The Playboy Interview With Charles Evers

Editor’s note: Originally published in Playboy Magazine in October 1971, this interview with Charles Evers reveals a portrait of a passionate civil rights activist that is well worth the read today. It does contain language some may find offensive.

“So y’all goin’ to write a story on Evers?” asked the lady. “My, my, that nigra sure is comin’ up in the world.” Her smile was sweet, but it didn’t reach the eyes. Her husband, a stout white-haired man in a rumpled seersucker suit with an American-flag pin on the lapel, frowned. “We never had any trouble with our niggers before all this.” The conversation could have been overheard anywhere in white Mississippi, but the fact that it took place in Fayette gave it a special relevance. For the target of their criticism, Charles Evers, is not only a Black man but their own mayor, the political leader of a town in which Black voters outnumber whites more than two to one, and for the first time since Reconstruction, a white minority was confronting dominant Black political power.

Evers, 49, has been the undisputed leader of the civil rights movement in Mississippi since the sniper slaying of his younger brother, Medgar, on July 12, 1963. The day before Medgar’s interment at Arlington National Cemetery, Charles assumed his mantle as NAACP state field secretary and quickly launched a major voter-registration drive and a series of successful boycotts of segregated business establishments throughout the state. In 1964, he and NAACP state chairman Aaron Henry led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in its unsuccessful attempt to unseat the all-white delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Evers was a nuisance to the Democrats in those days, but within four years he had made his political mark on both the state and national scene, and in 1968, the “Mississippi Challenge” succeeded when Evers’s biracial delegation of “loyalist” Democrats was seated at the Chicago convention and Evers himself appointed to the 12-man Democratic National Executive Committee, the first Black to sit on the party’s highest policy-making body.

But the main thrust of his organizational activity–until now–has been the registration of Black voters, facilitated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and under his leadership, over 200,000 Blacks were registered in Mississippi between 1963 and 1970. By 1967, Black voters outnumbered whites in six rural counties, and in one of these, Jefferson County, Evers established his personal power base. After an unsuccessful but narrowly contested Congressional race, he announced his candidacy for mayor of Fayette, a racially mixed community of 1,754 and the county seat. His opponent, Mayor R.J. (“Turnip Green”) Allen–a nickname won by trading vegetables for Black votes–had held the office for 18 years. In a campaign reminiscent of the Kennedys’–Evers was a close friend of Robert Kennedy, and Ethel and Ted pledged their support–Evers defeated the septuagenarian incumbent by 128 votes.

Though the outcome sent deep waves of apprehension and resentment through the state, Evers’ inauguration was attended by such prominent liberals as Ramsey Clark, Paul O’Dwyer, Theodore Sorensen, Whitney Young, Julian Bond and Shirley MacLaine, and messages of congratulation were sent by President Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, Eugene McCarthy and many others. But such distinguished acclaim was less meaningful to Black Mississippians than the sudden reality of power–and the possibility of extending that power to other communities and eventually to the statehouse itself.

Within a day of the election, a number of whites had shuttered their houses and fled the city, including a restaurant owner who had endeared himself to Black customers by posting a sign reading: “Every cent spent by a nigger to be donated to the Ku Klux Klan.” Nor did the defeated city administration go out of its way to smooth the transition to the new regime. The majority of white city employees resigned after the election, and the outgoing mayor and his aldermen devoted their last days in office to a spending spree calculated to bankrupt the community. When Evers took office, there weren’t enough funds in the town coffers even to maintain municipal services, and he was forced to appeal for public donations on a CBS news feature about Fayette. The response was overwhelming: Within eight days $100,000 had poured in, most of which has been used to open a public-health center. With the help of political allies in Washington and Eastern financial circles, Evers has brought new industry into a town where 500 of the 1,000 Black residents were unemployed, and federal grants have established vocational centers to train unskilled Black–and white–youths.

Fayette is still a depressed community, and its economy can hardly be said to be thriving, but dramatic gains have been made and continue to be made. The work force has been substantially increased and, for the first time in years, the welfare rolls have been reduced. Such accomplishments have won Evers support even among some pillars of the white Mississippi business establishment. Tom B. Scott, president of Jackson’s First Federal Savings and Loan Association, considers Evers a valuable influence for progress: “Because of his connections, he could make Fayette a show place. I think he is going to be a great help to Fayette and Mississippi.” Syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak have written: “Charles Evers is attempting a political balancing act designed to divide power between the Negro numerical majority and the economically dominant white minority…. If he can manage it without driving out the whites, it could be the beginning of biracial Black-white power in the Deep South.”

