Medgar Evers

New Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Besmirched By Presence Of Donald Trump, And Absence, Therefore, Of John Lewis, Civil Rights Icon

Today, in Jackson, Mississippi, a new Civil Rights Museum opens, to commemorate the sufferings of African Americans in the history of Mississippi discrimination and violence.

Mississippi is the state of the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955; of James Meredith needing National Guard intervention ordered by President John F. Kennedy in 1962-1963 to be able, safely, to attend the University of Mississippi; and of the three civil rights workers (Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney) murdered in 1964 by Ku Klux Klansmen, simply for the act of trying to register black voters. Also, the murder of Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 stands out as a deplorable moment in Mississippi history.

It is the state which has the worst image of all 50 states on racism, bloodshed, and violence in the Civil Rights Era, but also of its members of Congress historically, including Theodore Bilbo, John Stennis, and James Eastland, and Governor Ross Barnett, infamous for racism and advocating prejudice and denial of equal rights to African Americans.

The opening of this new museum is a wonderful event, but is besmirched by the presence of President Donald Trump, who has a long history of promoting discrimination, racism, prejudice, and hatred in his own life experience, and his promotion of setting back civil rights during his Presidency, including his appointment of former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be his Attorney General, and setting back civil rights enforcement as a policy.

Just as Donald Trump is advocating Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate seat, with his long record of racism, along with the record of Moore involved in sexual abuse of young women, including girls under the age of 18, now he is coming to an event which is pure hypocrisy on his part, and only promotes racial division ever more.

Therefore, civil rights icon John Lewis, Georgia Congressman, who was involved in the major events of the civil rights movement, and is much respected and honored by all decent people, will not be attending the opening of this museum on principle, a regrettable but understandable reaction by this great man.

50 Years Since Civil Rights Activist Medgar Evers Was Killed In Mississippi

A sad anniversary was reached today, as 50 years ago, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was killed in Mississippi by gunfire, as he stepped out of his car at his home, just hours after Alabama Governor George Wallace had stood in the door of the Registrar’s Office at the University of Alabama, attempting to stop the registration of two black students at the university, which had led to President John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights Speech that evening, one of the greatest Presidential speeches in American history!

It was just past midnight, when Evers, the Mississippi Field Secretary of the NAACP, was slaughtered, leaving three young children and a wife, Myrlie Evers-Williams, who survives him after 50 years, and later became the Chairwoman of the NAACP.

His assassin went free after a hung jury, but was later convicted on new evidence thirty years later, and served time in prison for the last seven years of his life.

A community college in New York City was created within a few years in his honor, and Evers has remained a leading part of the civil rights story.

His death also shaped the thoughts of a young generation of whites and blacks, and stained the reputation of both Mississippi and Alabama, as the two worst states on civil rights above all others, with Mississippi often compared in many ways to Nazi Germany in its treatment of its minority population, before the federal government intervened and enforced civil rights on all states by legislation in 1964, repudiating the arguments of states rights!