Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr
"An important and readable study of this seminal leaderand the history of the civil rights movement."--Publishers Weekly"Williams's work tops what have been too few head-on examinations of the substance and significance of this martyr's sacrifice, a man who demonstrated the truth he liked to repeat: 'You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.' General readers and scholars will benefit from reading this work..."--Library Journal, Nov 2011"The first substantial scholarly biography of Medgar Evers…. Will be the standard reference for some time to come."--Journal of Southern History"Masterful… Williams's great achievement here is in recognizing that Evers was more than just a symbol of resistance. With Mississippi Martyr, he has written the seminal work on the life of Medgar Wiley Evers."--Brent Riffel in Arkansas Review, 2012"Americans remember Medgar Evers--if they remember him at all--as the black leader gunned down the night President Kennedy made his famous civil rights speech. But Evers was much more than that, as Michael Williams makes clear in this marvelous biography. Long before the TV cameras and newsmen descended on the Magnolia State, Evers was risking his life on the back roads of Mississippi, organizing local people to take charge of their destiny. A hero and a martyr, Evers was also a complicated man torn between his activist impulses and the conservative mandates of his NAACP bosses in New York. Williams captures Medgar Evers in all his complexity in this well written, solidly researched, important book."--John Dittmer, author of Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi"Michael Williams's book provides the first scholarly full-length treatment of this iconic Mississippi civil rights leader, and it is a fitting tribute, providing the depth, detail, and texture hitherto missing from Evers's life story."-John A. Kirk, chair and Donaghey Professor of History, University of Arkansas at Little Rock