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Mississippi Martyr
University of Arkansas Press
November 2011
On Sale: November 1, 2011
434 pages
ISBN: 1557289735
EAN: 9781557289735
Kindle: B00C1N3DJE
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
Civil rights activist Medgar Wiley Evers was well aware of
the dangers he would face when he challenged the status quo
in Mississippi in the 1950s and '60s, a place and time known
for the brutal murders of Emmett Till, Reverend George Lee,
Lamar Smith, and others. Nonetheless, Evers consistently
investigated the rapes, murders, beatings, and lynching's of
black Mississippians and reported the horrid incidents to a
national audience, all the while organizing economic
boycotts, sit-ins, and street protests in Jackson as the
NAACP's first full-time Mississippi field secretary. He
organized and participated in voting drives and
nonviolent
direct-action protests, joined lawsuits to
overturn state-supported school segregation, and devoted
himself to a career that cost him his life.
This
biography of a lesser-known but seminal civil rights leader
draws on personal interviews from Myrlie Evers-Williams
(Evers's widow), his two remaining siblings, friends,
grade-school-to-college schoolmates, and fellow activists to
elucidate Evers as an individual, leader, husband, brother,
and father. Extensive archival work in the Evers Papers, the
NAACP Papers, oral history collections, FBI files, Citizen
Council collections, and the Mississippi State Sovereignty
Commission Papers, to list a few, provides a detailed
account of Evers's NAACP work and a clearer understanding of
the racist environment that ultimately led to his
murder.
Selfless dedication marked the life of Medgar
Evers, and while this remains his story, it is also a
testament to the important role that grassroots activism
played in exacting social change during some of America's
most turbulent and violent times.
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