Have No Fear

Andrew Szanton, Charles Evers

Description

"Have No Fear reminds us what it meant to live under a system where segregation was important enough to kill for and where being treated with dignity and respect was a whites-only entitlement." --The New York Times Book Review

"A gutsy, American patriot and treasure . . . an important slice of American history."--Dan Rather

"Charles Evers has given us one of the most extraordinary memoirs about race in America that I know. This holy sinner of the civil rights era, who kept company with mobsters, bootleggers, call girls, Kings, Kennedys, and Rockefellers has produced, with Andrew Szanton, a salient one-man's history of Mississippi and the United States before and after Brown v. Board of Education. The fascinating interplay of racial nihilism and political sagacity is reminiscent of the early Malcolm X and the mature Frederick Douglass." --David Levering Lewis

"Truly spellbinding . . . relives the fear, desperation, and confrontation that marked the civil rights struggle." --The seattle times
My Pact with Medgar.

Mama, Daddy, and Old Mark Thomas.

The Wall of Separation.

Whites Messed with Us, But We Couldn't Mess with Them.

Felicia.

Wheeling and Dealing at Alcorn.

Crossing the Line.

The Pure of Heart: Medgar Joins the NAACP Full-Time.

Terrible Years.

Chicago: The Chances I Took.

I Trusted to God and My .45 Pistol.

Turn Me Loose.

You Won't Die in Vain, Medgar.

Taking Over the Mississippi NAACP.

Two Lost Brothers.

Hate Goes on Trial.

Interrupting the Green.

The Next Step up the Ladder.

Lyndon Johnson Said, "We Shall Overcome." Black Power.

Losing Martin, Losing Bobby.

Running for Congress: Evers for Everybody.

Call Me "The Mayor." Fayette Was Our Israel.

A Black-Skinned Man Running for Governor.

Scolding Richard Nixon about Watergate.

Why I Became a Republican.

The Bridge That Carried Us Across.

Have No Fear.

Selected Bibliography.

Index.

Sujets

• Political
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 21 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470301890
• Langue: English

Extrait

Have No Fear
Have No Fear
The Charles Evers Story
Charles Evers and Andrew Szanton
A ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN BOOK

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
New York Chichester Brisbane Toronto Singapore Weinheim
This text is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 1997 by Charles Evers and Andrew Szanton
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc.
All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada.
Portions of this book are from The Playboy Interview: Charles Evers,
Playboy , October 1971. Copyright 1971 by Playboy .
Used with permission. All rights reserved.
Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Evers, Charles.
Have no fear : the Charles Evers story / by Charles Evers and Andrew Szanton.
p. cm.
A Robert L. Bernstein book.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-471-29694-2
1. Evers, Charles, 1922- 2. Civil rights workers-Mississippi-Biography. 3. Afro-American politicians-Mississippi-Biography. 4. Politicians-Mississippi-Biography. 5. Civil rights movements-Mississippi-History-20th century. 6. Afro-Americans-Civil rights-Mississippi. 7. Mississippi-Race relations. 8. Mississippi-Politics and government-1951.
I. Szanton, Andrew.
E185.97.E93A3 1997
323.092-dc20
[B]
96-5766
To our brothers, Medgar and Nathan
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments

