MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid tells the story of Medgar Evers and his wife Myrlie. Medgar was the NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, a state that lynched more Black people than any other. The risks of the job created a lot of tension in their marriage — and after Medgar's 1963 assassination, Myrlie's fury drove her to be an activist herself.And film critic Justin Chang reviews Sinners, the new supernatural thriller by director Ryan Coogler, starring Michael B. Jordan.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging, and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from NPR.
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. How to Be a Civil Rights Widow is one chapter title in a book by Joy Reid, the former MSNBC Evening Show host. The widow is Merle Evers. Her husband was Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist who served as the NAACP's Mississippi field secretary and risked his life to push for voting rights, desegregation, and freedom.
Reid's book is called Medgar and Merle and is now out in paperback. Medgar and Murley were both from Mississippi. Murley constantly worried about the safety of her husband and their children, with good reason. Their house was firebombed. Later, in June 1963, Medgar was assassinated just outside the door of their home. Murley had heard the gunshot and found her husband bleeding out.
His was the first in a series of high-profile assassinations in the 1960s. Next came President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy.
Joy Reid describes her book, Medgar and Murley, as a love story between two black people in Mississippi, their love for their children, and the higher love it took for black Americans to love America and to fight for it, even in the state that butchered more black bodies via lynching than any other.
The love story between Murley and Medgar Evers also is fraught with tension, with Murley objecting to how much he was away from home, leaving her wondering if he loved his work more than he loved his family. He often left her alone to deal with the constant phone calls, threatening the lives of her family.
After her husband's death, Murley became an activist, an in-demand public speaker, and executive director of the NAACP. She gave the invocation at President Obama's second inauguration. Joy Reid spoke with Terry Gross last year.
Joy Reid, welcome to Fresh Air. Oh, thank you, Terry.
It is so wonderful to be here.
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