Remembering Medgar Evers

Author : Minrose Gwin
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2013-02-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9780820335643

Get Book

Remembering Medgar Evers by Minrose Gwin Pdf

As the first NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, Medgar Wiley Evers put his life on the line to investigate racial crimes (including Emmett Till's murder) and to organize boycotts and voter registration drives. On June 12, 1963, he was shot in the back by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith as the civil rights leader unloaded a stack of "Jim Crow Must Go" T-shirts in his own driveway. His was the first assassination of a high-ranking public figure in the civil rights movement. While Evers's death ushered in a decade of political assassinations and ignited a powder keg of racial unrest nationwide, his life of service and courage has largely been consigned to the periphery of U.S. and civil rights history. In her compelling study of collective memory and artistic production, Remembering Medgar Evers, Minrose Gwin engages the powerful body of work that has emerged in response to Evers's life and death--fiction, poetry, memoir, drama, and songs from James Baldwin, Margaret Walker, Eudora Welty, Lucille Clifton, Bob Dylan, and Willie Morris, among others. Gwin examines local news accounts about Evers, 1960s gospel and protest music as well as contemporary hip-hop, the haunting poems of Frank X Walker, and contemporary fiction such as The Help and Gwin's own novel, The Queen of Palmyra. In this study, Evers springs to life as a leader of "plural singularity," who modeled for southern African Americans a new form of cultural identity that both drew from the past and broke from it; to quote Gwendolyn Brooks, "He leaned across tomorrow." Fifty years after his untimely death, Evers still casts a long shadow. In her examination of the body of work he has inspired, Gwin probes wide-ranging questions about collective memory and art as instruments of social justice. "Remembered, Evers's life's legacy pivots to the future," she writes, "linking us to other human rights struggles, both local and global." A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication.

Author : Myrlie Evers-Williams,Manning Marable
Publisher : Civitas Books
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2006-08-29
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780786722495

Get Book

The Autobiography of Medgar Evers by Myrlie Evers-Williams,Manning Marable Pdf

The Autobiography of Medgar Evers is the first and only comprehensive collection of the words of slain civil rights hero Medgar Evers. Evers became a leader of the civil rights movement during the late 1950s and early 1960s. He established NAACP chapters throughout the Mississippi delta region, and eventually became the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi. Myrlie Evers-Williams, Medgar's widow, partnered with Manning Marable, one of the country's leading black scholars, to develop this book based on the previously untouched cache of Medgar's personal documents and writings. These writings range from Medgar's monthly reports to the NAACP to his correspondence with luminaries of the time such as Robert Carter, General Counsel for the NAACP in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. Still, most moving of all, is the preface written by Myrlie Evers.

Author : Frank X. Walker
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 97 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2013-05-01
Category : Poetry
ISBN : 9780820345413

Get Book

Turn Me Loose by Frank X. Walker Pdf

In this selection of poetry the author writes from the point of view of people involved in the life and death of Medgar Evers, including his widow, his brother, his assassin Byron De La Beckwith, and both of Beckwith's wives.

Author : Michael Vinson Williams
Publisher : University of Arkansas Press
Page : 473 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2013-08-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781557286468

Get Book

Medgar Evers by Michael Vinson Williams Pdf

The sculptor Ed Hamilton presents information on his portrait bust of African-American civil rights activist Medgar Wiley Evers (1925-1963). Evers was murdered on June 12, 1963. He worked for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and campaigned to win equal rights for African Americans in the south. The bust was cast in bronze at Bright Foundry in Louisville, Kentucky. General Mills, Inc. commissioned the bust.

Author : Maryanne Vollers
Publisher : Little Brown & Company
Page : 411 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0316914851

Get Book

Ghosts of Mississippi by Maryanne Vollers Pdf

An examination of a noted civil rights case involving the murder of an NAACP official and his killer's three trials draws comparisons between the case and the racial climate in the Deep South

Author : Myrlie Evers-Williams,Melinda Blau
Publisher : Little Brown
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : African American women
ISBN : 0316255203

Get Book

Watch Me Fly by Myrlie Evers-Williams,Melinda Blau Pdf

The former chairwoman of the NAACP and widow of assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers draws from her own extraordinary life to share inspiration and advice on everything from triumphing over adversity to achieving selfhood.

