinating
civil rights activity in the state. He
led by example, undeterred in the
face of open white hostility.
In the early morning hours of
June 12,1963, he was shot and killed
in his driveway after returning home
from an N AACP meeting. Byron de
la Beckwith was finally convicted of
the murder 31 years later thanks to
M yrlie’s dogged persistence.
I returned to live in Mississippi in -
1964, a year after Medgar Evers’s
death, as a staff attorney with the
N A ACP’s Legal Defense Fund,
h elp in g to con tin u e the w ork
Medgar and others had begun and
to provide legal help for the Missis­
sippi Freedom Summer Project work­
ers organized by SNCC and the
Council of Federated Organizations,
a coalition of civil rights groups,
who had traveled to that closed
society to shed light on it and sup­
port local black citizens who were
seeking to exercise their right to
vote.
Throughout the years, I never
forgot M edgar’s personal kindness
and support of a young first year
law student and public example of
courage and determination in the
face of enormous danger and fear.
So I warmly welcomed the opportu­
nity to join Myrlie Evers-Williams
earlier this month at the 2013 Heri­
tage Convocation at their alma mater
Alcorn State University.
How very different Mississippi
and the nation might look to Medgar
today. There is so much he would be
proud of, but still so much left to do.
He would of course be thrilled to see
the country has elected its first Af­
rican American president and to
know Mississippi now leads the
nation in the number of black elected
officials even if their influence is
under assault and waning.
But he would be disappointed to.
continued
on page 20