Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard (March 4, 1908 – May 1, 1976) was an American civil rights leader, fraternal organization leader, entrepreneur and surgeon. He was one of the mentors to activists such as Medgar Evers, Charles Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, and Jesse Jackson, founded Mississippi's leading civil rights organization in the 1950s, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, and played a prominent role in the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till. He was also president of the National Medical Association and chairman of the board of the National Negro Business League.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Howard was born in Murray, Kentucky to Arthur Howard, a tobacco twister, and Mary Chandler, a cook for Will Mason, a prominent local white doctor and member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Mason took note of the boy’s work habits, talent, ambition, and charm. He put him to work in his hospital and eventually paid for much of his medical education. Howard later showed his gratitude by adding Mason as one of his middle names.

Howard attended three Adventist colleges; the historically black Oakwood Junior College in Huntsville, Alabama, the then nearly all-white Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the College of Medical Evangelists (now Loma Linda University) in Loma Linda, California. While at Union College, he won the Anti-Saloon League of America’s national contest for best orator in 1930.

During his years in medical school in California, Howard took part in civil rights and political causes and wrote a regular column for the California Eagle, the main black newspaper of Los Angeles. He was also the president of the California Economic, Commercial, and Political League. Through the League and his columns, he championed black business ownership, the study of black history, and opposed local efforts to introduce segregation. In 1935, he began a forty-one year marriage with prominent black socialite, Helen Nela Boyd. After a residency at Homer G. Phillips Hospital (in St. Louis, Missouri), Howard became the medical director of the Riverside Sanitarium, the main Adventist health care institution to serve blacks.

Career[link]

In 1942, Howard took over as the first chief surgeon at the hospital of the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a fraternal organization, in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. While there, he founded an insurance company, restaurant, hospital, home construction firm, and a large farm where he raised cattle, quail, hunting dogs, and cotton. He also built a small zoo and a park as well as the first swimming pool for blacks in Mississippi. "In addition to his duties at the hospital, Howard operated a thriving private practice, where his specialties soon included the discreet provision of illegal abortions (for both black and white patients), a practice he justified as a matter of both individual rights and family planning. (He also favored legalizing prostitution, arguing that man’s sinful nature made it impossible to suppress the sex trade.)"^[1]

In 1947, he broke with the Knights and Daughters, organized the rival United Order of Friendship, and opened the Friendship Clinic.

Howard rose to prominence as a civil rights leader after founding the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) in 1951. His compatriots in the League included Medgar Evers, who Howard had hired as an agent for his Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company and Aaron Henry, a future leader in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The RCNL mounted a successful boycott against service stations that denied restrooms to blacks and distributed twenty thousand bumper stickers with the slogan, "Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom."

The RCNL organized yearly rallies in Mound Bayou for civil rights. Sometimes as many as ten thousand attended including such future activists as Fannie Lou Hamer and Amzie Moore. Some of the speakers were Rep. William L. Dawson of Chicago, Alderman Archibald J. Carey, Jr. of Chicago, Rep. Charles Diggs of Michigan, and NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall. One of the entertainers was Mahalia Jackson.

In 1954, Howard hatched a plan to fight a credit squeeze by the White Citizens Councils against civil rights activists in Mississippi. At his suggestion, the NAACP under Roy Wilkins encouraged businesses, churches, and voluntary associations to transfer their accounts to the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Memphis. The funds were made available for loans to victims of the squeeze.

Emmett Till Affair[link]

Howard moved into the national limelight as never before after the murder of Emmett Till in August 1955 and the trial of his killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant in September. He delivered "[o]ne of the earliest and loudest denunciations of Till’s murder," saying that that if “the slaughtering of Negroes is allowed to continue, Mississippi will have a civil war. Negroes are only going to take so much."^[1] He was also heavily involved in the search for evidence and gave over his home to be a “black command center” for witnesses and journalists, including Cloyte Murdock of Ebony magazine and Rep. Charles Diggs.^[1] "Recognizing that local officials had little incentive to identify or punish every member of the conspiracy that took Till’s life, he spearheaded a private investigation, personally helping to locate, interview, and protect several important witnesses."^[1]