Author : Ronald William Bailey,University of Mississippi. Afro-American Studies Program,University of Mississippi. Afro-American Studies Program. Civil Rights Research and Documentation Project
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 20 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : African American civil rights workers
ISBN : 0942373014

Get Book

Remembering Medgar Evers -- for a New Generation by Ronald William Bailey,University of Mississippi. Afro-American Studies Program,University of Mississippi. Afro-American Studies Program. Civil Rights Research and Documentation Project Pdf

Author : Steven D. Classen
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2004-03-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780822385424

Get Book

Watching Jim Crow by Steven D. Classen Pdf

In the early 1960s, whenever the Today Show discussed integration, wlbt-tv, the nbc affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi, cut away to local news after announcing that the Today Show content was “network news . . . represent[ing] the views of the northern press.” This was only one part of a larger effort by wlbt and other local stations to keep African Americans and integrationists off Jackson’s television screens. Watching Jim Crow presents the vivid story of the successful struggles of African Americans to achieve representation in the tv programming of Jackson, a city many considered one of the strongest bastions of Jim Crow segregation. Steven D. Classen provides a detailed social history of media activism and communications policy during the civil rights era. He focuses on the years between 1955—when Medgar Evers and the naacp began urging the two local stations, wlbt and wjtv, to stop censoring African Americans and discussions of integration—and 1969, when the U.S. Court of Appeals issued a landmark decision denying wlbt renewal of its operating license. During the 1990s, Classen conducted extensive interviews with more than two dozen African Americans living in Jackson, several of whom, decades earlier, had fought to integrate television programming. He draws on these interviews not only to illuminate their perceptions—of the civil rights movement, what they accomplished, and the present as compared with the past—but also to reveal the inadequate representation of their viewpoints in the legal proceedings surrounding wlbt’s licensing. The story told in Watching Jim Crow has significant implications today, not least because the Telecommunications Act of 1996 effectively undid many of the hard-won reforms achieved by activists—including those whose stories Classen relates here.

Author : Jerry Mitchell
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2021-02-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9781451645149

Get Book

Race Against Time by Jerry Mitchell Pdf

“For almost two decades, investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell doggedly pursued the Klansmen responsible for some of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement. This book is his amazing story. Thanks to him, and to courageous prosecutors, witnesses, and FBI agents, justice finally prevailed.” —John Grisham, author of The Guardians On June 21, 1964, more than twenty Klansmen murdered three civil rights workers. The killings, in what would become known as the “Mississippi Burning” case, were among the most brazen acts of violence during the civil rights movement. And even though the killers’ identities, including the sheriff’s deputy, were an open secret, no one was charged with murder in the months and years that followed. It took forty-one years before the mastermind was brought to trial and finally convicted for the three innocent lives he took. If there is one man who helped pave the way for justice, it is investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell. In Race Against Time, Mitchell takes readers on the twisting, pulse-racing road that led to the reopening of four of the most infamous killings from the days of the civil rights movement, decades after the fact. His work played a central role in bringing killers to justice for the assassination of Medgar Evers, the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer, the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham and the Mississippi Burning case. Mitchell reveals how he unearthed secret documents, found long-lost suspects and witnesses, building up evidence strong enough to take on the Klan. He takes us into every harrowing scene along the way, as when Mitchell goes into the lion’s den, meeting one-on-one with the very murderers he is seeking to catch. His efforts have put four leading Klansmen behind bars, years after they thought they had gotten away with murder. Race Against Time is an astonishing, courageous story capturing a historic race for justice, as the past is uncovered, clue by clue, and long-ignored evils are brought into the light. This is a landmark book and essential reading for all Americans.

