Sixty years ago this year was born one of the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement… we’ll remember Mississippi’s Man for Evers.
Medgar Evers was at the vanguard of the fight for equal rights but was mowed down in his driveway in Jackson in 1963.
Which you can see for yourself at his house in the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument.
You’ll notice that Myrlie is honoured too in the naming of the national monument.
Because 2332 Margaret W Alexander Drive was her house.
Where she would take protection with their three children from the threat to theirs and Medgar’s lives.
It would appear an insignificant family bungalow unless you knew it were Medgar and Myrlie’s home.
But you get a chill sense of what happened here when Medgar unloaded his posters in the carport.
Said to be the only place the gunman, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith Jr could have shot him.
The trail leads here
Their home was, and still is, a place of pilgrimage for those on the Civil Rights Trail but back in 2018 when we visited as part of MLK50 it had yet to receive that honour.
MLK50 was, of course, the 50th anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King‘s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee.
With its climax the opening of the Two Museums, the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
Myrlie trumps the Donald
Which then-President Donald Trump made a personal visit to back in 2018 amid some dissent from his opponents.
With our party and the other invited guests treated to Myrlie Evers-Williams’ addresses to the gathered numbers.
And those lucky few, myself included, who managed to gain a private audience with Myrlie later hearing her speak passionately of her thoughts on his disruptionist rule.
What took place since then and the recognition of the home as a national monument by Donald Trump we don’t know.
But having met the force of nature that is Myrlie Evers I should imagine that he might have found it difficult to say no to the Marvellous Myrlie.
All of which we’ll be reflecting on as we honour and will always remember Mississippi’s Man for Evers and his indomitable Myrlie.
And point you in the direction of their home while also paying tribute to his great friend Martin Luther King in Memphis.
