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Hunter Bear - June 15 2011 This is about things that should never be forgotten and, indeed, must be remembered forever. This is the time of the year which, almost half a century ago in 1963, saw the climax of our Jackson Movement. That massive and, from us, non-violent struggle was brutally and often bloodily attacked by hordes of Mississippi "lawmen", thugs, vigilantes. The Jackson Movement's examples of martyrdom are many. On the peak of that great mountain of courage and sacrifice is the death of Medgar W. Evers, field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP. [His killer, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, was eventually convicted in 1994, after two hung white juries in 1964, and died several years ago in the Mississippi State Penitentiary.] I knew Medgar as a close friend and co-worker in struggle from almost the moment of our arrival in Mississippi in the late summer of 1961 right through to his murder on the night of June 11, 1963 [he died shortly after midnight on June 12.] These paragraphs here are excerpts from our very full web page in appreciation of Medgar and the Jackson Movement. The link to that full page and an interesting related link on our violently attacked Jackson Woolworth Sit In are given at the conclusion of this introductory material. >From our full web page: I knew Martin King -- not deeply and well -- but consistently. I called him on the night of June 13 1963 from Jackson -- two days after Medgar Evers was shot and killed. Our rapidly growing protest demonstrations were being bloodily suppressed. I asked Dr King to come to Jackson for Medgar's funeral on June 15. He readily agreed to do so. We picked him up and several key staff of his -- Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt Walker and others -- at the police-drenched Jackson airport. It was already very hot and the temperature was to go, that day, to 102 super-humid degrees. Martin King and Dr Abernathy rode in my car -- along with Bill Kunstler -- and the others were brought by Ed King. We had a very grudging police escort from the city's all-White police department. The Jackson setting could not have been more lethally dangerous for all of us -- but Dr King visited easily and casually with me, and I with him, as we traveled the very dangerous several miles to the Negro Masonic Temple on Lynch Street. The funeral was huge -- several thousand people, inside and out -- and, following the funeral, six thousand of us marched the two miles or so from the Temple to the Collins Funeral Home on Farish Street. [It was the first "legal" civil rights demonstration in Mississippi's hate-filled, sanguinary history.] Then, there was a second massive demonstration -- which is discussed in my following post on Medgar Evers. I knew Medgar Wiley Evers deeply and well. This extensive document focuses heavily and in considerable detail on my personal and direct recollections of Medgar W. Evers. It also deals with the epochal Jackson Movement of 1961- 1963. Written by me [Hunter Gray] on September 27 1966 -- little more than three years after Medgar's death in 1963 -- to Ms. Polly Greenberg, a writer from New York City -- my recollections were fresh, sharp and vivid. [And they certainly still are -- etched forever in my psyche.] Copies of this letter are held in my collected papers at State Historical Society of Wisconsin and Mississippi Department of Archives and History. A copy is also held by a very good and faithful colleague, Mrs. Doris Allison of Jackson, then President of the Jackson Branch of NAACP, and, with Medgar and myself, a signer of our famous letter of May 12, 1963 -- which threw down the gauntlet to the power structure of Jackson and Mississippi. [Mrs. Allison and I talk several times each month.] Very curiously -- surprisingly -- this extensive personal reflection/appreciation with respect to Medgar W. Evers, a major civil rights figure in Mississippi and national martyr, has been ignored by most writers who have had access to it. One of those who did use it -- and quite effectively -- was the New York Times reporter, Adam Nossiter, in his good Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994. I now make it quite public. For our full page, my letter to Ms. Greenberg and more, on Medgar W. Evers: http://hunterbear.org/medgar_w.htm And, among our many other pages on the Jackson Civil Rights Movement, see our two consecutive pages on The Woolworth Sit In -- the most violently attacked sit-in of the 1960s: http://hunterbear.org/Woolworth%20Sitin%20Jackson.htm HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands. Our Hunterbear website is now eleven years old.. Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm See - Personal and Detailed Background Narrative: http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm See this on the new, expanded edition of my book, Jackson Mississippi -- the classic account of the historic and bloody Jackson Movement of almost 50 years ago: http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm And see Shooting Lupus (my killing a deadly disease that did its best to kill me): http://hunterbear.org/shooting_lupus.htm ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