Author : Dave Tell
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2021-02-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226559674

Get Book

Remembering Emmett Till by Dave Tell Pdf

Take a drive through the Mississippi Delta today and you’ll find a landscape dotted with memorials to major figures and events from the civil rights movement. Perhaps the most chilling are those devoted to the murder of Emmett Till, a tragedy of hate and injustice that became a beacon in the fight for racial equality. The ways this event is remembered have been fraught from the beginning, revealing currents of controversy, patronage, and racism lurking just behind the placid facades of historical markers. In Remembering Emmett Till, Dave Tell gives us five accounts of the commemoration of this infamous crime. In a development no one could have foreseen, Till’s murder—one of the darkest moments in the region’s history—has become an economic driver for the Delta. Historical tourism has transformed seemingly innocuous places like bridges, boat landings, gas stations, and riverbeds into sites of racial politics, reminders of the still-unsettled question of how best to remember the victim of this heinous crime. Tell builds an insightful and persuasive case for how these memorials have altered the Delta’s physical and cultural landscape, drawing potent connections between the dawn of the civil rights era and our own moment of renewed fire for racial justice.

Author : W. Ralph Eubanks
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2007-10-11
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780465009800

Get Book

Ever Is a Long Time by W. Ralph Eubanks Pdf

Like the renowned classics Praying for Sheetrock and North Toward Home , Ever Is a Long Time captures the spirit and feel of a small Southern town divided by racism and violence in the midst of the Civil Rights era. Part personal journey, part social and political history, this extraordinary book reveals the burden of Southern history and how that burden is carried even today in the hearts and minds of those who lived through the worst of it. Author Ralph Eubanks, whose father was a black county agent and whose mother was a schoolteacher, grew up on an eighty-acre farm on the outskirts of Mount Olive, Mississippi, a town of great pastoral beauty but also a place where the racial dividing lines were clear and where violence was always lingering in the background. Ever Is a Long Time tells his story against the backdrop of an era when churches were burned, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King were murdered, schools were integrated forcibly, and the state of Mississippi created an agency to spy on its citizens in an effort to maintain white supremacy. Through Eubanks's evocative prose, we see and feel a side of Mississippi that has seldom been seen before. He reveals the complexities of the racial dividing lines at the time and the price many paid for what we now take for granted. With colorful stories that bring that time to life as well as interviews with those who were involved in the spying activities of the State Sovereignty Commission, Ever Is a Long Time is a poignant picture of one man coming to terms with his southern legacy.

Author : Ted Ownby
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2013-10-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9781617039331

Get Book

The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi by Ted Ownby Pdf

Based on new research and combining multiple scholarly approaches, these twelve essays tell new stories about the civil rights movement in the state most resistant to change. Wesley Hogan, Françoise N. Hamlin, and Michael Vinson Williams raise questions about how civil rights organizing took place. Three pairs of essays address African Americans' and whites' stories on education, religion, and the issues of violence. Jelani Favors and Robert Luckett analyze civil rights issues on the campuses of Jackson State University and the University of Mississippi. Carter Dalton Lyon and Joseph T. Reiff study people who confronted the question of how their religion related to their possible involvement in civil rights activism. By studying the Ku Klux Klan and the Deacons for Defense in Mississippi, David Cunningham and Akinyele Umoja ask who chose to use violence or to raise its possibility. The final three chapters describe some of the consequences and continuing questions raised by the civil rights movement. Byron D'Andra Orey analyzes the degree to which voting rights translated into political power for African American legislators. Chris Myers Asch studies a Freedom School that started in recent years in the Mississippi Delta. Emilye Crosby details the conflicting memories of Claiborne County residents and the parts of the civil rights movement they recall or ignore. As a group, the essays introduce numerous new characters and conundrums into civil rights scholarship, advance efforts to study African Americans and whites as interactive agents in the complex stories, and encourage historians to pull civil rights scholarship closer toward the present.