Visitors noticed the high level of security, including armed guards and a plethora of weapons. Historians David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito have written that Howard's residence “was so impregnable that journalists and politicians from a later era might have used the word ‘compound’ rather than ‘home’ to describe it.”^[1] Howard evaded Mississippi’s discriminatory gun control laws by hiding a pistol in a secret compartment of his car, and "slept with a Thompson submachine gun at the foot of his bed."^[2] He brought Emmett's mother Mamie Till Bradley in from Chicago at his own expense, and she stayed at his home when she came to testify. Howard "escorted [Bradley] and various others to and from the courthouse in a heavily-armed caravan."^[2] Like many black journalists and political leaders, Howard alleged that more than two people took part in the crime.

After an all-white jury acquitted Milam and Bryant, Howard gave dozens of speeches around the country on the Till killing and other violence in Mississippi, typically to crowds of several thousand. One of them was to an overflow crowd on November 27 in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. His host for the event was Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks was in the audience. Many years later, she singled out Howard’s appearance as the “first mass meeting that we had in Montgomery” following Till’s death. Only four days after his speech, Parks made history by refusing to give her seat on a city bus to a white man in violation of a segregation ordinance.^[1]

Howard's speaking tour culminated in rally for twenty thousand at Madison Square Garden where he was the featured speaker. He shared the stage with Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Autherine Lucy.

In the final months of 1955, Howard and his family were increasingly subjected to death threats and economic pressure. He sold most of his property and moved permanently to Chicago, Illinois. His national reputation as a civil rights leader still seemed secure. He also had a highly visible public dispute with J. Edgar Hoover whom he accused of slowness to find the killers of blacks in the South.

In early 1956, the Chicago Defender gave Howard the top spot on its annual national honor role. He founded the profitable Howard Medical Center on the South Side and served for one year as president of the National Medical Association, the black counterpart of the AMA. Howard also became medical director of S.B. Fuller Products Company. Samuel B. Fuller was probably the richest black man in the country.^[3]

Politics[link]

Howard was somewhat unique among prominent civil rights leaders by virtue of his outspoken opposition to socialism and consistent praise of Booker Washington who he regarded as a "towering genius" for his emphasis on self-help and entrepreneurship. He "had little patience for the utopian schemes of the far left, declaring at one point that he wished 'one bomb could be fashioned that would blow every Communist in America right back to Russia where they belong.' In a similar vein, he maintained, 'There is not a thing wrong with Mississippi today that real Jeffersonian democracy and the religion of Jesus Christ cannot solve.'"^[1]

In 1958, Howard ran for Congress as a Republican against the powerful incumbent black Democrat, Rep. William L. Dawson, a close ally of Mayor Richard J. Daley. Although he received much favorable media publicity, and support from leading black opponents of the Daley machine, Dawson overwhelmed him at the polls. Howard was unable to counter Dawson's efficient political organization and rising voter discontent from the economic recession and the slowness of President Dwight D. Eisenhower to back civil rights in the South.

Shortly before the election, Howard helped to found the Chicago League of Negro Voters. The League generally opposed the Daley organization and promoted the election of black candidates in both parties. It nurtured the black independent movement of the 1960s and 1970s which eventually propelled four of Howard’s friends to higher office: Ralph Metcalfe, Charles Hayes, and Gus Savage to Congress and Harold Washington as mayor.

In the two decades after the election, Howard had little role as a national leader but he remained important locally. He chaired a Chicago committee in 1965 to raise money for the children of the recently assassinated leader, Malcolm X. Later, he was an early contributor to the Chicago chapter of the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket under Jesse Jackson. In 1971, Operation PUSH was founded in Howard's Chicago home and he chaired the organization's finance committee.

