THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9503300612
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI
The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South
MARYANNE VOLLERS
Little, Brown. 411 pp. $24.95.
SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD Byron De La Beckwith, clad in a dark blue jumpsuit and slippers, lounges on his prison cot, chatting up a fellow Klan buddy and a cousin whose family owns cotton land around Greenwood, Miss., where Beckwith grew up. Two more visitors arrive, another cousin and a female writer with whom Beckwith has been corresponding.
Hard of hearing and suffering from arterial disease, the still-garrulous inmate holds court.
``Do you know how to get to the petrified forest?'' he jokes, about a tourist attraction north of Jackson, Miss.
Pause.
``Just head out Delta Drive and turn left at the petrified nigger!'' he answers, referring to the recently unveiled statue of slain NAACP leader Medgar Evers on Medgar Evers Boulevard, formerly Delta Drive.
It is Aug. 1, 1992, and Byron De La Beckwith has been charged for the third time with Evers' 1963 murder, a crime executed by a rifle blast to the back. Two all-male, all-white hung juries have previously freed him. Now confined, unable to post bail, Beckwith shows no repentance, no compassion, no shame. But as the mighty Mississippi River is his witness, the pathological racist once diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic will have his judgment day; and some 30-year-old sins of the racially divisive Old South will be redeemed.
That is how Charlottesville writer Maryanne Vollers would have Evers' tragedy finally laid to rest in her passionate, near-gothic story of hard-fought justice, Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South. Since Vollers began her acquaintance with Beckwith in 1991 for an Esquire assignment about the New South, history has indeed come full circle: On Feb. 5, 1994, a Mississippi jury, mixed in race and sex, found Beckwith guilty of first-degree murder; and just this year Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, assumed chairmanship of the NAACP.
From the uneasy opening tableau of the nonchalant Beckwith in jail, the author shifts deftly into scenes of peaceful black civil-rights demonstrations during the '50s and '60s, and violent white resistance, chiefly engineered by the Ku Klux Klan, but assisted by virulent segregationist politicians and corrupt law enforcement. To her credit, she also describes infighting and exploitation within the NAACP, especially pertaining to Evers' position as a field secretary, and between the NAACP and other freedom-fighting groups, notably Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Though well-known, the humiliations and atrocities - the murders of Emmett Till, George Lee, the three Neshoba County civil rights workers, and more - that Vollers recounts still evoke profound outrage, sadness and disbelief. For those who know ``Mississippi Burning'' only as a movie - fatally flawed for its whitewashing of the FBI's indifference to racial violence - Ghosts of Mississippi is a primer on civil rights. Vollers makes a few factual errors - for example, notorious racist William Harold Cox was appointed to the U.S. District Court, not the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals - but she excels in conveying a sense of hardscrabble life in segregated Mississippi.
Against this volatile backdrop, Vollers juxtaposes Beckwith, the quirky misfit and gun-crazy Klansman, orphaned at 12 and raised by eccentric uncles in Mississippi, with Evers, athletic and smart, a dedicated activist and family man. (Charles Evers, a shrewd businessman and politician of practical integrity, provides a compelling contrast to his younger brother.) Though Vollers' character study largely culminates in Evers' slaying and Beckwith's two aborted murder trials, the opposing spirits of these two Southern men imbue the entire narrative.
No person symbolizes the Southern cathartic process more, however, than Myrlie Evers-Williams. Lost and panic-stricken on the June night that her husband lay bleeding to death on their driveway, the 30-year-old widow shortly left Mississippi for California to raise their three children, finish college, serve public office, remarry and eventually take her place on the NAACP board. With the aid of white prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter, 40, a graduate of Ole Miss, the same law school that once rejected Medgar Evers' application because of his race, Evers-Williams goes ``the last mile,'' convincing the state to reopen Beckwith's prosecution after 30 years.
Vollers skillfully reconstructs all of the trials and the behind-the-scenes maneuverings - key to the '94 prosecution are court disposition of Beckwith's speedy-trial objection and recovery of the misplaced murder weapon - but her aim clearly transcends such matters. Ghosts of Mississippi is an eerily eternal, distinctly American story of race and region, heritage past and present. In observing the passing of a proud generation and the forgetfulness of the next, it is both wise and somber. Vollers is to be congratulated. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is book editor of The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Byron De La Beckwith, above, arrives at court with his wife, Thelma.
Beckwith was convicted in 1994 of the 1963 slaying of civil rights
leader Medgar Evers, left. Below, Evers' widow, Myrlie
Evers-Williams, and her daughter Reena Evers-Everett celebrate
Beckwith's conviction.
by CNB