Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story that Awakened America

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and racism, including racist violence, the Jim Crow era, and enslavement.

The civil rights movement in America was a struggle for social justice and racial equality initiated by African Americans that resulted in monumental changes in socio-political life; it is generally defined as spanning roughly the early 1950s to the late 1960s, though efforts to combat racism would continue in the decades that followed. 

During Reconstruction, the period that followed the American Civil War, enslavement was officially abolished. Emancipated African Americans obtained citizenship, and Black men also acquired voting rights. Several held office and attempted to secure legislative reforms to advance social equality. However, many white Americans resisted change. To ensure Black people’s subordination, Southern states enacted “Jim Crow” laws that legalized segregation in public spaces, ensured Black Americans’ ongoing economic exploitation, and deprived Black Americans of voting rights through various measures. Simultaneously, groups like the Ku Klux Klan used racist terrorism—including, most famously, lynchings—to reinforce white supremacy. While Northern states did not adopt Jim Crow laws, Black people faced discrimination in housing, education, and jobs nationwide. 

Following World War II, many Black veterans, like Medgar Evers, realized the contradictions of fighting for freedom and democracy in Europe while living oppressed in America. Despite discrimination in the military, Black people made significant contributions and sacrifices during the war. However, upon returning to the US, Black veterans continued to be treated as second-class citizens. As Black people in the South intensified their organizing in the mid-20th century, the NAACP, a major civil rights organization, helped secure the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court, which banned segregation in education. However, as racism persisted and the implementation of civil rights laws lagged, African Americans deepened their resistance through direct action and grassroots activism, especially throughout the South.

Protests focused on nonviolent resistance strategies, including freedom rides (protests against segregated public transportation), sit-ins (protests against segregated businesses), boycotts, marches, and other forms of civil disobedience. Civil rights organizations, churches, and other social networks galvanized the community to participate in the struggle with voting registration drives. Rosa Parks remains an emblematic figure of the struggle as a member of the NAACP who initiated the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, after refusing to give up her seat to a white man. Martin Luther King, Jr., emerged as the movement’s leader when he was appointed head of the Montgomery Improvement Association. He formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to assist the community’s organizing efforts, becoming its first president. Black college students were also key in organizing direct action protests, forming the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Evers’s assassination, which Reid covers in detail, was one of several tragic events that occurred as part of a backlash against the civil rights era. The movement intensified its efforts as time went on, resulting in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which banned discrimination based on race, sex, color, or religion, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Such victories heightened the persecution of civil rights activists, culminating in the assassinations of two major civil rights leaders, Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. Those events demonstrated the profound social resistance to racial progress. The movement reached a turning point by the late 1960s as new militant and more radical organizations emerged, carrying on the struggle throughout the 1970s. 

Reid’s book illuminates Evers’s role in the Southern civil rights struggle, arguing that his contributions have not been adequately recognized. As a field officer in the NACCP, Evers expanded civil rights efforts in the South and galvanized the Black community in Mississippi. While he was a member of a major organization, he supported young activists working outside it, paving the way for activism in later decades.