Friendship Medical Center[link]

In 1972, Howard founded the multimillion dollar Friendship Medical Center on the South Side, the largest privately owned black clinic in Chicago. The staff of about one hundred and sixty included twenty-seven doctors in such fields as pediatrics, dental care, a pharmacy, ear, nose, and throat, and psychological and drug counseling. Friendship Medical Center fell into scandal when the Chicago Sun-Times, along with the Better Government Association, investigated Chicago abortion practices. The Sun-Times reported the deaths of three Friendship Medical Center abortion patients, including one who died in 1973 after an abortion that her survivors alleged had been performed by Howard himself.^[4][5] Howard countered that the FMC had performed 1,500 legal abortions thus far, more than any other Illinois provider. Given such numbers, he concluded, only six major complications were not unusual. A lack of detailed comparative statistics makes it almost impossible to determine if he was right. To Howard, the hue and cry was a smokescreen by the medical and political establishment to quash their lower-priced competitors. He had a basis for this belief. An abortion at the FMC cost about fifty dollars less than at hospitals.^[6]

Personal life[link]

During his years in Chicago, Howard's attention increasingly focused on big game hunting, and made several trips to Africa for this purpose. His Chicago mansion included a “safari room” filled with trophies that was often made available for public tours. His New Year’s Eve parties, co-hosted by Helen Howard, were a regular stop for the Chicago’s black social set. He also became well known as a leading abortion provider and was arrested in 1964 and 1965 but never convicted. Howard regarded this work as complementary to his earlier civil rights activism.

Howard died in Chicago on May 1, 1976 after many years of deteriorating health. The Reverend Jesse Jackson officiated at the funeral.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• T.R.M. Howard Webpage
• A Forgotten Civil Rights Hero
• Beito, David and Linda (2009). Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03420-6. 
• Dittmer, John (1994). Local People: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02102-9. 
• Payne, Charles M. (1995). I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 052008515. 
• Ward, Thomas J. Black Physicians in the Jim Crow South. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003.9

Video and audio material[link]

• Video from December 1955 - interview in Los Angeles on fighting the economic pressure campaign of the White Citizens' Councils in Mississippi
• Audio recording of Howard's eulogy at the memorial service for Medgar Evers, June 15, 1963, Jackson, Mississippi
• Speech at Madison Square Garden (introduced by A. Philip Randolph, on May 24, 1956)

T. Rex were a British rock band, formed in 1967 by singer/songwriter and guitarist Marc Bolan. The band formed as Tyrannosaurus Rex, releasing four folk albums under the name. Tony Visconti (their producer for several albums) claimed in a documentary on the band that he had taken to using the abbreviated term "T.Rex" as a shorthand, something that initially irritated Bolan, who gradually came around to the idea and officially shortened the band's name to "T.Rex" at roughly the same time they started having big hits (shortly after going electric).

In the 1970s, the band had reached success with glam rock hits like "Jeepster", "Get It On", "Ride a White Swan", "20th Century Boy", "Children of the Revolution", "Hot Love", "Telegram Sam", and "Metal Guru".

After earning success in the early and mid-1970s, the band broke up after Bolan was killed in a 1977 car accident.

History[link]

Formation and folk era[link]

Marc Bolan founded Tyrannosaurus Rex in August 1967. After a solitary performance as a four-piece at the Electric Garden in Covent Garden, the group immediately broke up. Bolan retained the services of percussionist Steve Peregrin Took and the duo began performing acoustic material with occasional homages to Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. The combination of Bolan's acoustic guitar and distinctive vocal style with Took's bongos and assorted percussion—which often included children's instruments such as the Pixiphone—earned them a devoted following in the thriving underground scene. BBC Radio One Disc jockey John Peel championed the band early in their recording career.^[1] Peel later appeared on record with them, reading stories written by Bolan. Another key collaborator was producer Tony Visconti, who went on to produce the band's albums well into their second, glam rock phase.^[2]

By 1968, Tyrannosaurus Rex had become a modest success on radio and on record, and had released three albums. While Bolan's early material was rock and roll-influenced folk music, by now he was writing dramatic and Baroque songs with lush melodies and surreal lyrics filled with Greek and Persian mythology as well as creations of his own. The band became regulars on Peel Sessions on BBC radio, and toured Britain's student union halls.^[3]

