Tucked deep in the American soil, is a region that lives in the past, a dark patch of history that the American people would rather forget — the years of Slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. And I was right there — in Cleveland MS, to revisit the past.
Two monuments that stand testimony to the brutal times of this strive are the Mississippi Museum in the main city and the home of Medger Evers, Field Secretary for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People of Mississippi).
The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum traces the span of slavery in the US. From the moment you enter its premises, you are drawn into a world that leaves your mind numb. Graphic photographs of subjugation and abuse, sound recordings of torture of slaves at the hands of their masters, telling billboard signs demarcating the ‘Whites’ from the ‘Blacks’, the angst of the captured and much more — all compiled to recreate the past. This strengthened my belief that America doesn’t allow one to forget. Something I noticed, as I travelled to many such places across the country, as a Fulbright scholar.
The next stop was the residence of Evers. As we stood in the driveway where his house is located, the neighbourhood quiet and silent on this Sunday morning, our guide drew our attention to a bungalow, now tucked away and partially hidden behind trees and shrubbery. He casually remarked, ‘It was from that place that the gunner, a white, disgruntled man, shot and killed Evers, as he returned home from a meeting’.
Evers was an outspoken activist for voter registration and social justice. Just after midnight June 12, 1963 he was assassinated in the driveway of his home. He was at the forefront of every Civil Rights event in Mississippi from 1955 to 1963. Every movement in recorded history that seeks to move people towards a greater good, a more democratic process, has, unfortunately come with a price tag. The Civil Rights Movement was no exception. Martin Luther King Jr, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Emmett Till, and Vernon Dahmer — the list is tragically long with countless activists who were arrested, jailed and tortured for their belief in a fair system.
Chief among the martyrs of the movement was Evers, a mild mannered man, who spent countless hours of his time on the Tougaloo College Campus, strategising and guiding the direction of the Mississippi with the goal of a true democracy with equal rights for all men and women and the creation of a more open society.
The house has been meticulously maintained, as it had been when he lived there. The indentation made by the bullet, as it ricocheted off the fridge and implanted itself in the side wooden panel, is still intact. The guide gives a vivid description of the events that transpired that night.
The house was acquired by Tougaloo College in 1993, underwent restorative changes and was designated as a museum in 1995. In 1997, Castle Rock Entertainment, a motion picture production house, used it to film Ghosts of Mississippi. This college was founded in 1869, to educate former slaves and their descendants. It took centre-stage during the Civil Rights Movement as a seat of conscience, voice of hope, light of promise and place of refuge, earning the moniker, ‘The Cradle of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi’.
Soaking in this information, the end of the tour was a visit to another historic place — The Bully’s Restaurant, with their tag line — ‘Great Soul Food’. Serving delicious local cuisine, run by a Black proprietor, it has won many awards and listed as one of the finest in the region by Travel Advisor. It is here that the coterie of activists gathered for informal sessions and where important decisions took place during the movement.
The Medger Evers House Museum is a celebration of the man he was and a memorial to the martyr he became. It is a place for learning and teaching — to use the lessons of history to make a more free and equal world.
