Fifty years after the assassination of Medgar Evers, forthcoming civil rights decisions by the Supreme Court prove the struggle for civil rights has not yet been won.
Pending cases include a challenge to the Voting Rights Act, another dispute over affirmative action in college admissions, the fate of California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage, and a challenge of the Defense of Marriage Act, which excuses the federal government from recognizing legal marriages of same-sex couples.
While we tend to associate the 1950s and 1960s civil rights era with African Americans, benefits of the Civil Rights Act (banning discrimination in public accommodations), the 24th Amendment (abolishing poll taxes) and the Voting Rights Act have been just as profound and far-reaching for women and other minorities as for African Americans.
Indeed, all contemporary and subsequent civil rights movements follow in the footsteps of African American civil rights pioneers and their allies. Pioneers such as Medgar Evers.
On May 18, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People launched its Medgar Evers Membership campaign. The goal of this 50-day membership drive is to have every NAACP branch in the country recruit 50 new members by July 8 and to use the shining example of Evers' legacy to inspire a new generation of civil rights activists.
For readers who may not be familiar with this seminal figure, Evers was Mississippi's first NAACP field secretary. He led boycotts and set up many local NAACP branches within the state. In the early 1960s, Evers began investigating the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African-American boy who was killed for whistling at a white woman. Evers was a strong supporter of efforts to integrate the University of Mississippi. By 1963, his activism made Evers one of the most visible civil rights leaders in America. Consequently, he was the target of numerous death threats and assassination attempts.
The last 24 hours of Evers' life coincided with a series of watershed events in the history of American civil rights. On June 11, 1963, Alabama Gov. George Wallace was forced by the National Guard to step aside or risk arrest for attempting to block the admission of the first two African-American students to the University of Alabama. That evening, President John F. Kennedy, in a nationally televised address, confessed that the civil rights struggles of African Americans were "primarily a moral issue. ... We face therefore a moral crisis as a country and as a people."
Hours after the president's address, shortly after midnight June 12, Evers was shot and killed while emerging from his car at his home carrying NAACP T-shirts that stated, "Jim Crow Must Go."
His assassination spurred Kennedy to ask Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill, which was signed into law the next year by President Lyndon Johnson.
Today, an African-American president has come out in favor of marriage equality, yet voting rights and affirmative action are still under siege. We need a new generation to get in the fight.
In recognition of the continuing and expanding struggle for civil rights, the Monterey County NAACP invites county residents to become members and join a committee of our local branch. See our website at montereynaacp.org.
We also invite the public to a community potluck honoring the life and legacy of Medgar Evers at 2 p.m. July 7 at the Peace Resource Center, 1364 Fremont Blvd., in Seaside.
Goings is assistant secretary of the Monterey County Branch of the NAACP.