By 1969 there was a clear rift between the two halves of Tyrannosaurus Rex. While Bolan and his girlfriend June Child were living a quiet life, Took had fully embraced the anti-commercial/community-spirited/drug-taking ethos of the UK Underground scene centred around Ladbroke Grove. Took was also attracted to anarchistic elements such as Mick Farren/Deviants and members of the Pink Fairies Rock 'n' Roll and Drinking Club.^[4]

Took then contributed his talents and two songs to Twink's Think Pink album, and began writing his own songs, and wanted the duo to perform them, but Bolan strongly disapproved of his solo efforts. Bolan's relationship with Took ended after Unicorn, although they were contractually obliged to go through with a US tour which was doomed before it began. Poorly promoted and planned, the acoustic duo were overshadowed by the loud electric acts they were billed with. To counter this, Took drew from the shock rock style of Iggy Pop; Took explained, "I took my shirt off in the Sunset Strip where we were playing and whipped myself till everybody shut up. With a belt, y'know, a bit of blood and the whole of Los Angeles shuts up. 'What's going on, man, there's some nutter attacking himself on stage.' I mean, Iggy Stooge had the same basic approach."^[4]

As soon as he returned to the UK, Bolan replaced Took with percussionist Mickey Finn.^[2] They made A Beard of Stars, the final album under the Tyrannosaurus Rex moniker. Unlike Took, Finn had no songwriting aspirations; Tony Visconti commented he was not as talented as Took: "Mickey wasn't as inventive as Steve. Mickey's backing vocals weren't strong, so Marc would double-track them with his own voice for reinforcement".^[5]

Glam rock and commercial success[link]

As well as progressively shorter titles, Tyrannosaurus Rex's albums began to show higher production values, more accessible songwriting from Bolan, and experimentation with electric guitars and a true rock sound.^[6] The breakthrough was "King of the Rumbling Spires" (recorded with Took), which used a full rock band. The group's next album, T. Rex, continued the process of simplification by shortening the name, and completed the move to electric guitars.^[6] Visconti supposedly got fed up with writing the name out in full on studio chits and tapes and began to abbreviate it; when Bolan first noticed he was angry but later claimed the idea was his. The new sound was more pop-oriented, and the first single, "Ride a White Swan", reached number two in the UK in late 1970. In early 1971, T. Rex reached the top 20 of the UK albums chart.

	T. Rex – "Hot Love" noicon
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

"Ride a White Swan" was quickly followed by a second single, "Hot Love", which reached the top spot on the UK charts, and remained there for six weeks. A full band, which featured bassist Steve Currie and drummer Bill Legend, was formed to tour to growing audiences, as teenagers began replacing the hippies of old.^[2] After Chelita Secunda added two spots of glitter under Bolan's eyes before an appearance on Top of the Pops, the ensuing performance would often be viewed as the official birth of glam rock. After Bolan's display, glam rock would gain popularity in the UK and Europe during 1971–72. T. Rex's move to electric guitars coincided with Bolan's more overtly sexual lyrical style and image. The group's new image and sound outraged some of Bolan's older hippie fans, who branded him a "sell-out". Some of the lyrical content of Tyrannosaurus Rex remained, but the fairy tales about wizards and magic were now interspersed with sensuous grooves, replete with orgiastic moans and innuendo.

In September 1971, T. Rex released their second album Electric Warrior, which featured Currie and Legend. Often considered to be their best album, the chart-topping Electric Warrior brought much commercial success to the group; publicist BP Fallon coined the term "T. Rextasy" as a parallel to Beatlemania to describe the group's popularity. The album included T. Rex's best-known song, "Get It On", which hit number one in the UK. In January 1972 it became a top ten hit in the US, where the song was retitled "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" to distinguish it from a 1971 song by the group Chase. Along with David Bowie's early hits, "Get It On" was among the few British glam rock songs that were successful in the US.^[7] However, the album still recalled Bolan's acoustic roots with ballads such as "Cosmic Dancer" and the stark "Girl". Soon after, Bolan left Fly Records; after his contract had lapsed, the label released the album track "Jeepster" as a single without his permission. Bolan went to EMI, where he was given his own record label in the UK—T. Rex Records, the "T. Rex Wax Co.".

