The Story Behind Medgar Evers

The Story Behind Medgar Evers

        During the 1950’s, the United States was undergoing a period of social upheaval as the black civil rights movement gained momentum. Problems of racial inequality and discrimination as reflected in hate crimes and a lack of voting rights were placed in the spotlight. African Americans such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks gained a voice as they challenged racial segregation in public restrooms, schools, buses, and even water fountains. However, many African Americans were being poorly treated and even killed for protesting in favor of equal rights while the whites escaped without punishment. Another slightly less famous yet signifiant civil rights activist who died for his beliefs is Medgar Evers.

        Born on July 2, 1925, Evers was raised on a farm in Decatur, Mississippi where he worked until being drafted into the United States Army in 1943. After fighting in both France and Germany during World War II, Evers received an honorable discharge three years later. Following his short-lived military career, he enrolled in and graduated from Alcorn College in Lorman, Mississippi with a major in business administration. During his senior year at Alcorn, Evers fell in love with and later married Myrlie Beasley with which he had three children (Williams 46). After working as an insurance salesman for a time following his graduation, Evers became involved with the Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mississippi and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, leading boycotts on gas stations that refused to allow African Americans access to their restrooms. In 1954, Evers became the NAACP’s first field secretary in Mississippi, traveling around the state to recruit members while organizing voter-registration endeavors and leading non-violent demonstrations against all white companies that practiced racial discrimination (Williams 58).

        After working his way up in the ranks of the NAACP, Evers became a well-known proponent for civil rights, which caused him and his family to suffer many threats from white southerners who violently opposed racial integration and equality. On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers was shot in the back and killed in front of his own home in Jackson, Mississippi by Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist, founding member of the White Citizens’ Council, and member of the Ku Klux Klan. Beckwith stood on trial twice in the 1960’s but the jurors, all of whom were white, were never able to reach a verdict on the case despite evidence of the stolen gun with fingerprints and eye-witnesses (105). Finally, thirty one years after Evers’ assassination, a third trial was conducted in 1994 that sentenced Beckwith to a lifetime in prison. Evers, who believed that violence should not be used as a means to any ends, was killed for his beliefs in justice and equality for which he dedicated so much of his life advocating (Williams 111). Evers’ murder incited national outrage and increased support for federal legislation that became the Civil Rights Act only a year later in 1964.

        The legacy of Medgar Evers has since been immortalized in the lyrics of “Only a Pawn in Their Game” by Bob Dylan. As a folk singer in the mid-twentieth century, Dylan addressed the sociopolitical drama of the time in his lyrics, and Evers’ death struck him as an example of society’s injustice worth singing about. During the time of Evers’ assassination, Dylan’s music was becomingly increasing popular. He first performed the song at the 1963 March on Washington during which Martin Luther King Jr. also delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech (Williams 321). In “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Dylan suggests that Evers’ murder cannot be solely blamed on the white man who fired the gun but rather society as a whole. Although Dylan is not arguing that Beckwith is not directly to blame, the main point is that American society has allowed the notion of white supremacy to endure to a violent and revolting extent. Because no governmental authority has created legislation to interfere and halt racial discrimination amongst the general public, unnecessary deaths have ensued as a result of the system at large rather than just one individual. Basically, society’s lack of social justice caused the tainted frame of mind of Evers’ murderer, and without such a persisting attitude, Evers’ protesting and consequent death may not have occurred according to Dylan’s reasoning.

        “Only a Pawn in Their Game” was one of the first songs that argued poor whites similar to poor African Americans were also the victims of discrimination. Dylan examines the dynamics between the white elites and poor whites, claiming that white elites use African Americans to divert the attention away from the socioeconomic gap amongst the white population itself. Dylan suggested that white elites such as “a South politician” manipulate the minds of “the poor white man” by using the lower class status of African Americans to keep the poor, ignorant whites from realizing their own injustices, “remain[ing] on the caboose of the train” (Dylan 9,17). Therefore, the lower class whites refuse to ban together with African Americans against the privileged whites to enact social change. Instead, the poor whites are used “like a tool” and blinded by the racist notion that “[they’re] better than [blacks], [they’ve] been born with white skin,” which was established by the privileged whites to protect their assets (Dylan 23,11). Dylan takes a typical left-wing approach to the problem of racial profiling and segregation in the South. He argues that the social discrepancies in society are a result of the economic and political issues, and the problem is not simply a question of morality or hatred.

        During the Civil Rights Era, songs that called into question the causes and consequences of racism often talked about the virtue of civil rights activists fighting against a segregated American society. Dylan takes the perspective that white men are a “pawn” in the larger “game” of life dominated by the social standards of society, which forced his listeners to think a little deeper as to the reasons behind the Evers’ murder rather than taking the situation at face value. Dylan’s song is not encouraging toward the civil rights movement nor does it attempt to uplift the spirits of the downtrodden in the wake of Evers’ murder. Dylan believes “it ain’t [Beckwith] to blame” but the white leaders who institutionalized racism and caused African American civil rights activists to put their lives at risk to gain equality (Dylan 8).