"You can kill a man but
you can't kill an idea."
-Medgar Evers, June 7, 1963
When we got to the courthouse, the clerk said he wanted to talk with us. When we got into his office, some 15 or 20 armed white men surged in behind us, men I had grown up with, had played with. We split up and went home. Around town, Negroes said we had been whipped, beaten up and run out of town. Well, in a way we were whipped, I guess, but I made up my mind then that it would not be like that again—at least not for me. I was committed, in a way, to change things.
---Medgar Evers recalling trying to register to vote after coming home from World War 2
Medgar Wiley Evers was a man dedicated to seeing justice realized not only for himself and his immediate family, but for his many brothers and sisters suffering under the stifling oppression of American Apartheid also known as Jim Crow Rule…For 12 years the WW II vet waged a righteous war with Jim Crow…Performing Death Defying stunts on the civil rights movement frontlines as if he was Houdini or Evil Kneivel…
“I'm looking to be shot any time I step out of my car . . . If I die, it will be in a good cause. I've been fighting for America just as much as the soldiers in Vietnam.”
---Medgar Evers
Then on June 12, 1963, Medgar’s life journey of 37 years was ended with a sniper bullet in the back, the violent ending playing out before his family in the driveway of their home in their integrated Jackson, Ms neighborhood…
For 12 years this proud WW2 Veteran , Alcorn State University Graduate, devoted husband and loving father of three risked his life on Mississippi back roads, plantations and towns trying to bring forth justice, redemption, and civility to his home state, the same home state of the late Confederate President Jefferson Davis and one of the last hold outs of the Old Guard of the Antebellum South…
Being the NAACP Field Secretary it was his job being in the field to seek out the truth which was used to give voice to the voiceless and to give power to the powerless…It was Medgar’s responsibility to investigate the suspicious deaths of Black men, women, and children in Mississippi…What is amazing is that Medgar did much of this in a vacuum, with no support barely from the NAACP main office in Baltimore…For all intents and purposes, he was the NAACP of Mississippi…
It was Medgar, working with the unsung legendary Black leaders Dr. T.R.M. Howard, Amzie Moore and Aaron Henry, who made sure Emmett Till’s great uncle, Moses Wright, was able to testify in court about the kidnapping and the horrific murder of his grand nephew…Moses Wright when asked were the perpetrators in court room that committed the horrendous acts, as if he was taking a cue from a Hollywood director in a John Grisham themed movie, stood up and pointed his long bony finger to the guilty party and calmly stated "thar they be"…This was unheard of in this part of the country and surely meant death for Moses Wright and his loved ones…It was Medgar who helped Wright and his family to escape the brutal White Mob Vigilante Justice of the Mississippi Delta into the safe haven of Sweet Home Chicago,Il…
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Posted By: C H
Friday, June 13th 2008 at 1:48PM
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