52 pages • 1 hour read
Joy-Ann ReidMedgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story that Awakened America
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “Freedom From Fear”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and racism, including racist violence and the Jim Crow era.
James Meredith won in a circuit court in 1962 but still could not enroll at the University of Mississippi due to state opposition. Evers supported Meredith and his family during their legal battles. By this time, Evers was a primary target of the KKK.
A second decision by the Supreme Court ordered Meredith’s admission to the university. However, when he tried to attend, Meredith was met by an enraged white mob, galvanized by the segregationist governor to impede his enrollment. Meredith’s years as a student were difficult, as he was rejected by fellow students and needed daily security. Still, he became a cultural hero that symbolized hope for Black people. Evers admitted that the integration of “Ole Miss” was only the start, even as he and the community realized that changes would also “bring further death, destruction, and repercussion” (140).
Evers wished to add his children’s names to a petition for public school integration. Williams wanted to protect them but reluctantly agreed, understanding their role in the movement. While emphasizing that they were “inherently equal,” Evers explained the importance of integration to the children, as well as the history of Black people’s enslavement. Reid notes that the couple’s children would always remember their time with their father as one of “quality time and quality love” (141).
As Evers pushed his neighbors to join desegregation efforts, the community was reluctant to risk their jobs and safety. Frustrated with Jackson’s Black schoolteachers, he relied on “direct youth action” (142). After the petition for school integration was filed, the family faced constant threats. However, the danger brought the community together. New boycotts followed thanks to the alliances between civil rights organizations and youth councils. Alongside the victories, however, Evers noted the persistence of “unjust incarceration” of Black people. Evers made one such man’s case public in his newspaper, indicating the disregard for Black lives.
Evers and Williams, along with five other families, filed a lawsuit for the desegregation of Jackson schools. While the state had established separate Black schools, they were deficient, indicating Mississippi’s reluctance to educate Black children. The issue galvanized Williams, who fervently supported the petition even as the threats against them continued.
As youth involvement increased, Evers and other members of the NAACP trained young activists to protect themselves during marches. However, police brutality intensified, and many students were arrested. Evers and young activists insisted on direct action, while the leaders of the NAACP and the clergy asked for more voting registrations and court appeals.
Evers gave a speech on television as a public response to Jackson’s mayor, who depicted activists as “agitators.” The speech emphasized the daily terror and humiliation in Black people’s lives, noting their centrality to American history and calling for the “victory” of democracy. Reid notes that the speech marked Evers for “certain death.”
Chapter 7 Summary: “Countdown”
Students arranged the first sit-in protest in Jackson in a restaurant at Woolworth Capitol Street. The activists were attacked by a mob of white men, and the event devolved into violence. Evers and Williams sheltered several injured activists; others had been arrested. Their children witnessed the incident, and Evers explained to them his key objective of “nonviolent action.” Despite the violent outcome, Evers was hopeful that the Woolworth sit-in and the passionate young activists would bring “campaign momentum” to Jackson.
Meanwhile, the threats continued. One night, the family’s house was firebombed. Williams was outraged with the police who questioned her about the fire, as they dismissed the incident as a “prank.” Reid notes that a “terror campaign” against civil rights activists was ongoing in Mississippi but that the US Justice Department did not respond to the NAACP’s calls for protection.
Williams observed Evers becoming frustrated and exhausted. His disagreements with the national office of the NAACP intensified, with Evers supporting sit-ins and boycotts to push for desegregation. Despite the NAACP’s public support for Evers and the protesters, tensions remained. The leaders reprimanded him for encouraging young militants, threatening to fire him. Williams was pregnant again and felt certain that she would “lose” Evers.
As the NAACP national office was trying to stop the Jackson movement, Evers’s involvement in the organization diminished. He instead continued his work by leading Black protesters. At home, he was always tired. Evers was afraid that something would happen to him and encouraged his wife to prepare for that eventuality, asking her to take care of their children.
Reid notes that President Kennedy’s speech about his commitment to civil rights was a “full-scale war on the Southern way of life” and made Black activists hopeful (181). Williams was proud of her husband’s role in forcing the president to address the issue of racism. However, Reid notes that the movement in Jackson was waning due to the NAACP’s interventions. Expecting his dismissal, Evers had decided to continue his activism on his own, desiring to work with Martin Luther King, Jr., the SNNC, and the Congress of Racial Equality.
One night, Williams and the children were waiting for Evers to return home from a meeting when they heard his car in the driveway, followed by a shot. Williams rushed out and found Evers severely injured, lying in a pool of blood. Evers was transported to the hospital, where he died a while later. Williams felt that her “mission” then was to protect her children.
Chapter 8 Summary: “How to Be a Civil Rights Widow”
Reid explains that Williams had to maintain a specific image for the media as the widow of a “civil rights martyr” (194). She followed certain unspoken rules to ensure that her husband’s legacy would be honored, knowing that she had to pass his story on; as Reid stresses, Williams was the first widow of a major civil rights activist. In private, however, she sometimes felt that her life had no meaning, and her children remained distraught. Williams found comfort in her aunt and Evers’s siblings.