On 18 March 1972, T. Rex played two shows at the Empire Pool, Wembley, which were filmed by Ringo Starr and his crew for Apple Films. A large part of the second show was included on Bolan's own rock film Born to Boogie, while bits and pieces of the first show can be seen throughout the film's end-credits. Along with T. Rex and Starr, Born to Boogie also features Elton John, who jammed with the friends to create rocking studio versions of "Children of the Revolution" and "Tutti Frutti"; Elton John had appeared on TV with Bolan before, miming the piano part of "Get it On" on the 1971 Christmas edition of Top of the Pops.

T. Rex's third album The Slider was released in July 1972. The band's most successful album in the US, The Slider was not as successful as its predecessor in the UK, where it peaked at the fourth spot. During spring/summer 1972, Bolan's old label Fly released the chart-topping compilation album Bolan Boogie, a collection of singles, B-sides and LP tracks, which affected The Slider's sales. Two singles from The Slider, "Telegram Sam" and "Metal Guru", became number one hits in the UK. Born to Boogie premiered at the Oscar One cinema in London, in December 1972. The film received negative reviews from critics, while it was loved by fans.

Decline and resurgence[link]

Tanx (1973) would mark the end of the classic T. Rex lineup. An album full of melancholy ballads and rich production, Tanx showcased the T. Rex sound bolstered by extra instrumental embellishments such as Mellotron and saxophone. During the recording T. Rex members began to quit, starting with Bill Legend in November 1973. Legend felt alienated by Bolan's increasingly egotistical behaviour, which was fed by success, money, cocaine, and brandy.

Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow was released on 1 February 1974, and reached number 12 in the UK. The album harkened back to the Tyrannosaurus Rex days with long song-titles and lyrical complexity, but was not a critical success. T. Rex by now had an extended line-up which included second guitarist Jack Green and BJ Cole on pedal steel. Soon after the album's release, Bolan split with producer Tony Visconti. And then in December 1974, Mickey Finn too left T. Rex.

Bolan's Zip Gun (1975) was self-produced by Bolan who, in addition to writing the songs, gave his music a harder, more futuristic sheen. The final song recorded with Visconti, "Till Dawn", was re-recorded for Bolan's Zip Gun with Bolan at the controls. Bolan's own productions were not well received in the music press. An amalgam of Zinc Alloy and Zip Gun was released in the US as Light of Love. Rolling Stone magazine gave it one star out of five, while the British press slammed T. Rex for copying Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, even though Marc had spoken of releasing work under the pseudonym "Zinc Alloy" during the mid-1960s. Always a fantasist with an alleged Napoleon complex, during this time Bolan became increasingly isolated, while high tax rates in the UK drove him into exile in Monte Carlo and the US. No longer a vegetarian, Bolan grew heavy on a diet of hamburgers and alcohol, and was ridiculed in the music press.

T. Rex's penultimate album, Futuristic Dragon (1976), featured a schizophrenic production style that veered from wall of sound-style songs to nostalgic nods to the old T. Rex boogie machine. It only managed to reach number 50, but the album was better received by the critics and featured the singles "New York City" (number 15 in the UK) and "Dreamy Lady" (number 30). To promote the album, T. Rex toured the UK, and performed on television shows such as Top of the Pops, Supersonic and Get It Together.

In the summer of 1976, T. Rex released two more singles, "I Love to Boogie" (which charted at number 13) and "Laser Love", which made number 42. In early 1977 Dandy in the Underworld was released to critical acclaim. Bolan had slimmed down and regained his elfin looks, and the songs too had a stripped-down, streamlined sound. A spring UK tour with punk band The Damned on support garnered positive reviews. As Bolan was enjoying a new surge in popularity, he talked about performing again with Finn and Took, as well as reuniting with producer Tony Visconti.

