Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story that Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid

 

Thirteen of us met on Saturday February 8^th to discuss Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story that Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid. This non-fiction book, published in February 2024, chronicles the courtship and marriage of Medgar and Myrlie Evers. At the time of their meeting, he was a WWII veteran who was returning to college after his time in the military. She was a 17-year-old college freshman who was majoring in Education. Myrlie’s aunt and grandmother, who raised her, discouraged her from dating an “older man” who just back from Europe, and was ready to be treated like a man by white Mississippians.

Barb L. started us out, saying, "It was the early chapters of their lives and of their romance, it was beautiful but then for me it just got harder and harder, the granular details of what it was like in Mississippi and all of the terrible things that happened."

Robin added, "I think the book was really beautifully done and easy to read. I can’t believe that I didn’t know this. I should have known all about Medgar Evers and Joy Ann Reid says this at the beginning, that he’s one of the least known of all these Civil Rights icons, such important history. He was so amazing."

Alejandra followed up with, "I think Reid did such a good job... I was really sad that I hadn’t heard about him and how monumental he was. What I appreciated in her work was that it was pulled from a place of love that I think often is not used to portray Dr. King or Malcolm X. There’s a part of me that wonders if, even though it was so much later, that we forgot about him because there was a conviction of his killer. I just wondered if that had allowed white America to feel it was okay to forget about Medgar Evers because his spouse got 'justice.'"

Myrlie and Medgar

Barb L. continued, saying,  "Two things really stand out for me, one is that for me as a white person, learning more details just outraged me. I kept having to put the book down because I couldn’t believe all of the horrific ways that racism was playing out in Mississippi during those years. I was alive for some of that. Through the lens of my own upbringing, that outrage was missing until more recently. I was also struck by how so many notable Civil Rights male leaders that we read about in this group whose personal lives took a far more minor role in their lives than Medgar’s did. It only added to my respect for him. Obviously, this is told from the lens of his relationship with Myrlie, but he made his family a priority despite the ways his work was all consuming."

Wendy pointed out that, "She (Myrlie) talked about knowing he was likely to die and also how much they had to work at their relationship. It wasn’t an easy relationship. I think that so often in our group when we’ve read books that talked about how brave people were. I think reading it right now, in the current context of what’s going on, we’ve talked about Reconstruction and how everything was undone again. I feel like we’re in this time when everything now is being undone again. In Chapter two they talked about Dr. Howard who mentored Medgar, and all the things Dr. Howard wanted to happen, like he wanted abortion to be available because of the way in which women had been abused by the whites. He wanted prostitution to be legal. He was so ahead of his time."

Janice commented, "Joy Ann Reid, Myrlie Evers, and Betty Shabazz are my sorority sisters. I really appreciated the relationship between Betty, Myrlie, and Coretta. They were three very different women, and their husbands were very different from each other. My biggest takeaway from the book is how the media has contrived a different perspective on things. So, it’s wonderful to hear that these three women were actually friends and that they appreciated each other.  I was a Black History major in college in the 80s, but now I’m seeing the intersectionality of all of these figures and how I still have such a hard time with the power grabs by the various organizations. Dr. King didn’t get to speak at Medgar’s funeral. Joy Ann Reid met with Myrlie five or six times in researching for this book."

Betty Shabazz, Coretta Scott King and Myrlie Evers 

Barb M. offered, "I really like the way Joy Ann Reid writes. It’s a love story, I felt for Myrlie, all the responsibility fell on her. They had this weight hanging over them. I have difficulty with this concept of “Civil Rights Widows.” I was glad to see Myrlie Evers went on and lived her life. She got married again (even though her second husband died), and that she had other things going on in her life. The expectations for these women were they were to be a kind of antiseptic followers of the movement, and they were not thought of as people, and they were subordinate. There was a lot of political infighting in all of the organizations. Another thing I take my hat off to her for was her determination to go after de la Beckwith through three trials, that determination I respected a lot. I think she sacrificed a lot of her life to do that. Man, she had to love Medgar! He was not loveable always. A lot of her life was painful."

