When people are faced with
overwhelming trauma in their lives, some
become consumed by their difficulties, while
others emerge stronger for it. In special
circumstances, they may find their destiny,
and seek to heal the world and make all of
us stronger.
Myrlie
Evers-Williams
and Sybrina Fulton are two great women whose
achievements demand our attention. Although
their personal stories are separated by five
decades, these women share parallel lives.
yyThrust into a position of leadership for
the greater good of society, they have used
personal grief over the loss of a loved one
to become agents for change.
Each
of
these extraordinary women experienced
unthinkable tragedy: the killing of a
black man in their life who was gunned
down while still young. Recently, the two
women met in person for the taping of a
video for CNN and theGrio.
Evers-Williams
is
the widow of Medgar Evers, the iconic
civil rights leader who served as the
field secretary for the NAACP in
Mississippi. On June 12, 1963, Evers, who
fought against discrimination and
segregation and led voter registration
efforts, was assassinated
by a white supremacist named Byron De La
Beckwith, a founder of the state’s White
Citizens Council.
Evers, 37, was shot in the back
while in his driveway after coming from an
NAACP meeting. The Mississippi State
Sovereignty Commission, a state agency that
spied on the civil rights movement and was
complicit in the death of civil rights
workers, assisted Beckwith’s lawyers. Evers’
murder received national attention and was a
factor leading to the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964.
For the Evers family, the fear of
Medgar’s murder was ever present. “Both
Medgar and I knew the day would soon be upon
us when he would be killed, and that last
night that we had together, I said, ‘I can’t
make it without you,’ ” Evers-Williams said.
“And he told me ‘You’re stronger than you
think you are.’”
Following
her
husband’s death, Evers-Williams emerged as
a civil rights leader in her own right,
serving as chairwoman of the NAACP
in 1995 and helping to revive what was
then a financially troubled, debt-ridden
civil rights organization. She has
continued the fight for those things that
were important to her husband.
Evers-Williams
served
on the NAACP board for 30 years and was
awarded the organization’s Spingarn medal,
served as editor of “The Autobiography of
Medgar Evers: A Hero’s Life and Legacy
Revealed Through His Writings, Letters,
and Speeches”, and through the
establishment of the Medgar
and Myrlie Evers Institute,
she has kept his legacy alive. On January
21, 2013, she delivered the invocation at
President Obama’s second inauguration,
becoming the first layperson and the first
woman to serve in that capacity.
Further, Evers-Williams sought
justice for Medgar through Beckwith’s 1994
murder conviction, following two trials with
deadlocked all-white male juries 31 years
earlier. “All of us have a job to do, and
mine has been to rear those three children,
to be a strong, loving but strict mother, to
give to society, to give back to Medgar,”
she said.
Meanwhile,
not
unlike Myrlie Evers-Williams, Sybrina
Fulton
found
her
calling through grief nearly 50 years
later. Over
11
years
ago,
on February 26, 2012, Fulton’s son,
Trayvon Martin, was shot to death by
George Zimmerman, a self-proclaimed
neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford,
Florida. Martin, 17, was visiting his
father, and Zimmerman, who is a Latino of
Afro-Peruvian and German ancestry, claimed
Martin looked suspicious and killed the
black teen, invoking self-defense. The
police would not arrest Zimmerman for
several weeks.
In July 2013, a jury acquitted
Zimmerman of second-degree murder. The case
shone the national spotlight on the killing
of innocent, unarmed African-Americans such
as Martin, who was armed with nothing more
than a pack of Skittles and an iced tea.
Sybrina Fulton realized the need to
fight not only for justice for her own son,
but also for other families and their
children as well. “When this initially
happened to Trayvon, we thought this was
about Trayvon,” Fulton said. Then, when she
saw how many lives were touched by Trayvon’s
death, she became a voice for the voiceless,
like others before her. “We have to speak
out for those people, just like Trayvon, and
just like Dr. King, and just like Medgar;
they were sacrifices for better lives in a
better world.”
Fulton
founded
the Trayvon
Martin
Foundation,
and has reached out to others such as the
family of Michael Brown, 17, who was
fatally shot by police in Ferguson,
Missouri, while unarmed on August 9, 2014.
She
testified
before the United Nations in Geneva on
racial discrimination in the United
States.
In
addition,
Fulton has spoken out against “Stand
Your Ground”
laws, which are often used to claim
self-defense by whites who shoot
African-Americans. Zimmerman’s lawyers did
not raise the stand your ground defense at
trial, but a juror admitted the jury had
discussed the law before acquitting him.
Further, the judge’s
instructions
to
the
jury included mention of the law.
In
the
eyes of many, these laws have ushered in
an open season on black men—and
women.
“It just amazes me how God is using me to
go from that average life, and using me to
be a vessel to speak to so many people. I
would not voluntarily give my son’s life,
and the loss of his life was because of
the color of his skin. I feel like I just
have to do my part,” Fulton said.
Despite the half century separating
the death of Medgar Evers and Trayvon
Martin, the grieving women-turned-activists
have lived and struggled under similar
circumstances. And the more America has
changed, the more it has remained the same.
Whether during the Jim Crow era or
21st century America, the lives of black
people have been under siege, their bodies
devalued. Then and now, African-Americans
have faced lynching at the hands of white
men, whether police officers,
self-proclaimed cops, vigilantes, mobs or
domestic terrorists who were empowered to
take matters into their own hands.
History is about change, and yet it
represents a continuum as well, with
injustice likely to repeat itself,
particularly if society fails to heed its
lessons. As we celebrate progress, we must
also acknowledge the relentless nature of
injustice, and the need to remain vigilant
in order to eradicate it.
The two black women both have faced
a fight against what the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. called unjust laws. The regime of
Jim Crow segregation was an attempt to block
the full freedom of black Americans and
stifle their aspirations, backed by the
authority of the government and the courts,
and secured through the threat of violence.
People such as Medgar Evers were willing to
take the risk of becoming martyrs to break
down those arbitrary, oppressive laws.
However, today the country is
witnessing a backlash against progress, with
a rollback of the civil rights legislation
of the 1960s, restrictions on the right to
vote, and gun laws that endanger black lives
such as that of Trayvon Martin. Unjust laws
have turned America into a nation of
entrenched poverty and heightened economic
inequality, unparalleled gun homicide and
the largest prison population in the world.
Meanwhile, in the midst of a
nascent, multiracial #BlackLivesMatter
movement led by black women, Myrlie
Evers-Williams and Sybrina Fulton continue
the struggle and teach a new generation of
leaders. “Life does go on, but we must never
forget that we cannot stop at one point,
that it calls us to continue,” said
Evers-Williams. “And there are young people
out there who need to be reached, who need
to know what this is about, and who will
eventually dedicate themselves to justice,
to peace, to equality and to love.”
During Black History Month, we are
reminded that civil rights martyrs become
catalysts for new movements. And great women
lead and transform the world.
This commentary is also posted on CNN.com