Collecting History: A Collaborator s Introduction

Prologue: What It Meant to Be an Evers

1 My Pact with Medgar

2 Mama, Daddy, and Old Mark Thomas

3 The Wall of Separation

4 Whites Messed with Us, But We Couldn t Mess with Them

5 Felicia

6 Wheeling and Dealing at Alcorn

7 Crossing the Line

8 The Pure of Heart: Medgar Joins the NAACP Full-Time

9 Terrible Years

10 Chicago: The Chances I Took

11 I Trusted to God and My .45 Pistol

12 Turn Me Loose

13 You Won t Die in Vain, Medgar

14 Taking Over the Mississippi NAACP

15 Two Lost Brothers

16 Hate Goes on Trial

17 Interrupting the Green

18 The Next Step up the Ladder

19 Lyndon Johnson Said, We Shall Overcome

20 Black Power

21 Losing Martin, Losing Bobby

22 Running for Congress: Evers for Everybody

23 Call Me The Mayor

24 Fayette Was Our Israel

25 A Black-Skinned Man Running for Governor

26 Scolding Richard Nixon about Watergate

27 Why I Became a Republican

28 The Bridge That Carried Us Across

29 Have No Fear

Selected Bibliography

Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book has been a four-year journey passing through six different states. Among the hundreds of good people I have met along the way, let me single out five for special thanks.
My parents, Peter and Eleanor Szanton, have inspired me to write all my life and have helped me in many specific ways to understand, and do justice to, this particular project.
My brother, Nathan Szanton, has also been a great inspiration over many years, and a thoughtful, enthusiastic reader of this manuscript.
Hana Lane, my efficient, friendly editor at John Wiley, was another wise reader of the manuscript, who nimbly shaped it, believed in it, and saw it through to publication.
My greatest thanks go to Charles Evers. He answered hundreds of questions without flinching. He opened his files to me, took dozens of telephone calls at odd moments, sat for about ten formal interviews and countless informal ones, and even put me up for two long stays in his home. He trusted a man he hardly knew to tell his life story. I hope I have repaid his confidence.
For general assistance with this book, let me thank Franz Allina, Jerry Auerbach, Judy Auerbach, Steve Axelrod, Helen Bernstein, Jason Berry, Ellen Brodsky, Chris Calhoun, Cecily Cook, Levente Csaplar, Frank Curtis, Ken DeCell, Joseph Finder, Marilyn Fletcher, Eric Frumin, Melissa Frumin, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Richard Goodwin, Rob Gurwitt, Grace Halsell, Al W. Johnson, Ray Kemp, Susan Klee, Sydelle Kramer, Lisa Mihaly, Ethan Nelson, William Novak, Ronald Roach, Ted Rybeck, Will Schwalbe, Daniel Steiner, Henry Steiner, Sarah G. Szanton, Sarah L. Szanton, Tom Wicker, Sally Willcox, Mary Beth Williamson, Edith Wojeski, and Ken Wong.
For granting me personal interviews or helping this project in some other especially generous way, I want to thank Ainslie Binder, Peter Edelman, John Gregg, William Kienzle, Kate Kowalski, Neal Peirce, Dan Rather and his assistants Susan Martins and Sakura Komiyama, Yuval Taylor, and Peggy Wiesenberg.
Thanks to the San Francisco Public Library; the John F. Kennedy Library, especially Ronald Whealan, head librarian; the State Library of Massachusetts; the Wessell Library at Tufts University; the Pusey Library and the Widener Library, at Harvard University, especially Cheryl LaGuardia; the Henry Thomas Sampson Library, at Jackson State; the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, in Jackson; the Louis Round Wilson Library, at the University of North Carolina; the Shreve Memorial Library in Shreveport; and the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., especially Fred Bauman and Ernest Emrich in the Manuscript Division. My thanks also go to Playboy magazine, especially to Marcia Terrones, for granting me permission to use material from Charles Evers s 1971 interview.
For the photos in this book, let me thank Charles Evers, Eric Williams and Gerry Matthews at Black Star, and Don Bowden at AP/Wide World.
Let me thank all the people at John Wiley, besides Hana Lane, who helped produce and promote this book, especially Carole Hall, but also Lisbeth Cobas, Dee Dee DeBartlo, Gerry Helferich, Lauri Sayde, Jennifer Holiday, Earl Cox, and the distinguished man who has honored me by publishing this book under his own imprint, Robert Bernstein. Thanks also to Lachina Publishing Services, Inc.
In Mississippi, let me thank Charles Evers s chancery court clerk s staff, especially his daughter, Charlene Wilson; the people of Fayette, especially Milton Braxton and Kennie Middleton; David Westbrook in Crystal Springs; and in Jackson, Margaret Hawthorne, Charles Robinson, and the staff at WMPR; Susan Garcia of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger ; Lillie McNeal; and Walthena Gregory of the NAACP.
I owe a great debt of thanks to a number of perceptive family members, friends, and experts who read and critiqued this work in draft. Thank you Marcia Allina, Steve Bauer, Carol Cannon, Ed Davis, Toni Davis, Anne Gentile, Joe Gentile, Malcolm McCullough, Priscilla McMillan, Shirley Morrisette, Trish Perlmutter, Marion Pisick, Michael Pisick, Alex Polsky, Mallory Rintoul, Don Stokes, Sybil Stokes, Joseph A. Trunk, John Urda, Karen Waldstein, Tom Waldstein, Carole Walker, Jim Walker, Curtis Wilkie, and John Williamson.
Finally, let me thank my wife, Barbara Cannon, for years of faithful and ingenious support, on many levels.
COLLECTING HISTORY
A Collaborator s Introduction
First-rate biographies can be written a century after the death of their subject; memoirs must be written during the subject s life. That fact brings a lovely urgency to the task. Most people recall life with the best mix of passion, precision, and wisdom within a decade of their sixty-fifth birthday. In 1992, when I first spoke to Charles Evers, he was seventy.
I telephoned his chancery court clerk s office in Fayette, Mississippi, and told him I had researched his life with some care and hoped to help him write a memoir. I told Mr. Evers that I had always been intrigued by civil rights, the nature of leadership, and relations between brothers. I told him I knew he had been a leader in the great movement to gain equality for black Americans. His passionate bond with his martyred brother, Medgar, fascinated me.
I have found the life of Charles Evers even richer than I d expected. Deeply rooted in Mississippi, he has also traveled widely, with an inquiring mind. If his career has faltered in certain ways, the faltering has been revealing, too. He has not only befriended an astonishing range of people, from presidents to sharecroppers, but has tried to knit their lives together, to convince each that they need the other. His life has been full of ambition, hardship, love, grief, money, sex, and glory. His voice is humorous and blunt, his vision unsparing.
Most national civil rights leaders are tactful, live in large cities, and seek attention. Evers is a straight-talking loner who lives far from the national media centers, in Fayette, a town of two thousand, where in 1969 he won his greatest victory. He has turned down national political jobs. His politics and personal style have often put him on the margin of the national civil rights movement. Few people outside Mississippi know that Charles Evers, more than any other person, brought Mississippi blacks the vote.
I told Charles Evers that a well-told memoir might spread his good name, serve both his career and the history of the civil rights movement. Evers was rushing through the last days of a political campaign. Distracted but intrigued, he invited me down to Fayette to present myself and explain the nature of the book. In August 1992, we first met face-to-face. Evers sat behind his desk in an old shirt and slacks and spoke openly about his life. I described the memoir I wanted to write. He nodded, assenting easily, withholding comment. Even as I came to know him much better, I always sensed something withheld.
The id