Medgar Evers, at the time of his assassination in 1963, was the Field Secretary for the Mississippi NAACP and, thus one of the leaders of the civil rights movement in that state. Evers was born on July 2, 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi. Evers was inducted into the US Army in 1943 and served in Normandy the following year. After his discharge from the service, Evers enrolled at Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University).
While at Alcorn, he met his future wife, Myrlie Beasley of Vicksburg, and the following year they were married on December 24, 1951. After their graduation from Alcorn in 1952, they moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Evers worked at an insurance agency until 1954. While in Mound Bayou, Evers helped form local chapters of the NAACP in the predominantly African American Delta region of the state. His unsuccessful attempt in 1954 to attend the University of Mississippi Law School attracted national attention, especially since it came after the US Supreme Court decision declaring school segregation unconstitutional.
Evers soon worked full-time for the NAACP and moved to Jackson to run the statewide office. As state field secretary for the civil rights organization, he led a boycott of white Jackson merchants, who discriminated against black customers, and investigated racially motivated crimes against African Americans throughout the state. Evers also supported James Meredith’s successful effort to become the first African American to enter the University of Mississippi in 1962. Such high-profile leadership of the NAACP angered white supremacists throughout the state. He was assassinated outside his home in Jackson on June 12, 1963.
Black and white leaders from around the nation gathered in Jackson for Evers’s funeral. His brother, Charles, took over his position as state field secretary. Byron De La Beckwith stood trial twice in the 1960s for the assassination of Medgar Evers but was finally convicted in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison.
Evers’s legacy is ever-present in Mississippi. Ten years after his death, Mississippi had over 250,000 black voters (as opposed to 28,000 in 1963), 145 black elected officials, and African Americans were enrolled in each of the state’s public and private institutions of higher education.
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I love comparing Roadside Picnic and The Sphere
spoilers about both books
Both have this central wish granting object in the narrative, and theyre both orbs which I guess is supposed to like the platonic ideal of power or whatever. And even better, both seem to grant not just what you think you want but what your heart truly desiresBut Chrichton is an American and the Strugatsky brothers were Soviet. And their cultural milieu and history both had this indelible imprint on how they handle this Wish Granting Orb.
In The Sphere, its horrifying. We can't trust ourselves, the best we can do is forget because we aren't ready and maybe never will be. We cant hope to understand aliens and they cant hope to understand us. Our minds are terrifying and best closed. None of the scientists ever seem to wish for wisdom or an understanding of their conscious minds, instead their anxieties and impulses get the better of them despite this literal cosmic power of creation given to them.
In Roadside Picnic, Red - despite everything, all his very well earned cynicism, a life of exploitation and exploiting, having just sacrificed some naive idiot kid, when he finds himself in front of the Orb can only make that same wild, hopeful, stupid, wonderful wish. Happiness for all mankind. Its ambiguous whether or not its granted, I like to think it is but I know of some interpretations where he just ends up standing dumbly wishing for something good inside of himself before dying, but I do compare it to the terror the same kind of object inspired in the western mind.
Of course, in Stalker, they decide the room (the Orb from the book is now a room) is too powerful and they blow it up. Which is too bad. Because I adore the idea that maybe humanity is new on the cosmic scene or lacking in foresight or knowledge, but we still are fundamentally good and reaching out for each other - and that its not best to just discard the power to change the world for the better and just learn to suck it up in the muck.