Joy-Ann Reid:
Absolutely.
James Baldwin called Medgar, Malcolm and Martin the great triumvirate of the civil rights movement. But people know so much more about the other two than they do about Medgar Evers. He's sort of a — when you land in Jackson, Mississippi, you land in Medgar Evers Airport. A lot of people don't know why.
If you're in Brooklyn, you can go to Medgar Evers College. A lot of people just don't know who that is. They maybe have heard of the name, but they really don't know his story.
And to my mind, he was in many ways the most heroic civil rights leader in this country, because he was operating in the most difficult state to do civil rights. And that was Mississippi, the most lynchings per capita, the most aggressive Klan organization that killed Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and many, many more, the most aggressive statewide apparatus that was sort of the Klan in suits, a literal spy organization that operated out of the governor's office and the state legislature to spy on the citizens of Mississippi.
That existed nowhere but that state. And he was not just the field secretary. He was the first, the inaugural field secretary. And I can remember Vernon Jordan, the wonderful, great Vernon Jordan. I interviewed him for my first book, for "Fracture," and I remember sitting in his office and him saying to me that he could remember — he was very close to Medgar.
And he said he could remember being on the phone with Medgar, and Medgar literally crying and saying: I can't do this. They won't sign up to vote. They're terrified here. People in the Delta are so scared. They don't want to put their names on an NAACP ledger. And my bosses want me to do this, and they're insisting that's all I do, sign people up for membership in the NAACP and register them to vote.
But they don't understand. They're in New York. And this is almost impossible here, because these people need to develop just the courage to walk into a department store. It's so terrifying that just talking to a white person in the wrong way can get you lynched here.
And I think, for a lot of people, they have forgotten how much bravery it took for him to operate, not in Georgia, not even in Louisiana, not even in South Carolina, but Mississippi.
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