Evers’s assassination sparked rage among the Black community in Jackson, and protests and marches soon followed, reigniting the movement in the city. Police brutality escalated during the protests, leading to many arrests. Williams spoke at a mass meeting and, used to performing as a musician, found herself comfortable doing so. Reid quotes Williams stating that she was determined to “survive” as a “torch bearer” for Evers and his fight.
Some white officials and racist newspapers asked for an investigation into Evers’s murderer, even offering rewards, though they often framed the murder as a result of the protests. NAACP officials also demanded justice as protests continued. However, Williams doubted that police investigations would bring justice for her husband.
President Kennedy offered to bury Evers in Arlington with military honors, and Williams reluctantly agreed. Prominent civil rights leaders attended the funeral service held beforehand in Jackson, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and a major crowd gathered to mourn, surveilled by the police. The state prohibited demonstrations, but as the crowd defied this prohibition, violence followed. A riot was imminent until a young activist and a government representative stopped it.
Williams realized that Evers was gaining “national prominence” after his death. The family was welcomed in Washington, DC, and Williams felt proud knowing that her husband was “a great American” (220). President Kennedy invited her and her children to the White House, where he handed her a draft of the civil rights bill banning segregation that had been sent to Congress. When she returned home, the airport was not segregated, though she could not help but reflect that this was an achievement that her husband would not get to enjoy. Days later, Williams was notified that Evers’s murderer had been arrested.
Chapters 6-8 Analysis
Reid expands her analysis of The Impact of Grassroots Activism on the Civil Rights Movement via dramatic imagery of the events that preceded Evers’s assassination. She explains that Evers “threw himself into the escalating flurry of activity” (153), describing the early 1960s as the climax of his activism. Simultaneously, she highlights the backlash against the movement with language that suggests the continuity between growing police brutality and the mob violence that threatened the lives of activists: “State police and Jackson police seemed to merge with gangs of Klansmen and the whole, violent mass converged on Jackson” (157). The unprecedented nature of the backlash—particularly the state’s response, as embodied by the police—served as a tacit acknowledgment that the protestors were making progress, as only a serious threat to the status quo could inspire such retaliation.
Reid frames the campaign to desegregate schools as a turning point not only for the nation but also for the couple. For one, Williams’s determination to support educational equality cemented her activist consciousness: “The fight for her children’s education brought out a fire in Myrlie she scarcely knew was there” (151). The period also witnessed the solidification of Evers as a civil rights leader: Reid cites his televised speech describing the civil rights struggle as Black people’s attempt “to live without fear” (158). However, Evers’s celebrity led to new dangers: Reid’s descriptions of intimidation against Evers, including harassing phone calls, “threatening cars” driving around the family’s neighborhood, and the firebombing of their house, foreshadow Evers’s assassination.
In this, Evers functions partly as a symbol of the ongoing struggle of Black people against racism and brutality, with his assassination paralleling the broader reprisals that followed the civil rights movement’s victories. At the same time, Reid humanizes Evers by stressing his love for his family and underscoring that he did not set out to become an icon of any kind: “No one who knew Medgar believed he had a martyr complex. Far from it. His friends insisted vigorously that he wanted to live, for Myrlie and their children” (173). Rather than reducing Evers to an archetype—even a heroic one—Reid illustrates his individuality, highlighting both his determination and his agony as a Black father, husband, and activist. This is true of Reid’s depiction of Evers’s assassination itself, which marks the work’s climax. Reid uses vivid sensory details to help readers visualize the atrocity, remarking that Evers was found in “a pool of blood” described as a “long, semicircular pool of gore” (186). The scene also conveys Williams’s shock in confronting the tragedy of Evers’s murder, underscoring that for all the political significance of the event—it would prolong unrest but also intensify the movement’s efforts—it was also a personal tragedy.
Following the horror of Evers’s murder, Reid shifts to a hopeful tone to highlight Williams’s resilience: “She was now the torch bearer representing everything he ever did or tried to do. As she walked down that aisle toward the stage, she remembered him telling her, ‘Bury the fear and do what you have to do’” (200). Reid establishes a parallel between Williams and Evers that highlights The Crucial Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Struggle. In her first speech as a public speaker during a mass meeting, Williams assumed this role of “torch bearer,” echoing Evers’s activist efforts by galvanizing the community: “And I come to make a plea that all of you here and those who are not here will, by his death, be able to draw some of his strength, some of his courage, and some of his determination to finish this fight” (200). Reid also stresses Williams’s historical significance as the first of the “civil rights widows” who managed to channel her grief into the cause while demonstrating her skills as an organizer (195). Ultimately, Evers’s assassination marked both a personal and a public turning point in Williams’s life, as it thrust her into a long struggle for justice.