Medgar Ever's house 

Nancy shared her experience on a Civil Rights tour, saying, "I went to Medgar Evers’s house (on a Civil Rights tour) in 2023. I stood at the carport. This book for me was even more chilling because I have first-hand memories of being in these places. As a city currently, Jackson MS is eerie. It’s very strange there. We walked around the downtown area. There’s a wonderful museum there, a history museum, there’s other buildings but there are hardly any people. Everybody says the city of Jackson is majority Black but there was no one on the streets. I remember what all those places in the book look like and she described it incredibly well. His house is this ranch house kind of near the end of the street, down the street is that area of woods and weeds and brush, and that was where de la Beckwith was hiding, and all the other houses go off in the other direction.

 Some of the details in this book are different from the details we were told by the historians from Jackson State University who talked to us on the tour. No one really remembers things the same. What struck me while I was there was that the Evers family had this incredibly detailed survival plan, like where the furniture was placed in the house, not leaving the light on by the side door, and they never getting out of the car on the drivers’ side. They always got out on the passenger’s side. What we were told on the tour was that somehow, they forgot that night. They didn’t do their plan. She left the light on, and he got out on the driver’s side and when he went to the trunk of his car to take out the shirts he was bringing home for his kids. He made himself a perfect target. Nobody can follow a plan perfectly every day of their life. We were also told on the tour that the shot de la Beckwith fired would not have been lethal if the local hospitals had been willing to treat Medgar. We were told on the tour was that they made at least two stops, and even the hospital that he was ultimately in, the white doctors were just standing around, and one doctor finally said, “we have to treat this man,” and by then it was just too late.

One of the things that was striking to me in the book was how the author talked about how despondent he was in the weeks and days right before he was killed. And that made me think differently about what I was told about them not sticking to the plan that night: him getting out on the wrong side of the car, and I just wondered if he was tired. Even if he didn’t make a conscious decision about it but if he was in some way like, 'they’re going to get me sooner or later.' It was so striking that they had this plan worked out, but didn’t follow it that night."

Wendy added, "He was encouraged by the person he was picking up the shirts from to stay overnight but he decided to go home."

Nancy continued, saying, "They had been asking people from the NAACP for security, and they just wouldn’t do it. There are a million things that contributed to this over time, but I hadn’t read anything before this book about him being so despondent."

Janice answered, "I would describe it as resignation, not so much about despondence. There’s an inevitably to it. Not only did he not accept the offer to spend the night, but apparently, he drove towards those tin cans that were in the street, and he turned around and still went to his house.  The tin cans were there, but he saw the tin cans and still went home."

Nancy added further, "On that same tour, we went to Jackson State University, and we saw all the offices the various organizations worked out of, and we met Hezekiah Williams. He was the youngest Freedom Rider. He said he was downtown with his friends, and they were just sort of goofing around downtown and they walked in front of the Greyhound bus depot and his friend pushed him into the white people’s door, for which he got arrested and sent to Parchman Prison. This book says that it was a concerted effort, but he said he and his friends had just been goofing.  He got out of Parchman, and he went on to be a part of the whole movement. He’s an old man now and still full of life and really proud of what he did. He asked us if we went to the museum in Jackson and we said yes and he said, “Did you see my picture?” He was very proud of it and said, 'I think I looked really good in my picture.'"

Maria, following up on her earlier comments, said "I was struck as Barbara was, about how 

much of a burden it was on Myrlie. Medgar 

was incredibly brave. The book, The Warmth of Other Suns was really good in spelling out 

the horrible conditions Black people lived under in the South. This book, because it was so 

specific, was like the graduate course in this topic. This book is more raw. The whole time 

Myrlie kept asking him, “Why do you put yourself in these situations, don’t you love us?” I 

could relate to that. I was a young mother too. Thank God I didn’t have a man on a mission. 

How do you integrate the fear and the love? If she had been in the kitchen or in the living 

room, she would have been killed too. Both parents would have been wiped out at the same time. 