Death[link]

Marc Bolan and his girlfriend Gloria Jones spent the evening of 15 September 1977 drinking at the Speakeasy and then dining at Morton's club on Berkeley Square, in Mayfair, Central London. While driving home early in the morning of 16 September, Jones crashed Bolan's purple Mini 1275GT into a tree (now the site of Bolan's Rock Shrine), at Barnes Bridge, Barnes, South West London, less than a mile from his home at 142 Upper Richmond Road West in East Sheen. While Jones was severely injured, Bolan was killed in the crash, two weeks before his 30th birthday.^[8][9]

After Bolan, whose death ended the band, three other band members met untimely ends: Steve Peregrin Took died from asphyxiation from a cherry^{[clarification needed]} in 1980, Steve Currie also died in a car crash, in 1981;^[10] Mickey Finn succumbed to illness in 2003.^[11]

Influence[link]

T. Rex vastly influenced the glam rock, punk rock and Britpop genres. Johnny Marr of The Smiths stated: "The influence of T. Rex is very profound on certain songs of the Smiths like "Panic" and "Shoplifters of the World Unite". Morrissey was himself also mad about Bolan. When we wrote "Panic" he was obsessed with "Metal Guru" and wanted to sing in the same style. He didn't stop singing it in an attempt to modify the words of "Panic" to fit the exact rhythm of "Metal Guru". He also exhorted me to use the same guitar break so that the two songs are the same!".^[12] Marr rated Bolan in his ten favourite guitarists.^[13][14]

T. Rex are specifically referenced by The Who in the lyrics of their 1981 hit song "You Better You Bet," by David Bowie in the song "All the Young Dudes," which he wrote for Mott the Hoople, by B A Robertson in his 1980 hit "Kool In The Kaftan" not to forget The Ramones in their song "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?", opening track for the band's fifth album "End of the Century" (released on February 4, 1980). The early acoustic material was influential in helping to bring about progressive rock and 21st century folk music-influenced singers.^[15][16] The lyric "Glimmers like Bolan in the shining sun" is featured in My Chemical Romance's song "Vampire Money", a direct reference to Bolan, taken from their most recent studio album Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Additionally, Oasis "borrowed" the distinct guitar riff from "Get It On" on their single "Cigarettes and Alcohol".^[17] Oasis's guitarist, Noel Gallagher, has cited T. Rex as a strong influence.^[18]

Discography[link]

As Tyrannosaurus Rex

• My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair... But Now They're Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows (1968)
• Prophets, Seers & Sages – The Angels of the Ages (1968)
• Unicorn (1969)
• A Beard of Stars (1970)

As T. Rex

• T. Rex (1970)
• Electric Warrior (1971)
• The Slider (1972)
• Tanx (1973)
• Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow (1974)
• Bolan's Zip Gun (1975)
• Futuristic Dragon (1976)
• Dandy in the Underworld (1977)

Members[link]

• Marc Bolan – guitar, lead vocals (Aug 1967 – Sep 1977)
• Steve Peregrin Took – percussion (Aug 1967 – Oct 1969)
• Mickey Finn – percussion (Oct 1969 – Dec 1974)
• Steve Currie – bass (Dec 1970 – Aug 1976)
• Bill Legend – drums (Mar 1971 – Nov 1973)
• Gloria Jones – keyboards, vocals (Jul 1973 – Aug 1976)
• Jack Green – guitar (Jul 1973 – Nov 1973)
• Dino Dines – keyboards (Nov 1973 – Sep 1977)
• Davy Lutton – drums (Nov 1973 – Aug 1976)
• Miller Anderson – guitar (Aug 1976 – Sep 1977)
• Herbie Flowers – bass (Aug 1976 – Sep 1977)
• Tony Newman – drums (Aug 1976 – Sep 1977)

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Paytress, Mark. "Marc Bolan: T. Rextasy". Mojo. May 2005.
• Paytress, Mark. Bolan: The Rise and Fall of a 20th Century Superstar. Omnibus Press. 2003.
• McLenehan, Cliff. Marc Bolan: 1947–1977 A Chronology. Helter Skelter Publishing. 2002.
• Ewens, Carl. Born to Boogie: The Songwriting of Marc Bolan. Aureus Publishing. 2007.

External links[link]

• MarcBolan.net – Marc Bolan & T.Rex web site
• TAG's Marc Bolan & T-Rex web site – Legal Guardians of Marc Bolan's Rock Shrine

Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi. He became active in the civil rights movement after returning from overseas service in World War II and completing secondary education; he became a field secretary for the NAACP.

