When Medgar Evers returned home to Mississippi after fighting for his country in Normandy in World War II, he wasn’t met with a grateful nation. Instead, a mob of armed white men met him at the Newton County Courthouse in Decatur when he dared to imagine himself as a full citizen of the United States as he attempted to register to vote along with a small group of Black veterans in 1946.
He would go on to fight for voting rights in Mississippi until the night a white supremacist shot him in the back while he stood in the garage of his home, while his wife, Myrlie, and their children were inside. He was carrying an armful of white T-shirts with the words, “Jim Crow Must Go” printed on them when the cowardly klansman assassinated him.
“People died. They didn’t know the outcome. Medgar Evers did not know the outcome when he sacrificed his life,” Democrat Scott Colom told a crowd in Mississippi during his campaign for U.S. Senate.
On Tuesday, Nov. 3, Mississippians voted to send Scott Colom to the U.S. Senate. Though two Black Mississippi men—Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce—served in the U.S. Senate during the late 1800s, they were appointed by the Legislature under Reconstruction. Colom will be the first Black Mississippian ever to serve in the U.S. Senate, or any other statewide office, by a vote of the people.
His victory has captured the attention of the world, both for the historic nature of a Black man winning statewide in Mississippi, and because Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the 1980s. Pundits have theorized over how he managed such a feat: Was it his “pick another protein” ad? Was it his willingness to go into hostile territory, such as talking to Republicans lined up outside a Trump rally? Was it because he focused relentlessly on affordability?
What I can’t stop thinking about, though, are all those who fought for civil rights and voting rights in Mississippi—not for the sake of any one political party, but to secure for Black Mississippians the freedom to live, to thrive and to participate fully in democratic life.
I think of Ida B. Wells, who was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and wielded the democratic powers of journalism to expose the epidemic of lynching across the South in the 1890s and early 1900s. She also worked to ensure that the white-dominated suffragist movement would not leave Black women out of its fight for democracy.
I think of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy murdered by white men in 1955 after a white woman accused him of whistling at her; and I think of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who showed the world his beaten, bloated body that had been cast into the Tallahatchie River, helping kick off the Civil Rights Movement.
I think of Rev. George Lee, the NAACP leader and minister who became one of the first Black residents of Humphreys County to register to vote, and urged others to do the same. In 1955, a group of white supremacists shot him from a moving car, killing him.
I think of Lamar Smith, the World War II veteran and farmer who returned home only to be shot and killed on the Lincoln County Courthouse lawn in broad daylight in 1955 for daring to encourage Black residents to vote—for a white man.
I think of Bob Moses from Harlem, New York, who came to Mississippi as leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to lead voter education and registration efforts in the heart of Jim Crow in the 1960s.
I think of Herbert Lee, a farmer in Amite County who worked with Bob Moses on voter registration, drawing threats from white supremacists. While delivering cotton at a local cotton gin near Liberty, white Democratic Mississippi House Rep. E.H. Hurst confronted Lee with a pistol and shot him in the head, killing him.
I think of Fannie Lou Hamer, who co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Famous for declaring that she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she stood up to the state’s all-white segregationist Democratic Party and traveled to the 1964 Democratic Convention to fight for Black representation in the party. She had been sterilized without her permission by a doctor in what is still known as the “Mississippi appendectomy.”
I think of Victoria Gray Adams, the Black woman from the Palmer’s Crossing Community of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who dared to run for U.S. Senate against segregationist Democrat John C. Stennis during the Freedom Summer of 1964.
I think of Vernon Dahmer, who led the NAACP in Forrest County and its voter-registration efforts, in a county named for the Ku Klux Klan’s first grand wizard, and who offered to pay his neighbors’ poll taxes. In 1966, he fought off the KKK to give his wife and children time to escape as they firebombed his home, killing him.
I think of Ellie Dahmer, Vernon Dahmer’s widow, who continued the fight for voting rights, and who ran and served as a Forrest County election commissioner.
I think, too, of Myrlie Evers-Williams, who also continued her husband’s work for voting rights even as she continued to fight for justice for his killer.
I think of James Chaney, a young Black man from Neshoba County, Mississippi, and the two young Jewish men from New York who volunteered to work in Mississippi during Freedom Summer to register voters and work at freedom schools: Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Klansmen, aided by local law enforcement, abducted, shot and killed them in 1964 in the infamous “Mississippi Burning” murders.
I think of the many Black Mississippians who have continued fighting for voting rights and a more just Mississippi in the years since the Civil Rights Movement, such as Crystal Welch, who was among the many Black Mississippians who worked to finally help rid this state of our old Confederate-themed state flag in 2020. She died in a family tragedy in 2024.
I think of Kimberly Griffin, one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met, who co-founded the Mississippi Free Press as its first publisher with Executive Editor Donna Ladd in 2020. Though she’s no longer MFP’s publisher, she remains a valuable part of MFP’s story, and she’s someone who truly understands the essential role of journalism in strengthening democracy in Mississippi and across the country. Because democracy neither starts nor ends at the ballot box.
I think of those whose names aren’t in history books or on any bylines, but who have nevertheless quietly worked behind the scenes to strengthen their communities; to register voters; to care for their neighbors; to foster unity and forge a new future in a state whose foundation was laid in bloodshed and slavery.
I think of all those who are still doing the work of growing democracy.
That includes brilliant Black journalists and other members of the MFP team with whom I work every day to tell the full story of Mississippi, in all its diversity, all its beauty, all its ugliness and all its potential. I’m grateful to live in a state where so many people, past and present, have devoted themselves and their talents to making it better.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
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