Murdered for the truth
June 11, 1963, Jackson, Mississippi.
Myrlie Evers was lying on her bed, which was the only one in the single-story green house not set directly on the floor below the window line and underneath the bottom of the glass.
She was watching television with her three children, Darrell Kenyatta, Reena Denise and James Van Dyke, alongside millions of Americans. They were tuned in to hear President Kennedy speak about a profound moral crisis that was being ignored by an overwhelming majority of white Americans for 100 years.
The president, like her husband Medgar, was a combat veteran of World War II.
Here is a taste of the speech:
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.
It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.
The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.
If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?
Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free.
They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice.
They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression.
And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.
Outside of Myrlie Evers’ window, a campaign slogan was coming together.
A United States Marine Corps veteran of Guadalcanal, wounded on Okinawa, aimed an Enfield 30-06 rifle at the back of the army veteran who served with the legendary “Red Ball Express” from Normandy until the end of the war.
He did not see a comrade or even a human in his gunsight. He saw an animal and an enemy.
Evers was the first field officer of the NAACP in Mississippi, but when it came to the civil rights struggle of 1963 in Mississippi, he was “the straw that stirred the drink” — only he wasn’t playing a game.
When they first met, Myrlie Evers had left the shy army veteran and college athlete tongue-tied and stammering.
Hearing the thunder of cleats pounding on asphalt bearing down from behind as the football team headed from the field to their lockers she leaned up against a pole to let them pass.
Medgar Evers stopped in front of her without much of a plan. He chose to offer a warning for her to stay clear of the pole in case there might be lightning on what was a blue sky day.
Marriage leaves little unsaid, and so shortly before June 12, 1963, when Myrlie Evers suggested Medgar buy a new suit since there was a sale, he responded with a chilling premonition.
He said he would never get a chance to wear it, and the only suit he would need was one in which to be buried.
Medgar Evers had committed an unpardonable sin in 1963 Mississippi.
He went on Mississippi television, and told the truth about Jim Crow.
He broke the “cotton curtain.”
Telling hard truths had long carried a price in America, and for a black man in 1963 the cost was as high as it gets.
Here is how CBS News recalled the 50th anniversary of the event 13 years ago —before it was destroyed by Bari Weiss and David Ellison in service to the same type of evil that killed Medgar Evers:
In the spring of 1963, following the successful civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, Evers and the NAACP sued the city of Jackson to desegregate its public elementary and high schools, and he called for equal access to public accommodations and city jobs.
On WLBT, Jackson Mayor Allen Thompson rejected the idea of a biracial committee to study change and criticized the NAACP as "outside agitators."
Finally, Evers was granted time to respond, on May 20, 1963.
He spoke for 17 minutes.
He began by telling his audience he was a U.S. Army veteran who fought fascism and Nazism in Europe during World War II.
He talked about a 40 percent black city of 150,000 residents that had no black police officers, firefighters, or clerks.
He called for a black man being able to "register and vote without special handicaps imposed on him" and "more jobs above the menial level in stores where he spends his money."
Evers said this towards the end of his remarks.
"The two races have lived here together. The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race.
Let me appeal to the consciences of many silent, responsible citizens of the white community who know that a victory for democracy in Jackson will be a victory for democracy everywhere."
Because he told the truth about truths that could not be spoken of in Mississippi he was killed.
Byron De La Beckwith had a straight shot at Medgar Ever’s back.
He fired.
The bullet went through Medgar Evers, through the window, through the wall and bounced off the refrigerator, before landing on the counter where Myrlie Evers cooked dinner for her children, next to a watermelon.
Myrlie Evers commented that even the “bullet was racist.”
Medgar Evers died crawling to the side door of his home underneath the carport.
Everyone in America knew who murdered Medgar Evers.
Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, a racist and segregationist, came to Beckwith’s trial to shake hands with the killer in plain sight of the all-white, all-male jury.
When Byron De La Beckwith ran for lieutenant governor of Mississippi in 1967, after two hung all-white Mississippi juries refused to convict him, his campaign slogan was: “Straight Shot.”
Byron De La Beckwith believed he would never face justice.
He died in prison just like the ICE murderer Jonathan Ross will.
Justice came for Byron De La Beckwith in 1994 when a Mississippi jury said: “Guilty.”
Justice also came in 2005 for three young men: civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman.
Everyone knew who killed them.
They were murdered by police, which was run by the Ku Klux Klan, on Mississippi Highway 19 South, en route to Meridian.
Outside the courthouse where justice was hindered until 2005 sits a 65-foot tall Confederate statue of a soldier cast in the familiar pose of memorials from 1915-1925 in the south:
Last March, I stood on the road, and looked up in the direction from which the three young men were headed, and down the road that their journey ended on.
I thought about Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, standing in the middle of that road.
I thought about the terror and courage of the young men who had come to register black people to vote in Mississippi, and asked myself a question: why did they do it?
The answer is important because it helps the country understand what is happening in Minnesota.
