At 4:00pm on Sunday June 9 at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral the annual “Liturgy of Racial Reconciliation Commemorating the Life and Legacy of Medgar Wiley Evers” will take place.
The service is hosted every year by All Saints, St. Alexis, St. Christopher’s and St. Mark’s in Jackson and those churches will host the reception themed “Mississippi Family Reunion” after the service in the St. Andrew’s parish hall. The Cathedral was chosen as the site of this year’s event as we mark a poignant major milestone in our state’s history, the 50th anniversary of Evers’ assassination. We are honored to have as our speaker his widow Myrlie Evers, noted civil rights activist and former NAACP president. Currently she lives on the campus of Alcorn State University, where she is distinguished scholar-in-residence. She also serves as chairman of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute, with the mission of championing civil rights with a focus on history, education, and reconciliation, especially among young people.
Mrs. Evers gave a stirring invocation at President Obama’s second inauguration, praying, “We ask, too, Almighty, that where our paths seem blanketed by throngs of oppression and riddled by pangs of despair, we ask for your guidance toward the light of deliverance and that the vision of those who came before us and dreamed of this day, that we recognize that their visions still inspire us. They are a great cloud of witnesses unseen by the naked eye, but all around us, thankful that their living was not in vain.”
Several significant exhibits and events honoring the courageous work and celebrating the life of Medgar Evers are occurring this year. At the time of his murder on June 12, 1963 by Ku Klux Klansman, Byron De La Beckwick, Evers was the field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi. Myrlie was his secretary and together, at great personal peril, they organized voter registration drives and civil rights demonstration throughout the state.
Mrs. Evers spoke at the recent opening of the “This is Home” Medgar Evers, Mississippi and the Movement at the William F. Winter Archives & History Building which is free to the public through October 31. After touring the exhibit, Mrs. Evers said what moved her most was seeing the rifle that was used to assassinate her husband. “That weapon that is in that case represents hatred but it also represents hope because although it was used as a weapon to eliminate Medgar, it raised up a band of people in this country, throughout Mississippi, and the world who recognized the need for human beings to be treated as humans regardless of race, creed or color.”
In 2010 Bishop Gray activated the Anti-Racism Task Force and in a letter to the diocese noted that our state was entering a period of five years of significant anniversaries in the Civil Rights Movement: 1961—Freedom Riders travel through the South to Jackson, 1962—James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, 1963—Assassination of Medgar Evers, 1964—Murders of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney in Philadelphia, 1965—Passage of the Voting Rights Act. “It will not be easy to return to parts of my (our) past. The temptation is always to call the past the past and move on. However, the past in both our individual and corporate lives, left unexamined or ignored, will control us in very unhelpful ways. My redemption and freedom requires the cross of accountability. As Mr. Faulkner once note, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ “
The public is invited and welcome to the service on June 9 and the reception following. The offering will be given to support the work of the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute.//www.eversinstitute.org/
