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There are few human acts considered more noble than a parent working hard to leave his children a valuable inheritance. If parents work so hard that they sacrifice their lives early in the pursuit of this inheritance, and care enough to leave it to their children, to advance the quality of their lives, then it becomes noble all the more. Expand that concept to sacrifices meant to benefit an entire nation, and suddenly the work earns recognition as heroism.
In the immediate afterglow of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the attorney Benjamin Crump, representing the family of the victim Trayvon Martin, said something before the cameras that shocked and frankly angered. He directly compared Trayvon Martin to slain civil rights worker Medgar Evers.
Sadly, too few people in America appreciate their national history. Everyone should know who Medgar Evers was, and what he sacrificed his life for. Medgar Evers was born back in 1925. When his nation went to war to fight the Nazis, Evers enlisted in the US Army at age 18, and served in the European Theater from 1943 to the end of the war. He served in the Normandy Invasion and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant. He was a non-commissioned officer who led men in war.
After the war, Evers returned home and used the GI Bill to attend Alcorn State University. He earned his baccalaureate degree in 1952. While attending college, he met and married Myrlie Beasley, and spent the rest of his life with her as a faithful husband and father of their three children.
After graduation, Evers joined the NAACP during the height of this organizations good work to help end systemic Jim Crow laws in the southeast. Fully knowing the risks to his life, and frankly to his family, Evers located in Mississippi and worked privately as an insurance salesman, and also for the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. Shortly afterward, he was elected as the NAACP's first field leader in Mississippi.
Despite being an honorably discharged veteran of World War II, and a good family man, his application to attend the University of Mississippi's Law School was rejected because he was a black man.
Tasting the bitter brew of systemic racism, he worked hard to peacefully change his community and state. For his honorable work, he had true racists throw a Molotov Cocktail into the carport of his home. These evil men later tried to murder him again by deliberately running him down with an automobile as he was leaving his NAACP headquarters. The obvious threats to his life did not deter him. He was a brave man.
On 12 June 1963, at the relatively young age of 37 years, he drove to his home and got out of his car. As he was walking to his own front door, on his own yard, he was murdered by a thug with a hunting rifle with a single shot to the back. His assailant had not even the dignity to look him in the eye, but shot him in the back! Evers stumbled to his front door and fell unconscious on the door step, and bled to death in view of his wife and children!
Despite the racism of the day, the local district attorney, a white man named Bill Waller, twice attempted to bring the assassin to justice. Both murder trials ended with hung juries, all being composed of white men. In both trials held in 1963, some of the jurors voted to convict, and some refused despite the weight of the evidence.
There being no statute of limitations for murder, finally a third trial was convened in 1994 and Byron De La Beckwith was convicted for the murder. Beckwith was a known member of the white supremacist group, White Citizens Council, and also the Ku Klux Klan.
We should all know our history. Honorable men who sacrificed their lives to help make America a better country, such as Medgar Evers, should not be forgotten, nor should their heroic deeds be misunderstood or misrepresented.
Trayvon Martin was a confused 17 year old teenager. Perhaps with a few more years of maturity, he could have grown up to be a good man, married, and raised a family of his own. Sadly, the odds do not support such a hope. Currently, more than 65% of all black children born in America are born out of wedlock. Martin appeared well on the path to the same harmful lifestyle that too many young people in America today are willing to walk down.
Based upon the forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony offered in Zimmerman's trial, it seems that Martin chose to react to someone following him. He reacted by confronting the follower and hitting him, breaking his nose, and then pummeling him multiple times. Tragically, there were no burly men in that neighborhood who were able or willing to run to the scene of the fight, and pull Martin off Zimmerman, and separate the two until the police could arrive, as they did only a minute later. Instead, a single gun shot was fired that killed Martin, ending his confused young life far too early.
Martin's young life is a tragedy, and also an object lesson we cannot forget. In his short life, he was suspended from his school for drug use, posed for photos with a gun he was too young to legally own, and had pictures on his cell phone of underaged unclothed girls. Again, it is sad he did not live long enough to grow up and mature into a man. As a 17-year old, he deserved the chance to mature and gain the wisdom of long life. In truth, he died partially as a result of the crime that infected the neighborhood he walked home through, crime that set people against people because of fear of that crime.
But, to compare Trayvon Martin to Medgar Evers is lacking in principle and fairness. Evers died to give an inheritance to all of America. Sadly, it seems too many Americans would rather forget what Evers sacrificed his life to provide all of us, and instead soil his legacy through our own misdeeds, poor lifestyle choices, and false claims of systemic racism that have long since gone away. Evers helped make America better, and it is long past time for Americans to move forward, vice wallow in the evil past and fan the flames of racism long since thankfully left behind.
If Martin's young life can be properly used as a teaching moment, it should be to help encourage other young men and women to endeavor to live their lives in a manner befitting the legacy of Medgar Evers. If we can do that, then neither Martin's death, nor Ever's, shall be in vain.
On a fateful night in Florida, two people met, and based upon mutual confusion, and mistake, engaged in an altercation that ended with one of them shot dead and the other beaten. It was a tragedy, but it wasn't racism, and it should never had been said to be. As a nation, we can now choose to learn the true lessons, or we can continue to misrepresent and fan flames of anger and hatred that have no reason to exist.
-- Ken Stallings (email: ken@kenstallings.com)
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