They did it for the same reason Renee Good was doing what she was doing. She was taking a stand for the right against the wrong before she was murdered by a man with hate in his heart and a badge on his chest.
One day, there will be a historic marker like the one that marks the murder of the civil rights workers in Minneapolis, where Renee Good was gunned down by a fascist killer who shouted, “F*cking bitch!” after taking her life.
When the civil rights workers disappeared, the Mississippi Governor L.B. Jackson snarled in the camera, and said, “Maybe they went to Cuba.”
Today, Fox News carries the lies and hate that too many Americans thought was a relic of our past that has instead become the chains of our present misery.
It is the place where the new generation of racial supremacists and Hitler admirers — including KKKaroline Leavitt, KKKristi Noem, Stephen MiKKKer and Tricia McLaughlin — appear to attack the virtuous and brave with mean-spirited lies and depraved cruelty.
All manner of vile slurs and lies were directed at Evers and the three civil rights workers by government officials and media outlets that called them “traitors, agitators, communists and un-American.”
They were called all of the names Donald Trump’s wicked agents have used to slur the murdered Renee Good who, like Evers, Schwermer, Chaney and Goodman, were blamed for their deaths by the people who murdered them.
I thought about Medgar Evers and his new suit.
All he had to do was shut up and stop.
All he had to do was leave Mississippi.
Medgar Evers could not leave Mississippi because he was a man who could not back down.
This country is filled with people who cannot — and will not — back down from the pursuit of justice.
President Kennedy was so outraged by the murder of Medgar Evers that he arranged for his burial at Arlington National Cemetery, where he was laid to rest with full military honors as a martyr to freedom.
One hundred and fifty-nine days later, JFK would be buried not very far away in another section of what was once Robert E Lee’s plantation.
Pete Hegseth has ordered the story of Medgar Evers and his grave site location be scrubbed from the Arlington National Cemetery website.
The only thing this proves is that Pete Hegseth is a moral infant with a broken character.
Medgar Evers cannot be erased.
Myrlie Evers is 93 years young, and her husband has not been forgotten. He will never be forgotten.
The Tuskegee Airmen cannot be erased.
Mississippi and its history cannot be erased or hidden because it is American history.
Medgar Evers loved his country and his state.
Mrs. Evers knew that it would please him that the name of his state was not abbreviated on his headstone. MISSISSIPPI.
Despite all the hate, injustice and oppression Medgar Evers loved his home.
He said often that he didn’t know if he was “going to heaven or hell, but that he was going from Jackson, Mississippi.”
Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were murdered by hate that could not overcome the love for which they died.
They died for the love of justice and an ephemeral idea about freedom.
Some people say that they are too exhausted after 11 years of Donald Trump to resist his presidency anymore.
These people say that they are so worn down that they cannot bear to watch the news, or inform themselves about what is happening. They have decided seeing what must be seen is just too much.
It is not a new phenomenon or impulse.
I have knelt on the spot where Medgar Evers died, and I know that this country belongs to us, not the forces that killed him.
What side do I stand on?
What side do you stand on?
I stand for the cause for which James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and Renee Good died.
I stand for the America that looks at Medgar Evers, and says that was a very great man with the deepest gratitude.
I stand for the cause remembered on the side of the road by a marker that remembers what happened there.
The days ahead in America will be brutal, and the crisis will worsen.
Yet, the ending is not in doubt, and it has never been in doubt.
The country has always produced an abundance of Donald Trumps and Pete Hegseths, and versions of every low man and woman who has embraced the putrid MAGA ethos of grievance, rage, hate and violence for opportunity and power.
What those people underestimate is that it has also produced people like Medgar and Myrlie Evers and James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and Renee Good.
They are not forgotten, and never will be.
Their lives teach a powerful lesson. Power does not come from the gun, a burning cross, vile slurs, cruelty and violence.
In the end, it comes from inalienable truths.
Evil has announced itself in America with a disorienting audacity and vile arrogance.
This is disconcerting, to say the least, but the foul tide rising again will not erode the mighty rock upon which an altar of freedom has been carved by the blood sacrifice of a million patriot lives over 250 years so that we may live in freedom.
Medgar Evers went to heaven from Jackson, Mississippi. He is looking down today singing “An American Tune.”
Forsaking his country, his cause and his faith means forsaking the memory and legacy of Medgar Evers.
No living American has earned that right.
Keep the faith.
Medgar Evers is watching.
I know he is.
Mississippi has the nation’s shortest life expectancy, highest maternal mortality rate, highest infant mortality rate, the worst healthcare system, highest rate of adult diabetes, and ranks dead last in education. The word bottom is insufficient.
And yet millions of Federal dollars are currently being spent to attack Minnesota. The priorities are so screwed up — and Mississippi has not helped itself by voting Republican for over 50 years. Ronald Reagan launched his Presidential campaign in Mississippi in 1980. What good did it do for anyone?
I remember when you were here and shared your video commentaries and article's, Steve. I still get teary eyed,as I was reading this piece this morning, Thank You, Steve,you and are a true Patriot, and will reStack ASAP 🙏