Medgar Evers, Non-Violence And The March On Washington

The March on Washington is one of those events that people use to mark time and transformation. "Did you go?," people ask. "Where were you on that day?"

I was serving my country, stationed on Adak in the Aleutian Islands. Defending democracy.

We had no newspaper and no live television, but still I followed events in Mississippi and in the nation's capitol.

I knew of the entry of James Meredith into my alma mater, the University of Mississippi. Many college administrators and professors I knew were involved in the court battles. The University was under attack by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and the White Citizens' Council.

I followed the violent assault on federal marshals when Meredith was enrolled. Some lost their lives at that time.

I knew of the assassination of Medgar Evers on June 12, a little more than two months before the March on Washington.

The hallmark of response to white violence in those formative years of the Civil Rights Movement, whether in Montgomery, Birmingham, Oxford, or during the voter registration drives, was non-violence.

For anyone familiar with the violence by white supremacists against blacks in the south, the non-violent response, even in the face of massive efforts to provoke violence, was impressive. The level of organization, the discipline and restraint during large demonstrations, were unprecedented. (Well, there was the precedent of the Women's Suffrage Movement).

The power of non-violence to transform the political situation was certainly Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s greatest insight. He had read the writings of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, a small brown man wearing only a loincloth and carrying a walking stick, had ended the power of the world's greatest empire in India.

What power!

Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized that power and used it.

We are all the better for it.