GREENVILLE - The images came flickering across the television monitor, rekindling a time when people of color in Mississippi were not experiencing the atmosphere of inclusion the Founding Fathers had in mind.
Last week, I found myself watching the motion picture "Ghosts of Mississippi," which chronicled the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Wiley Evers, and the subsequent prosecution of white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith more than three decades later.
De la Beckwith, of Greenwood, had been fingered as the culprit who laid in wait for Evers on June 12, 1963, as the civil rights leader returned to his Jackson home. Although Beckwith was indicted for the Evers murder, two all-white-male juries failed to return convictions. The apparent jury indifference simply perpetuated a perception that a white man would never be convicted in Mississippi of taking the life of a black man.
The 1997 film, which starred Whoopi Goldberg as Myrlie Evers, his widow, and Alec Baldwin as crusading Hinds County Assistant District Attorney Bobby DeLaughter, was simply Hollywood's cinematic postscript of an event that helped the civil rights movement turn the corner - several months before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. shared his earth-shaking dream of racial inclusion with the world.
It is no great secret that Magnolia has wrestled with its segregationist past - from the cotton patch to the corporate boardroom. And 40 years ago, a gunshot rang out in the night - claiming the life of Evers, a valiant drum major who dared march to a different tune.
DeLaughter, who is currently a Hinds County Circuit judge, was a young state prosecutor at the time, and saw an urgent need to correct a gross injustice in the Evers case. And in 1994, a Hinds County Circuit Court jury - much more reflective of the human mosaic - found de la Beckwith guilty in the Evers' killing. Beckwith, 80, died in jail in 2000.
On this 40th anniversary of the murder of Evers, there is no national holiday acknowledgment of its import has been haphazard, but we all owe a gratitude to this uncompromising steward of racial inclusion.
Evers, the young field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had become a strident voice - an utterance that those who wanted to maintain the state's racial status quo did not want to hear.
But Evers, a World War II Army veteran, was undaunted in championing the cause of blacks who were relegated to second-class citizenship throughout the Deep South.
Nevertheless, Evers was viewed in some quarters around the state as a distinct threat to the accepted Southern way of life.
As with King, perhaps Evers understood that his earthly time was drawing to a conclusion, but he remained unbowed and unafraid of the perils that lay ahead.
"It may sound funny, but I love the South," Evers said many times. "There is room for my children to play and grow, and become good citizens - if the white man will let them."
Evers was no stranger to the Mississippi Delta, tirelessly working and organizing in Mound Bayou in Bolivar County, and in other communities throughout the region.
Many Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that we remain a free society, where everyone has the opportunity to pursue happiness and success. And as we continue to wage the battle to bring democracy to Iraq, we should remember the freedom-fighters back home, because we owe Evers an unrepayable debt of gratitude for making the supreme beneficence to ensure that liberty will be indeed alive and well in America.
