Medgar Evers shot in the back!

Medgar Evers

So, I'm avoiding news like Trump supporters are avoiding truth, and so, no news here today, people.  Move along.

"If I die, it will be in a good cause," Medgar Evers told a reporter just days before his assassination.  "I've been fighting for America just as much as soldiers in Vietnam," said the World War II who was now a Civil Rights Activist.

Yes, this proud man-of-color who served the US in Military, was shot (in the back, I might add!) by another ex-military man with a French name, Byron De La Beckwith, but Beckwith was no Frenchman.  Unfortunately, he was born in these here United States of America, and after earning a  Purple Heart for his service in the US Marines, went White-Supremacist Nuts, and became a Make America Great Again, Segregationist, and was certain he had the right to murder Evers based on the color of his skin. 

Beckwith pretending to be human.

The scariest thing of all about this, is that Beckwith really thought he'd be giving another medal for having murdered a US Citizen and be completely allowed to continue his Mississippi life filled with Christian Sunday services, Saturday Night White Sheets with eye-holes,  bass fishing, and deer hunting for the rest of his life without interruption.   And he almost did, for his two trials ended in a hung-jury (yes, all white male jurors, go figure).

Fortunately for justice, after years of white sheets and Sunday Church appearances, Beckwith was convicted at the age of 71.  That's right, like many of the Nazis, he was allowed to live a long life before being prosecuted for killing someone that wasn't white. 

In 1963 on this day, his funeral was held and Roy Wilkins, the NAACP executive secretary spoke these words, which I present here for you to look at in today's America where White Supremacist are on the rise again threatening our country! 

The lurking assassin pulled the trigger, but in all wars the men who do the shooting are trained and indoctrinated and keyed to action.  The southern political system put him behind that rifle.... The southern system has its outposts in the Congress.... The killer must have felt that he had, if not immunity, then certainly a protection for whatever he chose to do, no matter how dastardly.  But nothing can stop the drive for freedom.  It will not cease here or elsewhere. 

Finally, in  2017, one of the last things our First Black President would do was make Evers's home a National Historic Landmark.

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Max Baer, the boxer

In 1934 around this day, Max Baer knocked the shit out of Primo Carnera in the 11th round to win the heavyweight boxing championship.

Thirty years later, his son, Max Jr, would brighten our day as Jethor Bonine on the Beverly Hillbillies.  

Fortunately neither were racist and no one got hurt.

Max Jr, the Beverly Hillbilly.