Author : David Bianculli
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2009-12-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1439109532

Get Book

Dangerously Funny by David Bianculli Pdf

An unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the rise and fall of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour -- the provocative, politically charged program that shocked the censors, outraged the White House, and forever changed the face of television. Decades before The Daily Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour proved there was a place on television for no-holds-barred political comedy with a decidedly antiauthoritarian point of view. In this first-ever all-access history of the show, veteran entertainment journalist David Bianculli tells the fascinating story of its three-year network run -- and the cultural impact that's still being felt today. Before it was suddenly removed from the CBS lineup (reportedly under pressure from the Nixon administration), The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was a ratings powerhouse. It helped launch the careers of comedy legends such as Steve Martin and Rob Reiner, featured groundbreaking musical acts like the Beatles and the Who, and served as a cultural touchstone for the antiwar movement of the late 1960s. Drawing on extensive original interviews with Tom and Dick Smothers and dozens of other key players -- as well as more than a decade's worth of original research -- Dangerously Funny brings readers behind the scenes for all the battles over censorship, mind-blowing musical performances, and unforgettable sketches that defined the show and its era. David Bianculli delves deep into this never-told story, to find out what really happened and to reveal why this show remains so significant to this day.

Author : Minrose Gwin
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2019-08-13
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780062471772

Get Book

The Accidentals by Minrose Gwin Pdf

Following the death of their mother from a botched backwoods abortion, the McAlister daughters have to cope with the ripple effect of this tragedy as they come of age in 1950s Mississippi and then grow up to face their own impossible choices—an unforgettable, beautiful novel that is threaded throughout with the stories of mothers and daughters in pre-Roe versus Wade America. Life heads down back alleys, takes sharp left turns. Then, one fine day it jumps the track and crashes.” In the fall of 1957, Olivia McAlister is living in Opelika, Mississippi, caring for her two girls, June and Grace, and her husband, Holly. She dreams of living a much larger life--seeing the world and returning to her wartime job at a landing boat factory in New Orleans. As she watches over the birds in her yard, Olivia feels like an “accidental”—a migratory bird blown off course. When Olivia becomes pregnant again, she makes a fateful decision, compelling Grace, June, and Holly to cope in different ways. While their father digs up the backyard to build a bomb shelter, desperate to protect his family, Olivia’s spinster sister tries to take them all under her wing. But the impact of Olivia’s decision reverberates throughout Grace’s and June’s lives. Grace, caught up in an unconventional love affair, becomes one of the “girls who went away” to have a baby in secret. June, guilt-ridden for her part in exposing Grace’s pregnancy, eventually makes an unhappy marriage. Meanwhile Ed Mae Johnson, an African-American care worker in a New Orleans orphanage, is drastically impacted by Grace’s choices. As the years go by, their lives intersect in ways that reflect the unpredictable nature of bird flight that lands in accidental locations—and the consolations of imperfect return. Filled with tragedy, humor, joy, and the indomitable strength of women facing the constricted spaces of the 1950s and 60s, The Accidentals is a poignant, timely novel that reminds us of the hope and consolation that can be found in unexpected landings.

Author : Harriet Pollack
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2019-12-16
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781496826183

Get Book

New Essays on Eudora Welty, Class, and Race by Harriet Pollack Pdf

Contributions by Jacob Agner, Susan V. Donaldson, Sarah Gilbreath Ford, Stephen M. Fuller, Jean C. Griffith, Ebony Lumumba, Rebecca Mark, Donnie McMahand, Kevin Murphy, Harriet Pollack, Christin Marie Taylor, Annette Trefzer, and Adrienne Akins Warfield The year 2013 saw the publication of Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race, a collection in which twelve critics changed the conversation on Welty’s fiction and photography by mining and deciphering the complexity of her responses to the Jim Crow South. The thirteen diverse voices in New Essays on Eudora Welty, Class, and Race deepen, reflect on, and respond to those seminal discussions. These essays freshly consider such topics as Welty’s uses of African American signifying in her short stories and her attention to public street performances interacting with Jim Crow rules in her unpublished photographs. Contributors discuss her adaptations of gothic plots, haunted houses, Civil War stories, and film noir. And they frame Welty’s work with such subjects as Bob Dylan’s songwriting, the idea and history of the orphan in America, and standup comedy. They compare her handling of whiteness and race to other works by such contemporary writers as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Chester Himes, and Alice Walker. Discussions of race and class here also bring her masterwork The Golden Apples and her novel Losing Battles, underrepresented in earlier conversations, into new focus. Moreover, as a group these essays provide insight into Welty as an innovative craftswoman and modernist technician, busily altering literary form with her frequent, pointed makeovers of familiar story patterns, plots, and genres.