Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America

Newscaster Joy-Ann Reid has taken a different tack on writing a biography of a martyred American hero. Rather than taking a linear approach to Medgar Ever’s work, Ms. Reid has framed his life within the confines of his loving family and his devoted wife, Myrlie. In this way, she has succeeded in bringing out the full measure of the man and his loss to the world and his family. By understanding his family’s loss and suffering, she brings context to the ugliness of racism and the terrible war on people of color in Mississippi.

Medgar Evers was the first NAACP Field Officer. His responsibilities took him to far reaches within Mississippi where he was alone and unprotected in these rural areas. Often in disagreement with the central headquarters, they did not provide him with protection despite his high profile and the constant threats to his life and the life of his family. His children were put through survival drills and despite that, his family witnessed his brutal assassination in the carport of their family home. His cowardly assassin breezed through two mistrials with an all-white jury and only came to justice thirty-one years after his crime.