Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9401300052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JACKSON, MISS. LENGTH: Medium
Last week, as the trial of the man accused of killing Evers began, the Jackson City Council designated the neighborhood where the civil rights leader once lived - and died - as the city's first historic district.
Medgar Evers is a monument now, cast in heroic bronze in much the same way that Confederate generals were once remembered in Mississippi. But his is, in some ways, an uncertain legacy.
Go inside the library that bears his name, and you will find no books about him. Ask many young people in Mississippi who he was, and they will struggle to respond.
When prospective jurors in the trial of Byron De La Beckwith, the white supremacist accused of assassinating Evers, were asked what they knew about him, many of them - black and white - said they knew little.
In some ways, it seems that Evers is remembered more for the way in which he died - shot in the back with what prosecutors called a bullet "aimed by prejudice, propelled by hatred and fired by a coward" - than for the accomplishments of his life.
They were not insignificant:
As the first Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP - essentially, its first full-time paid worker in the state - he led voter registration drives that began slowly swelling the number of black voters in Mississippi.
He played a key role in enrolling James Meredith as the first black student at the University of Mississippi. The law school had rejected Evers' application in 1954.
He helped organize economic boycotts against businesses that discriminated against blacks.
At grave risk, he investigated and filed reports to NAACP headquarters on cases involving violence or illegal discrimination against blacks.
When Evers died at age 37 on June 12, 1963, he was a giant to many black Mississippians, even if he was a cipher to whites. But those who remember him now are more likely to recall his attitudes than his deeds.
"He functioned openly and courageously and rationally for nine years in a maelstrom of hatred and bigotry and violence. And I would say that was his greatest accomplishment," said an old friend, John Salter, a professor at the University of North Dakota.
"If the only thing we can say about Medgar Evers is that he was responsible - that he felt a keen duty and purpose to make life better for black Mississippians - I think that's enough," said an admirer, Mary Coleman, a professor of political science at Jackson State University.
"He had a tough mind and a tender heart," said the Rev. L.D. Bass, a Jackson pastor.
Evers was deeply despised by many whites in Mississippi. At Beckwith's first trial in 1964, prosecutor William Waller called Evers' work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People "repugnant, repulsive, obnoxious."
But those who knew him well can recall no glaring flaws and believe that Evers forced many whites to respect him even as they hated him.
Salter, who taught at a black college in Mississippi in the 1960s, worked closely with Evers. He remembers him as a "well-rounded guy," distinguished by his fundamental decency.
"In those days," Salter said, "a Southern white man would never take a black man's hand. But Medgar would go up to a prominent white man, like J.L. Ray, who was in charge of the anti-civil rights police, and he would stick out his hand in a genuinely friendly way and say, `How are you, Captain Ray?'
"And Ray, who was under it all a decent person, would stick out his hand before he could stop himself and find himself shaking hands with a black man. Medgar was in no sense a hater, but someone who took humanity - whatever the humanity was - on an equal, shoulder-to-shoulder basis."
In many histories of the civil rights movement, Evers is primarily noted as a martyr, the first prominent civil rights leader to be assassinated in the 1960s.
But those who would keep his name alive believe the value of his life outweighs that of his death.
"There were any number of things that Medgar was trying to do," his widow, Myrlie Evers, testified last week at Beckwith's trial.
He wanted to integrate schools, she said, and wanted blacks to be allowed into public swimming pools and restaurants, "to be able to use the libraries, to be able to go to department stores and be able to try on clothes. . . To be able to be called by a name instead of `Boy' or `Girl.' To be able to be called by a courtesy title."
Outside the courthouse on Friday, L.D. Bass and a friend, Joe Parker, stood chatting about Evers in the chill wind of early evening.
"You see," Bass concluded, "you can kill a man, but you can't kill his idea. Isn't that right?"
"That's right," Parker said.
by CNB