MEDGAR EVERS: BLACK LIFE SUPERHERO

 
Medgar Evers image has always conveyed the strength to shake the status quo to its foundations while respecting the law.
His example is all the more important now as civil rights activism has largely lost its life-or-death dimension. His strength is majestic counter point to recent rampages by men who happen to be White occurring against daily backdrops of epidemic Black male fratricide.
Violence is the language used too often by kaleidoscopic Klansmen public and private to intimidate everyone into subservience. Non-violent resistance tugs at my soul despite being an active self-defense advocate.
But, overshadowed by this giant, if my turning the other cheek will save at-risk lives; feed the hunger and shelter the homeless then turn it I must. Though I reserve the lawful right to use reasonable force after I’ve run out of cheeks to turn.
His example speaks across the decades and urges moderate yet steely determination toward slaying today’s dragons of brutality; hunger and homelessness, whom I call the ” Big Three Evils. ”
Our era proliferates rubbery spines in high places with situational morality and symbolic fingers to the wind of public opinion before taking action. Evers didn’t wait for pollsters and spin doctors- a fact lost on today’s ” leaders. ”
Contrast this with the brutal reality of Medgar Ever’s world, where Americans While Black ( and otherwise! ) walked a tight rope between responsible ” revolution ” ( peacefully challenging the status quo ) and state-sanctioned terror.
That this walk proceeded while promoting civic virtues identical to current conservative talking points is worth underscoring.
I look at him and realize here was the BEST of bygone liberalism, where citizens armed with courage and the Constitution ( not Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book ) endured their government’s resistance until it relented.
When I was born my birth certificate read, ” Negro ” along with all the stark limits it implied when  my mother brought me home to her native Georgia as a two year old.
Any freedom I enjoy is due to a civic constellation of inter-generational runaway slaves; White Abolitionists in every era and a singular shooting star named Medgar Evers who made my life better for his passing.
Medgar Evers is a Black life superhero- for everybody!