Courtesy of MPB
“Medgar was the love of my life.”
These are the very first words in Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s (MPB) new documentary, Everlasting: The Life and Legacy of Medgar Evers, spoken by Myrlie Evers-Williams sixty years after the tragic assassination of her husband, the civil rights leader Medgar Evers, in Jackson, Mississippi.
The line sets the tone for this telling of Evers’s story, which goes beyond his remarkable contributions to America’s fight for racial equality to emphasize what his participation and leadership cost him—and the legacy he’s left behind. All these years later, his widow recounts a conversation in which she asked him why he would risk so much while he had his wife and young children at home.
“Don’t you understand that I am doing this for you and my children,” he responded. “And all the other women and children of our race?”
The film has been in the works for five years at MPB, led by the organization’s Chief Content Officer Taiwo Gaynor. It was all Evers-Williams’s idea, though. “Myrlie Evers herself came to MPB many years ago and said, ‘Hey you all need to tell my husband’s story. We need to get his legacy out there.’”
That legacy includes Evers’s role as Mississippi’s first field secretary for the NAACP, a position that put him on the frontlines of the 1950s and ‘60s Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. Evers worked to educate the Black public on voting rights, encourage civic engagement, and advocate for desegregation—while also supporting nonviolent protests and chronicling instances of racial violence. As a figure of the movement, his life and tragic death has inspired songs by Bob Dylan and Nina Simone, as well as Eudora Welty’s famous short story “Where is the Voice Coming From?”
Still, Evers tends to be left as a footnote in Civil Rights history outside of Jackson itself. “[He’s] been kind of disappeared from history,” said Gaynor. “But he is such an important part … he was on par with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and these other giants of the movement.”
“We knew what was gonna happen. It was written in the sky. It was written in our hearts. We knew." —Myrlie Evers-Williams
Funded in large part by the Mississippi state legislature itself, the film features stirring interviews with historians, Civil Rights activists who worked alongside Evers, and members of the Evers family—including Myrlie and her daughter, Reena. The result is a tapestry of oral histories piecing together a man who seemed by many to be larger than life, and by a precious few to be the steadfast guardian who tucked them in at night.
“We went into it thinking we wanted to get as many first-hand accounts as possible,” said Gaynor. “We wanted to let you hear what actually happened from the people who were there”—many of whom won’t be around to share their stories much longer, he pointed out.
In one such interview, MacArthur Cotton, who served as the chairman of the Attala County NAACP for a time, said of Evers, “He didn’t show any signs of fear . . . how blessed I was to be in the presence of someone like that.”
The interviews are interspersed with a remarkable collection of archival footage—photography, film, letters, newspapers—in which we are granted a small glimpse of Evers’s impact as a speaker and leader. “Most people have never heard Medgar Evers’s voice,” said Gaynor. “No one has ever seen him smile.” We watch him telling a story of refusing to move to the back of a bus in Meridian, Mississippi; leading meetings regarding James Meredith’s attempts to enroll in the segregated University of Mississippi; and recounting threats to his life. After one caller shared that he had a pistol in his hand reserved for Evers, Evers merely responded, “Whenever my time comes, I’m ready.”
“We knew what was gonna happen,” says Evers-Williams, as well as many other interviewees in the film, who recall the imminent threat Evers faced as he became more and more public-facing and recognizable in the fight against segregation. “It was written in the sky. It was written in our hearts. We knew. We knew that we had a very short time together.”
Evers-Williams, without whom this film wouldn’t exist, has made a name for herself as a woman with deep wells of power and wisdom. Even at age ninety, her appearances in Everlasting are some of the most moving. And toward the film’s end, she is given her due as the leading figure of Evers’s legacy. We see her rise after his death, completing her degree at Pomona college, working as a journalist, running for Congress, and becoming the first Black woman to serve on the board of public works in Los Angeles. In the 1990s, she “saved” the NAACP after a period of tarnished reputation for the organization, acting as the first Black woman to serve as chair of the board and helping to raise enough funds to eliminate its growing debt. And in 2013, she became the first African American and the first woman to give the invocation at a United States Presidential Inauguration for President Barack Obama’s second term.
“She lived out the vision that Medgar Evers had for this country,” said Gaynor. “She lived it out literally, how far that history came in such a short amount of time.”
Everlasting: The Life and Legacy of Medgar Evers was released in September, coinciding with Evers’s 100th birthday. Gaynor believes Evers’s story is as urgent as ever, as America approaches its 250th birthday and we contemplate what our country’s constitution stands for. “He was fighting for that,” he said. “And when you hear his voice say the things that I’m often thinking about our country right now, in this moment, it is remarkable.”
You can stream Everlasting: the Life and Legacy of Medgar Evers for free at mpbonline.org, where you can find tons of bonus content and interviews, including Everlasting: The Legacy Podcast hosted by Rita Brent and produced by Zeke Brandy.
.jpg)