I was wondering if anyone else had the same feeling. She had to absorb an awful lot of his 

determination to make a real difference. He felt very strongly that things had to change. He 

had fought for this country and he knew that it could be different because he had been in 

Europe, they were treated as men in Europe. The NAACP said, “you should just be registering voters, 

none of this demonstrating and so on.” He was really between a rock and a hard place. My 

understanding of what happened to Dr. King was that he was asked to step in, in 

Birmingham. I was just listening to a program on NPR’s Fresh Air and there were two African 

American scholars who were talking about the terrible period of discouragement and 

depression that Dr. King went through, after the wonderful March on Washington and then the 

years of just white people not caring. I was there and should have been aware. There was a 

girl I my high school class who read about these things and were aware of them. But, like the 

rest of white people I just went along. I was really angry at the first part of the book but was really glad the author gave us so much of Myrlie’s life after Medgar. She made a life for herself, and she ended up cleaning up the NAACP. 

Ann gave us, "I appreciate what everybody said. I kept wondering about the cultural thing when they were in Europe. I think the other philosophical dilemma he was dealing with was how much aggression to use in his demonstrations. He looked at Kenyatta and the Mau Mau who were much more aggressive. Then he looked at Dr. King, who was much more peaceable."

Shelara reminded us that Medgar Evers carried a gun.

Ann, continuing, said, "Do we have any proof of what would work? Would he have been killed if he had approached with a more Gandian way?"

Shelara elaborated on her earlier point, saying, "Robert Williams outlived all of them, although he ended up in exile. Robert Williams was an American civil rights leader and author best known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and into 1961. He got kicked out of the NAACP because he said, 'If you greet us with violence, we will protect ourselves.' If you ask, 'Which way of protest was effective? 'I would say arming yourself was effective. There were people that armed themselves. Dr. King was protected in the South by the Deacons for Defense.

When James Meredith did his march, there were Black people hidden in the woods, ready to defend him. The idea of a non-violence is a tool to be used politically. I think Dr. King was a true pacifist. There were some in that movement that were not pacifists. I think that non-violence was an effective strategy for what they were trying to do.

Ann replied, "There was a book called The Power of Non-Violence, written in the 1930s about peaceful protests against the Nazis in Denmark and Finland. And Gandi was very powerful in terms of changing behavior. I wonder if you have big groups practicing non-violent protests if it’s more effective than violence."

Shelara retorted, "Is non-violence a strategy to change the hearts of the people that are doing the 

violence against you or is a strategy to influence the people that are watching? What happens 

when the society that you want to influence doesn’t care either?"

Princess added, " Especially thinking about Emmett Till, he was a kid. He didn’t harm anybody, for someone to be violent towards him. How do you fight back against that?"

Wendy said, "I think we’re dealing with a population of white people who didn’t view Black people as human. If you do treat people that way, there’s also fear of retribution, rightly so. It’s extraordinary to me to think that someone who had been treated that way would choose to combat it in a non-violent way."

Barb M. clarified, "If violence is the answer, the victims can’t be severely outnumbered. I’m not talking about personal protection."

Nancy told us, "Gandi said something like, “to defeat the Nazis, non-violence would have worked, but it would take millions of people putting their bodies on the line. If millions of people would have gone to Germany in a non-violent way and resisted what the Nazis were doing, maybe the resistance would have succeeded.” Gandi had his victories, but they were on a much smaller scale than the proposed fight against the Nazis and a much smaller scale than we’re talking about throughout these United States."

Shelara pointed out that, "Medgar Evers was a WWII vet; he fought for his country. He had a wife and children. He didn’t have to prove his humanity to anyone. Medgar Evers, like others, sacrificed so much. Medgar Evers was too good for this country."

The author, Joy-Ann Reid, said in the book’s Prologue,

p.6 “Medgar’s activism, from his role in investigating the Emmett Till Lynching and other racist murders of Black Mississippians to the boycott movement he orchestrated in Jackson, was the foundation upon which the later efforts by SNCC, CORE, and other organizations were built. James Baldwin had it right: Medgar Evers deserves a place alongside Malcolm X and Dr. King in our historical memory...”