A Voice In The Wilderness--Medgar Evers & The Miss

The Post Civil War Era ushered in the period of Reconstruction which lasted from 1865-1877.  It was during this time, that swelled bereft masses of former slaves flooded the war torn South as bitter Confederate sentiments lingered. Due to Congress legislating the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, “freedmen” were indelibly engrafted into the nation’s social fabric as full citizens. The American ideology of race had seemingly found a tangible resolution.  However, President Rutherford B. Hayes began withdrawing Northern troops from the former Confederacy in 1877 as a result of political wrangling. This ill conceived decision invited pernicious violence towards people of African descent for generations to come. Unimpeded intimidation, disenfranchisement and Jim Crow beset the hopes of so many for another one hundred years.  

The following century gave rise to the “Greatest Generation” that would produce new social leaders such as Medgar Wiley Evers who would recraft America’s Civil Rights narrative. Being born in 1925, he was a child of the Great Depression and eventually became a soldier during World War II. His tour ended after the successful D-Day Invasion and he returned home in 1946. Like his peers, liberal cultural experiences abroad nurtured within him a newly formed dignity that would not yield to the traditional racial norms of Mississippi. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Alcorn A&M College in 1952 and had accepted the state’s NAACP Field Representative position by 1955. After doing so, Evers relocated his young family from Mound Bayou to Mississippi’s capitol. Here, he became a voice in the wilderness.  

Please see more pictures on Mill Valley Rotary club Facebook page: 
https://www.facebook.com/RotaryClubOfMillValley/posts/3384143015036590