The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero's Life and Legacy Revealed Through his Writings, Letters, and Speeches [Hardcover]

In an era filled with charismatic leaders, Evers (1925–1963) came to national attention primarily as the victim of "the first political assassination of a major leader of the modern Black Freedom Movement." As NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, Evers recruited NAACP members, desegregated schools, registered voters and organized boycotts. The work was usually undramatic, but always perilous. Evers's widow and historian Marable seek to redress Evers's relative absence from the historical record. But more than half of these 89 documents (from the years 1954–1963) are mundane monthly reports to or business correspondence with the NAACP. Ten Evers speeches are included along with eight newspaper articles, four press releases, a telegram to Eisenhower and one to Kennedy, an NAACP newsletter, a "text fragment," a posthumous Life interview. There's no clue to the principle of selection. With the exception of two very brief notes to his family, there is no personal correspondence. This monument is a tomb ready for excavation by historians of the Civil Rights movement, but it's not for the ordinary reader looking for an autobiography of Medgar Evers. It reveals the quotidian work rather than the indomitable man. (June)
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Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers, the Mississippi civil-rights activist and head of the state's NAACP (who was slain in 1963), draws on her husband's personal papers to present a portrait of a man who understood the sacrifices he might be required to make for the cause he believed in. Evers' memoranda, transcribed public speeches, and personal notes present the picture of a servant-leader, a man who worried about the welfare of families, participated in boycotts and protests, and strategized about the most effective means of securing voting rights. His monthly reports included a chronicle of the escalating violence in reaction to the NAACP's efforts to recruit members. In an Ebony magazine essay, Evers explained why he continued to live and struggle in the racial cauldron of Mississippi. The collection includes correspondence with luminaries such as Martin Luther King Jr and Roy Wilkins, but is most revealing of the man who is less celebrated yet helped to lay the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement. Vernon Ford
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"Once the leader in the number of lynchings in America, today Mississippi leads in the number of elected black officials. It's part of Medgar Evers' legacy--paid for in blood--and stamped on the lives of Mississippians, from the state capitol of Jackson to the cornfields of Newton County where Medgar Evers grew up."