Medgar, Myrlie, and the Movement

Every year, the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis bestows an award for a nonfiction book that best furthers understanding of the American Civil Rights Movement and its legacy. This year’s winner is Joy-Ann Reid’s Medgar and Myrlie, an absorbing history of the struggle for racial justice in Mississippi and beyond, told through the experience of an extraordinary couple, Medgar Evers and Myrlie Evers-Williams.

Joy-Ann Reid has hosted a variety of nationally televised news programs, including, most recently, The ReidOut on MSNBC. She is the author of two previous books: Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide and The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story. She answered questions via email from Chapter 16:

Chapter 16: “This book is, first and foremost, a love story,” you write. Can you explain that description? How do you envision “love” in the context of this history?

Joy-Ann Reid: I view Medgar and Myrlie as a three-part love story. It traces Medgar and Myrlie’s intense love for one other; Medgar’s deep love for his home state of Mississippi, despite all of the pain that Mississippi racism caused him and his family; and Medgar’s pure, unadulterated love for this country, which he proved by offering up his life twice — as a volunteer soldier and as a civil rights leader — to make it live up to its founding creed.

Chapter 16: You are known for your television commentary on national politics, and your previous books have examined contemporary political figures from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. What compelled you to pivot into writing history?

Reid: I am first and foremost a history buff, and in some ways, history is journalism written backwards; it’s the opportunity to look back into time and unravel mysteries and stories that need to be told.

Chapter 16: Medgar and Myrlie argues that Medgar Evers shaped the contours of the Civil Rights Movement. What was the nature of his work, and why was it so significant?

Reid: I think of Medgar as a sort of “Forrest Gump” of civil rights history. He is present and embedded in so many of the key events in history, yet his name has been scrubbed from our official memory. It was his NAACP youth committees that trained a 15-year-old James Chaney. It was his groundwork in the Delta that laid the foundation for the Mississippi Freedom Rides and Bob Moses and SNCC’s efforts to register rural Blacks to vote in that all-but-impossible state. It was his NAACP office that bailed out of jail the hundreds of young protesters who boldly marched against segregation over the objections of the home office. He was the instigator of the most famous Woolworth’s sit-in in Mississippi history, and when Medgar was assassinated, Dr. King initially included him and Emmett Till — whose lynching he investigated, prompting unprecedented live witness testimony by Black men against white men in that state — in what became the speech at the March on Washington. And when men like James Baldwin came to Mississippi to join and record the civil rights struggle, it was Medgar and Myrlie’s home, and Medgar’s office on Lynch Street, that served as their headquarters. There is a reason Baldwin stated that the three great men of the movement were Martin, Malcolm, and Medgar.

Chapter 16: Civil rights activists in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s must have endured enormous pressures. How did those demands shape the Evers’ marriage?

Reid: Ms. Myrlie was incredibly candid in our many interviews for the book about how Medgar’s insistence on being a movement leader strained their marriage. She was initially reluctant to support his work because she was simply a young woman in love, who wanted her husband home with her, and safe. But as their marriage progressed, she became not just his literal assistant, speech editor, and confidant, but also his fiercest supporter. And after he was assassinated, she picked up the torch to carry his mission forward and to seek justice for his murder.

Chapter 16: When Byron De La Beckwith assassinated Medgar Evers in 1963, it put Myrlie Evers into the spotlight. How did she respond? How, in the ensuing decades, did she evolve?

Reid: Myrlie Evers-Williams, in my opinion, is a national treasure and hero. This 30-year-old woman, and reluctant activist, immediately found her voice after Medgar’s assassination and spoke powerfully for justice, touring the country and refusing to let white America forget what its negligence and tolerance for hate had done. She then spent 30 years doggedly pursuing justice for her husband’s assassination, ultimately helping to secure De La Beckwith’s conviction, and going on to herself become the national leader of the NAACP.

Chapter 16: In our current, fraught political atmosphere, does the history of the Civil Rights Movement bear any significance? What can the story of Medgar and Myrlie Evers teach us?

Reid: The story of Medgar and Myrlie Evers teaches us the power of love — since it takes tremendous love of our people, our loved ones, and our country to fight to free America from its demons.