Jackson Free Press

I may be even closer to Medgar now than when he was alive, if that's possible. He was the saint of our family and I cherished him. I didn't want him to leave Mississippi as I had, because I knew how much he was needed here. So whenever he needed money, I'd send him down some.

***

I was sort of fatherly with Medgar. Took care of him. We went to school together, always slept together. God, I remember us kicking each other out of the bed. But I always warmed it for him, because, man, was that bedroom cold, especially between those old sack sheets of ours. I'd get a spot warm, then move over and let him have it because he was the baby. I remember putting my legs on him to keep him warm.

He was so clumsy. When we'd go fishing together I'd help him across the log bridge. But strong. We'd wrestle and box. Sometimes I'd let him take me, and sometimes he'd really take me. He was bookish, very sharp and very lovable. He never wanted to hurt anybody. All the battling and beating we got into, that was my doing, not his. I wasn't cruel or bitter, but I could be mean.

Momma used to say to me, "You're different. Medgar's sweet. But you're always in trouble." And Medgar used to say to me, "Charley, you're going to get into trouble." And I said, "I was born in trouble. Being a Negro, you're automatically in trouble."

***

As boys, Medgar and I hated it when Momma and Daddy sent us into Decatur to a community store to buy flour or sugar. Soon as we'd go in the white men standing around there would start picking on us and trying to make us dance. "Dance, nigger!" The owner of the store was the worst of them all.

I used to swear to Medgar afterwards that some day I'd have a store and make white folks dance to my tune. Now I have a store, a couple of them, in fact, but I've never made anybody dance in them.

***

Being black is part of the air you breathe. Our mothers began telling us about being black from the day we were born. The white folks weren't any better than we were, Momma said, but they sure thought they were. When we'd ask why we couldn't do something or other, often she'd just say, "Because you're colored, son."

Our own people have been taught to believe that white is right and black is wrong. A lot of black parents would tell their children, "It's a white man's world, and you just happen to be here, nigger."

Medgar and I, right from the start, when we were little kids, were determined to prove that this wasn't a white man's world—or, if it was, we'd at least get our share of whatever there was worth getting and see that some other black folks could, too.

Sometimes it was just no fun growing up black, like when we got it hammered into us to watch our step, to stay in our place, or get off the street when a white woman passed by so as not to brush up against her accidentally. To be black in this country is miserable more often than it's not.

***

The deacon of my Momma's Holiness church was Will Loper, and I'd tell Medgar, "You're just like ol' Brother Loper," but Medgar resented this guy, because he was always up shouting, dancing, twisting and carrying on. … Medgar would get fighting mad when I'd call him Loper, and he'd take off after me, and I'd take off running. Then we'd be sitting talking and I'd say, "You know, Lope—" and he'd look a snap right quick, and then sort of grin. The name just stuck, and I kept calling him Lope after we got bigger.

***

Every spring and summer, Medgar and I and all the children were in our bare feet. We'd get briars stuck in our feet and we'd have to sit down and pull them off. Once every two years in the fall, Daddy used to carry us to town to buy us shoes. We'd get two pairs of shoes every two years. He'd buy us a pair of Sunday shoes—we called them our "slippers." We'd wear them to church and to funerals. And they'd always get them big enough for growth; if we wore size eight they'd get us ten so we could wear them two years. The minute you got out of church you pulled those slippers off and you were in your bare feet.

***

At church the preacher was always talking about how "We're all God's children" and "No man is different from anybody else," so I'd ask Daddy, "Why are we different? The preacher don't say we gotta be different."

And he'd say, "Well, son, that's the way it is. I don't know what we can do about it. There ain't nothin' we can do about it. Because if we do anything about it, they kill you."

Reprinted by permission of Charles Evers from his autobiography, Evers.