Book: Medgar & Myrlie

Joy Reed's new book on civil rights icon Medgar Evers was released today and delivered to me. The pool on Capitol Hill in Seattle where I swam in several meets and attended several other competitions, is named for Medgar Evans so I'm familiar with his name... but not his story. Looking forward to diving in, so to speak.

Oy, this book is injurious to my soul.  Nonstop lynchings, beatings, segregation, voter suppression, education suppression... such was the life of Negroes in Mississippi in the 1950s.

No wonder the white supremacists don't want it taught.

Myrlie lived every day with the certainty that one day Medgar would not come home.

In Mississippi public schoolteachers were not allowed to belong to the NAACP. If you joined up, you were immediately fired, because membership was public record in MS.

Devious, that. Black schoolteachers were educated—by definition—and could pass the literacy tests required for voting. Those who couldn't pass of course were barred from voting.

And without educated Black schoolteachers in the segregated school system, few blacks would gain the literacy they needed. Or the advocates they needed to fight the system.

Joy-Ann Reid wrote:

Neither party in Washington seemed particularly interested in Black lives. Despite Abraham Lincoln's sacrifice and the promise of Ulysses Grant's administration, Republicans had ultimately betrayed Black Americans, cutting a deal with Southern Democrats tto pull federal troops out of the South in 1877 in exchange for installing Republican Rutherford Hayes in the White House.  This allowed Reconstruction to collapse under white robes, rifles, and ropes, and the planter class to come back from secession with renewed strength and ferocity.  Now these former Confederate states were fighting modernity with every legal and violent trick they could dream up.

And they're still doing it in 2024.

Joy's description of Medgar Ever's final days, his premonition of death, his assassination on June 12, 1963, his funeral and his burial at Arlington National Cemetery are very moving. I found myself crying with grief and heartbreak.

His eulogy included the invocation that he be the last Black man to die in the fight for freedom.

It was, sadly, not to be.

The first half of the book was no shit pretty tough sledding. I mean I thought I knew a little bit about the tribulations of African-Americans in the South in the 1950s.  It was much, much worse than I ever imagined. And it hurt my soul to read about it.

But ironically, Medgar's assassination thrust Myrlie into the public spotlight, and she blossomed into the riveting public speaker, the dedicated community organizer, the powerful force for equality that Medgar always saw in her.  Her triumphs, her eventual recognition and promotion to positions of power, her delivery of the invocation at the first Black president's second inaugural, had me crying tears of joy instead.

This is a powerful book, beautifully written, and important. Kudos to Ms Reid. It deserves its NYT #1 bestseller status.