Evers was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council. As a veteran, Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.^[2][3] His murder and the resulting trials inspired civil rights protests, as well as numerous works of art, music, and film.

Life[link]

Medgar Evers was born July 2, 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi, the son of Jesse and her husband, James Evers; they owned a small farm and he also worked at a sawmill. Evers was the third of five children, after Charles and Elizabeth. His sister Ruth was the youngest.^[4] The family also included Eva Lee and Gene, Jesse’s children from a prior marriage. After the lynchings of family friends, Evers became determined to get an education. He walked 12 miles to and from school to earn his high school diploma.^[5]

In 1943 Evers and his older brother Charlie were inducted into the army after the US entered World War II.^[6] Evers fought in the European Theatre of WWII, including in France. He was honorably discharged in 1945 as a Sergeant. In 1946, he, along with his brother and four friends, returned to his hometown.^{[citation needed]}

In 1948 he enrolled at Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University), a historically black college, majoring in business administration. In college, he was on the debate team, played football and ran track, sang in the school choir, and served as president of his junior class. He was listed in Who’s Who in American Colleges based on his accomplishments.^[7]

He married classmate Myrlie Beasley on December 24, 1951, and received his BA degree the following year. They had three children together, two boys and a girl. In 2001, their oldest son, Darrell Kenyatta Evers, died of colon cancer^[8]. Their two surviving children are Reena Denise and James Van Evers.^{[citation needed]}

Activism[link]

The couple moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where T. R. M. Howard had hired Evers as a salesman for his Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. Howard was also the president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a civil rights and self-help organization. Participation in the RCNL gave Evers crucial training in activism. He helped to organize the RCNL's boycott of service stations that denied blacks use of their restrooms. The boycotters distributed bumper stickers with the slogan "Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom." Along with his brother, Charles Evers, Medgar also attended the RCNL's annual conferences in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1954, which drew crowds of ten thousand or more.^[9]

Evers applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi Law School in February 1954. When his application was rejected, Evers filed a lawsuit against the university, and became the focus of an NAACP campaign to desegregate the school. The case was strengthened by the United States Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) 347 U.S. 483 that segregation was unconstitutional.^{[citation needed]} That same year, due to his involvement, the NAACP's National Office suggested Evers become Mississippi’s first field secretary for the NAACP.^{[citation needed]}

NAACP field secretary[link]

On November 24, 1954, Evers was appointed Mississippi’s first field secretary. President of the NAACP Mississippi State Conference and civil rights activist, E.J. Stringer, helped him gain this position.^[4] Evers was involved in a boycott campaign against white merchants. He was instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of Mississippi by mentoring James Meredith through his attempt to enroll, succeeding in 1962.^{[citation needed]}

Segregationist protesters collected at the campus, where they rioted after Meredith was admitted. Two people died, and hundreds were wounded, and the federal government sent in the National Guard and regular troops to restore order.^{[citation needed]}

Evers’ civil rights leadership and investigative work made him a target of white supremacists. In the weeks leading up to his death, the hostility directed towards him grew. His public investigations into the murder of Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard had made him a prominent black leader. On May 28, 1963, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home. On June 7 1963, Evers was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the Jackson NAACP office.^{[citation needed]}

Assassination[link]

In the early morning of June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go," Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917 rifle; it ricocheted into his home. He staggered 9 meters (30 feet) before collapsing. He died at a local hospital 50 minutes later.^[10]

The driveway where Medgar Evers was shot.

Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors before a crowd of more than 3,000.

Medgar Evers' grave in Arlington National Cemetery in 2007.

On June 21, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan), was arrested for Evers' murder.^[11]

District Attorney and future Governor Bill Waller prosecuted De La Beckwith.^{[citation needed]} Juries composed solely of white men twice that year deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt.

In 1994, 30 years after the two previous trials had failed to reach a verdict, De La Beckwith was brought to trial based on new evidence. Bobby DeLaughter took on the job as the prosecutor. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for autopsy.^[3] De La Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, after having lived as a free man for much of the three decades following the killing (though he was imprisoned on an unrelated charge from 1977 to 1980). De La Beckwith appealed unsuccessfully, and died at age 80 in prison in January 2001.

