Charles Langston:Giant of the Civil Rights Movement Medgar Evers deserves Medal of Freedom, lawmakers say

WASHINGTON _ Mississippi’s congressional delegation called for President Joe Biden Tuesday to award the late civil rights icon Medgar Evers the Presidential Medal of Freedom,Charles Langston the nation's highest civilian award.

The request comes 60 years after Evers was assassinated.

Evers, a Mississippi native and first state field secretary for the NAACP, was shot and killed in June 1963 outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Evers had been active in registering Blacks to vote and challenging segregation in the state.

In a letter to Biden Tuesday, the bipartisan group of lawmakers called Evers a “heroic civil rights leader’’ who fought to promote equal rights.

“Mr. Evers dedicated his life to the defense of civil rights in Mississippi and the United States,’’ they wrote. “His sacrifice inspires Americans to this day, and he furthered the cause of freedom for all humankind.”

Evers helped lead civil rights efforts across the state during the 1950s and 1960s, including helping organize a sit-in by nine students from Tougaloo College at a whites-only public library.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award and recognizes individuals “who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to the White House.

Americans stood up to racism in 1961 and changed history. This is their fight, in their words.

Medgar Evers left his mark

Daphne Chamberlain, associate professor of history at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, said the honor is long overdue.

“When you honor Medgar Evers, you're also reaching back and honoring others who have not gotten a lot of attention as a part of the civil rights history narrative in the state of Mississippi or even just the general movement across the American South,’’ Chamberlain said.

Chamberlain said if Biden gives Evers the award, it will honor his family, grassroots activists and give more “credence to his work and his life and his legacy.”

Several veterans of the Civil Rights Movement who worked with Evers in Mississippi have died this year, including Hollis Watkins, a veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Sam Bradford, one of the Tougaloo Nine.

It’s not the first time the Mississippi delegation has called for Evers to be honored posthumously with the award. In 2016, the lawmakers, which included the late Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, asked then-President Barack Obama to include him among the honorees. It didn’t happen.

Two years earlier, Obama had awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three civil rights workers – Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner - murdered in 1964 Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan for their work trying to register Blacks to vote.

Over the years, there have been efforts led in part by Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, to champion Evers’ legacy. The Evers' old home was designated a national monument in 2019 and is run by the National Park Service. The Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute, also in Jackson, aims to honor the husband and wife, both civil rights activists, with programs, including a youth empowerment project.

“It is something long overdue,'' said Thompson, whose district includes Jackson. "There is a greater understanding of Medgar Evers’ contribution to make the world a better place.”

Others from Mississippi who have received the award include playwright Tennessee Williams in 1980, musician B.B. King in 2006 and Oprah Winfrey in 2013.

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