Into the heart of darkness
Back in the late 1960’s, during the civil rights wars, before reporters turned into “journalists” and even before professors were hippies or hippies were politicians, it became my extraordinary privilege to run around Mississippi with Charles Evers, famed black leader in that state. He had replaced his brother, Medgar, who was assassinated by a member of the white citizens’ council in 1963.
The Klan were continuing their murderous pastime of shooting or dynamiting the homes of people they didn’t like, including those of any race they saw as blood enemies. I felt several of these late-night blasts rumble through the walls of my house in Jackson, sort of like little earthquakes. It was always late at night.
Then, shortly after midnight, on May 15, 1970, two black students were shot and killed by police at Jackson State University. A large crowd had gathered and were pelting cars with rocks after a rumor spread through the campus that Charles Evers and his wife had been killed. The situation then became volatile overnight and was threatening to spread through the city.
The next day a very much alive Charles Evers grabbed a megaphone in front of City Hall and passionately told the hundreds of blacks assembled there that hatred and revenge was the last thing they should think of.
“Don’t you dare go to hatin’,” he shouted, “that’s what these kluckers hopin’ you do. Then they got you. You ain’t no better than them if you do that.” He told them to work hard for equality without damaging their prospects for achieving it by doing violence. The crowd quieted down. They listened!
Think about that.
Think about a lone guy walking right smack into the middle of a raging crucible of anger and telling the people doing the raging to stay cool! That takes real guts and command presence and Evers had both.
I believe he single-handedly kept the capitol city of Jackson from what could have been widespread destruction. The whole event was covered on the local evening news and it affected me. Most people, certainly including me, believed that Jackson, if not Mississippi as a whole, had just dodged a bullet. He did this in the middle of the South’s violent civil rights wars
By himself!
I took off work early the next day and went across town to Evers’ office on Lynch Street to express my appreciation. I said I’d like to write a magazine article about him. He responded:
“I’m goin’ down to Brookhaven tonight. We havin’ a meetin’. Wann’a go?.”
Out of the blue. Just like that!
Before I could think or consider the ramifications, I said I did. Then I called my wife who told me several times, heatedly, that I had lost my mind (at best) and not to blame anybody else if I got shot.
That meeting was held in a country church set back among some ancient live oak trees and included hymns sung a’cappella in what sounded like 16-part harmony. Evers spoke of resisting the malevolent power structure through vocal but non-violent efforts. That meeting was followed by others which I attended with him over the next year. On one late night occasion he asked me to drive the two of us from a rousing church meeting in Natchez, 104 miles back to Jackson.
I bought a six-pack of Budweiser and had it on the front seat between us. He had a loaded .30 caliber military carbine propped against the seat. He also had a .45 Army handgun in the glove compartment and a .38 revolver tucked in his belt. I didn’t have anything but the beer. No ice. He told me to speed up.
“I’m already going near the speed limit,” I protested.
“I can see that,” he said, “but I don’t like no headlights in the rear-view.” I reached into my little brown sack and got a beer.
“Heh, heh.”
“What?”
“They gonn’a put us both under the jail they catch us —- you drinkin’ and me colored. Heh, heh. They gonna say “hey, look’a here boys. We done got us a drunk drivin’ white boy and ol’ Evers here an’ a bunch’a guns. Lets turn ‘em in and throw away the key’” He paused for a second then said:
“Ain’t you ‘fraid’a bein’ caught drinkin? An’ speedin’, too?”
“No. I’m afraid of being caught driving you to Jackson.”
“Heh, heh.”
In those tumultuous years, Evers and I became friends. The Klan knew it, too, starting with “evidence” their spies picked up at the main post office downtown — a fragment of which is the very same photograph at the top of this post. Without thinking, I had mailed the film out for processing! Then the prints came back.
Then they knew!
Every couple of weeks a few of what most certainly were klan members would park a car at night in front of our house, turn off the headlights and just quietly sit there. Three or four guys. You could see the off-and-on red glare of their cigarettes inside the dark car. After a couple of hours (HOURS!) they would silently drive away, turning the headlights back on halfway down the street. Our children were safe in their beds. I stayed at the window, sleepless, for long afterwards.
Evers once told me he had advised Martin Luther King against doing nationwide appearances but to stick to his home state.
“I told Martin, ‘stay in Alabama where you can do the most good without gettin’ yo’self killed’. He didn’t listen.” Rev. King was murdered in Memphis, April 4, 1968 by a klansman sniper.
It isn’t clear exactly which straw broke the klan’s back in Mississippi but there was such a rapid accumulation of deadly klan-caused events in those years that people across the state got royally fed up and juries, some of them integrated, started putting those people away. Then the klan no longer had “cover”. The mayhem was finally winding down.
“The klan ain’t gonna win. We gonna win! They scared of us now.”
On one of those long night trips back to Jackson, I asked Evers into my home for some pecan pie and coffee. My wife wanted to meet him after all this time.
“Naw,” he said, “I can’t go in your home. Somebody could see us and get you in trouble.”
“But it’s dark, Charlie. Nobody’s gonna see anything. We can go in the kitchen door, around back if you’d rather.” He agreed.
Sitting there at the dining room table at one-thirty in the morning I noticed on the wall behind Evers a framed picture of Robert E. Lee. My grandmother had given it to me years before and I asked Evers to turn around and look.
“General Lee,” he said after a slight pause, “yes. General Lee. He was a fine man. He was always fair and kind to our people. I respect him. I’m sure you’re proud of that picture.”
Evers left the Democratic Party shortly afterwards, when he saw that the “movement” had been co-opted by dishonest politicians and race-hustling phonies, ostentatiously calling themselves “reverend”. Their sole interest was personal gain cloaked in a mantle of self-righteousness and wealth-transfer. Their aim was to gin up what Evers was trying to calm. A snarky radio reporter in Philadelphia, PA, once asked him, on-air, if he was “a Nixon Republican, a Newt Gingrich Republican or a Reagan Republican.”
“Naw,” he replied, “I’m a Charles Evers Republican.”
I consider it a miracle that Evers survived those years. No one living today can imagine how badly the ku klux klan wanted him dead. Their hatred weighed heavily in the very air in Mississippi back then. You felt it everywhere. It was always over your shoulder, around the corner, in the shadows, on the rooftops, waking behind you on the sidewalk.
Evers owned a restaurant in Fayette and we went there for lunch sometimes. One of the menu items I especially liked was broiled chicken thighs. It’s real easy to make. Here it is:
Broiled Chicken Thighs
You Can Do This
Rub the meat (skin-on, bone-in) with Lawry’s Seasoned Salt and black pepper.
Place thighs skin-down in a shallow roasting pan.
Set the broiler to 325 (F) and place the pan on a rack in mid-oven.
Turn after 12-15 minutes and broil for another 12 minutes (more time if the thighs are very large).
Remove the meat to a platter and cover to keep warm.
De-glaze the roasting pan with a little water and some butter and a little salt and pepper and drizzle this over steaming white rice.
I had to quit after just one of these, served with collard greens, sweet potato, cornbread muffins, butter peas and sweet iced tea.
“C’mon. You eatin’ like a bird.”
“I’m stuffed.”
“Naw, seriously. Get some more. You didn’t even try the pork chops.”
“I’m sure they’re great, Charlie, but if I eat anything more I’ll drop dead.”
“Heh, heh.”