Legacy[link]

Evers' legacy has been kept alive in a variety of ways. The writer Minrose Gwin notes that after his death, Evers was memorialized by leading Mississippi and national authors, both black and white: Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Margaret Walker and Anne Moody.^[12] In 1969, Medgar Evers College was established in Brooklyn, New York as part of the City University of New York. In 1983, a made-for-television movie, For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story, starring Howard Rollins, Jr. and Irene Cara as Medgar and Myrlie Evers, aired on PBS, to celebrate his life and career. On June 28, 1992, the city of Jackson, Mississippi erected a statue in honor of Evers. All of Delta Drive (part of U.S. Highway 49) in Jackson was renamed in Evers' honor. In December 2004, the Jackson City Council changed the name of the city's airport to Jackson-Evers International Airport in honor of him.^{[citation needed]}

Evers's widow, Myrlie, became a noted activist in her own right later in life, eventually serving as chair of the NAACP.^[13] Medgar's brother Charles returned to Jackson in July 1963 and served briefly in his slain brother's place. He remained involved in Mississippi civil rights activities for years to come and resides in Jackson.^{[citation needed]}

On the 40 year-anniversary of Evers' assassination, hundreds of civil rights veterans, government officials, and students from across the country gathered around his grave site at Arlington National Cemetery to celebrate his life and legacy. Barry Bradford and three students — Sharmistha Dev, Jajah Wu and Debra Siegel, formerly of Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois — planned and hosted the commemoration in his honor.^[14] Evers was the subject of the students' research project.^[15]

In October 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced that USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE-13), a Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship, would be named in the activist's honor. ^[16] The ship was christened by Myrlie Evers-Williams on November 12, 2011.^[17]

In popular culture[link]

The murder and subsequent trials caused an uproar. Musician Bob Dylan wrote his 1963 song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" about Evers and his assassin. Nina Simone wrote and sang "Mississippi Goddam". Phil Ochs wrote the songs, "Too Many Martyrs" and "Another Country," in response to the killing. Matthew Jones and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers paid tribute to Evers in the haunting "Ballad of Medgar Evers." Eudora Welty's short story "Where Is the Voice Coming From," in which the speaker is the imagined assassin of Medgar Evers, was published in The New Yorker. Rex Stout used the event as a plot device in his civil rights-themed mystery A Right to Die.

Medgar Evers' story inspired a 1991 episode of the NBC TV series In the Heat of the Night, entitled "Sweet, Sweet Blues", written by author William James Royce. The story tells of a murder of a young black man and the elderly white man, played by actor James Best, who seems to have gotten away with the 40-year-old murder. (The TV episode preceded by several years the trial that convicted Beckwith.) In the Heat of the Night won its first NAACP Image Award for Best Dramatic Series that season.^[18]

The 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi, directed by Rob Reiner, tells the story of the 1994 retrial of Beckwith, in which prosecutor DeLaughter of the US District Attorney's office secured a conviction in federal court. Beckwith and DeLaughter were played by James Woods and Alec Baldwin, respectively; Whoopi Goldberg played Myrlie Evers. Evers was portrayed by James Pickens, Jr..

Robert DeLaughter wrote a first-person narrative article titled "Mississippi Justice" published in Reader's Digest, and a book, Never Too Late, (2001) based on his experiences.

Audio material[link]

• Audio recording of T.R.M. Howard's eulogy at the memorial service for Medgar Evers, June 15, 1963, Jackson, Mississippi

References[link]

External links[link]

• Gwin, Minrose. "Mourning Medgar: Justice, Aesthetics, and the Local" March 11, 2008. Southern Spaces http://southernspaces.org/2008/mourning-medgar-justice-aesthetics-and-local
• Medgar Evers in the U.S. Federal Census American Civil Rights Pioneers
• Medgar Evers biography at africawithin.com
• Medgar Evers at the Internet Movie Database
• http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0251350/bio
• Medgar Evers at Find a Grave Retrieved on February 22, 2010