Fifty years ago, on June 12, 1963, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith shot civil rights leader Medgar Evers in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. At the hospital an hour later, he was pronounced dead at age 37. I was just 16. But that killing and the speech of Martin Luther King Jr. just two months later in Washington, D.C., permanently catalyzed my activist side and would, a year later, take me to Jackson to register voters for Freedom Summer amid the search for three other civil rights workers we all knew to be dead long before their bodies were dug out of an earthen berm.
Ten years before, in 1954, Evers had become the first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi history. It was obviously a dangerous post. The Klan was not a memory in the Magnolia State, it was a living entity, and plenty of whites unwilling to join its ranks openly sympathized with its objectives of keeping the black population "in its place." Evers traveled across the state, bolstering brave activists with his optimism and cheerfulness and good sense. Despite the risks to them, he managed to get a few to sign onto civil rights lawsuits and buy NAACP membership cards.
Bolstered himself by his wife Myrlie, Evers did what he could to investigate and get out the word on the frequent barbarities and other injustices committed against blacks by private citizens and officials alike. It was a time when the alternate uniform for many police officers was a sheet and there was little help to be found in a criminal-justice system populated itself with criminals operating under the color of Jim Crow law. Evers would not live to see those statutes outlawed. But his wife carried on, as she still does, age 80.
"Only A Pawn In Their Game"
A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game.
The rest of the lyrics are below the fold..
Corey Dade at The Root writes—Fifty years after the activist's death, landmark policies he championed may be struck down by SCOTUS:
Uncertainty hovers over observances that began at Evers' gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery last week, as the civil rights community warily awaits rulings that might fundamentally change, if not outright limit, minorities' access to college and participation in elections. Before the end of June, the court will decide the constitutionality of race as a factor used in admissions at the University of Texas. The justices also will rule on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires states and smaller jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing election procedures.
Some justices on the conservative-leaning court have openly questioned or criticized the continued need for special protections for minority voters. And although the court upheld racially conscious admission policies in 2001, multiple lower-court rulings and state laws have narrowed or banned such affirmative action practices at public universities.
Both cases threaten the legacy of Evers, the NAACP's first field secretary in 1950s' Mississippi, whose work became a model for many successful challenges of Jim Crow laws across the South. He was the first known African American to apply to the University of Mississippi School of Law; he helped James Meredith integrate the university as an undergraduate student; he sued the city of Jackson, Miss., to desegregate its public schools; and he called for equal access to city jobs and accommodations. Evers also registered blacks to vote.
The lawsuit challenging the Voting Rights Act also threatens the legacy of Attorney General Eric Holder, who spoke at the wreath-laying ceremony for Evers at Arlington National Cemetery. Holder is the named defendant in the lawsuit because the Justice Department enforces the Voting Rights Act.
The Justice Department has aggressively used Section 5 to block a wave of
Republican-led state laws over the past couple of years, such as photo-identification requirements for voters, arguing that the measures would disproportionately harm minorities.
Holder has defended his agency's efforts and cites as one of his most important accomplishments the rebuilding of the Justice Department's civil rights division following the Bush administration. At Arlington last week, Holder praised Evers as a pioneer who laid the groundwork for many of the civil rights gains of the past 50 years.
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2002—Gangbanger of Doom:
The must-visit Media Whores Online has the following post today:
CBS News is now reporting utter chaos has overtaken the White House efforts to scare the American public and to protect its own political rump with the alleged Jose Padilla "dirty bomb" plot.
[...]
CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports some U.S. officials now admit they're not sure what Padilla's plans were when he returned to the U.S. last month.
MWO also includes a link to the actual article, but the story doesn't include the information mentioned above, apparently edited out. Interesting...
In any case, as I mentioned yesterday, this arrest of a small-time gangbanger is hardly the triumph over terror the administration would have us believe. It's designed to take pressure off Bush, the 9-11 hearings, Enron, and every other ill currently plaguing the administration. And the press and public lap it up. Unbelievable...
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Tweet of the Day:
On today's
Kagro in the Morning show, it's all about the NSA story again. And once again,
Greg Dworkin and
Armando pitch in on the discussion. Greg did bring us the top non-NSA story of the day, though, that being the Justice Department's Plan B reversal, plus some new and longer-term polling data on approval/disapproval of surveillance activity. From there on, though, it's all NSA, and another expansive discussion of the discussion (which might possibly constitute meta-data), including looks at the much-maligned takes of Jennifer Rubin and David Brooks.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.
A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin" they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.
The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.
From the powerty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.
Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.