"Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers and his wife, Myrlie, practiced what she and their children were to do if they heard something unusual outside their home."
The speaker of these words was Reggie Harris, a leader of the Living Legacy Pilgrimage. Our group of pilgrims was standing under the carport next to the Evers' home in Jackson, Mississippi.
Here, on June 12, 1963, Evers was gunned down and killed. Myrlie and their children were inside and heard the shots.
Harris explained that civil rights workers from the North would come to the South and ask, "Why don't we engage people [the segregationists] and talk to them?"
He said the leaders of the movement would reply, "Those people don't want to talk to you; they want to kill you. This is the reality we face."
Harris said that Medgar and Myrlie talked about hiring a bodyguard, but another reality was that on any given day, there were any number of places where he could be killed.
"They knew that, so they just led their lives," Harris said. "In the end, the shooter was standing behind that shrub." He pointed to a bush in a neighboring yard across the street, about 50 yards away.
Then Harris led us in a tribute song to those who died at the hands of race hatred: "We are soldiers in the army. We have to fight although we have to cry. We have to hold up the bloodstained banner. We have to hold it up until we die."
Near the end of the last chorus, Harris' voice choked. Visibly shaken, this professional singer turned and walked away, alone, across the front yard of the modest ranch house, now a National Historic Landmark, owned by Tougaloo College, a black liberal arts institution.
While married, Myrlie, now Myrlie Evers-Williams, was also a civil rights activist, journalist, author, and prominent member of the Mississippi chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Together, she and Medgar organized voter registration drives and civil rights demonstrations. They worked to end racial segregation in schools and public facilities, including the University of Mississippi.
In 1962, their home was firebombed as a result of their involvement in a boycott of downtown Jackson's white merchants.
In 1964, Evers' killer, Byron De La Beckwith, was tried for the murder twice; both times he was freed by a hung jury. He was finally convicted in 1994. He died in prison at age 80 in 2001 after having served seven years of a life sentence.
From the documentary Neshoba:
The Jim Crow Era is measured from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. During that time, an estimated 4,000 to 8,000 blacks were lynched by white racists; many of those lynchings were held in a party atmosphere with women, children, and picnics.
Yet, the true number of murdered blacks will never be known. For example, when authorities dragged a river in Neshoba County, Mississippi, searching for the bodies of murdered civil rights activists James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, they inadvertently found the bodies of nine black men who had never been reported missing.
From the documentary Eyes on the Prize, disc 3, program 5, "Mississippi: Is This America?" (1962-1964)
"We've had experience in the past with Negro political domination. It was known as the Reconstruction. There are some who call this present attempt to build up political power through a mass registration of unqualified nigger voters the Second Reconstruction."
--William J. Simmons, Citizens' Council, Mississippi
"I don't want the Negro, as I have known him and contacted him in my lifetime as a class, to control the making of the law that controls me. ... This country would be better off if all Negroes were removed from it."
--Judge Tom P. Brady, Citizens' Council, Mississippi
Next blog: "Racist reality: Hollis Watkins and James Means"