Evers has moved on to the next stage of his quest for such power. Last April, he was nominated for governor by the Mississippi Loyalist Democrats, the state’s nationally recognized Democratic Party, becoming the first Black man ever to run for governor of Mississippi. His campaign has aroused new fears and hatred among some Mississippi whites and fresh fervor among his dedicated Black supporters–as well as a surprising but still tentative ripple of support among the state’s hitherto silent white moderates. As Evers tours the state campaigning before Black and white audiences–the positive reception at a number of white meetings has astonished reporters–he has triggered new controversy about both his objectives and his character, which was called into question early this year not by a political rival but by Evers himself. In an extraordinary autobiography, he candidly–and perhaps foolhardily–confessed his affairs with white and Black women and his previous careers as an underworld policy runner, bootlegger and head of a prostitution ring.To his supporters, he is still the “Moses of Mississippi,” about to turn his state into the promised land; but to his enemies, he is a money- and power-hungry demagogue prepared to risk a race war to further his own ambitions. To find out which–if either–is the real Evers, Playboy sent journalist Eric Norden to Fayette to interview its mayor at the height of his gubernatorial campaign. Norden reports:

“Two hours out of Jackson, we cut west in our rented car off U.S. 20 along a potholed blacktop road, past pines and sweet gums and copses of oak and dogwood, the shacks growing shabbier as we near Delta country, the buzzards getting bolder, crouched over dead dogs on the roadside and flapping up as we pass. Off the highway the fields are empty; you can go for miles without seeing another car, and Northern paranoia conjures up images of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman ringed by flashlights, waiting for the first bite of the chain. Finally, a Mississippi highway-patrol car passes, its radio antenna whipping the leaves off overhanging trees, the pink faces of two jowly cops blurring past, and I look at my Black driver, but he’s watching his speedometer. A few minutes later, I see with relief a sign reading: ‘Welcome to Fayette, a community of progress and brotherhood, Charles Evers, Mayor,’ and we’re safe inside the city limits.

“Fayette is an old town, and the white frame houses with their little patches of garden and tree-shaded lawns carry antebellum echoes. The air shimmers with the summer heat–105 degrees in the shade–and people move slowly, to conserve energy. An ancient Black woman, bent and shawled, holds a parasol above her head with both gnarled hands, and young men lounge in doorways, towels wrapped around their necks, like sparring partners between bouts. It’s obviously a poor town, but everything is clean and neat, and even the most humble homes and stores display none of the earmarks of despair that mar the urban ghettos. It’s Saturday, shopping day, and the streets are crowded, an occasional white face bobbing in the Black sea. There are few Afros, no dashikis, and as I get out of the car and approach city hall, a passer-by nods pleasantly to me.

“The atmosphere is relaxed, casual, but there’s an undercurrent of tension that I feel even in the anteroom to the mayor’s office as busy Black and white aides bustle by, making last-minute preparations for a forthcoming festival marking the second anniversary of the Evers administration. Richard Woodard, one of the mayor’s security guards, on loan to Fayette from the New York Police Department, tells me that harassment of Evers’s supporters is growing: The highway patrol has begun to systematically arrest Black drivers with Evers stickers on their cars. Death threats, he says, have also been increasing.

“And then I’m in the mayor’s office, decorated with portraits of Medgar, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and Evers himself is waving me to a chair. He’s a big man, over six feet, pushing 250 pounds, but he moves like an athlete, slow and controlled, with a lazy grace. His face is coarsely powerful, with a fighter’s broken nose, slightly flattened, and a mobile mouth that breaks slowly into a broad smile of greeting. It’s a warm smile, but his eyes are sad–and guarded. At first I thought it might be because I was white, but after some days with him. I noticed this attitude toward everyone, even those closest to him; no matter how wide the smile, there is a detached, noncommittal reserve. He obviously likes people, but he doesn’t seem to fully trust any of them, Black or white.

“Over the next 10 days, I traveled everywhere with Evers on his campaign tours, skimming across treetops in a three-seater Piper Cherokee, riding along dusty roads in air-conditioned cars and battered pickup trucks, seated in his restaurant at the Evers Motel or in his apartment above the Medgar Evers Shopping Center, a veritable fortress with no windows and a small arsenal of rifles, revolvers and semiautomatic weapons. I came to like him and to respect him, but not to really know him. I think very few people do.

“He has a passion for life, but it derives from an intimacy with death–that of his brother, of so many others who have been close to him; and the possibility of his own. He tries to live every minute as if it were his last–and it very well could be. There is said to be a $15,000 contract on his life, and the Klan has vowed he won’t live till election day, much less have a chance at the statehouse. I began the interview on that grim note.”

PLAYBOY: The bodyguards who surround you, and the extensive security precautions on all your campaign trips, indicate that you take very seriously the death threats you’ve received since you announced your candidacy. Do you believe your life is in danger?

EVERS: In Mississippi, every Black man’s life is in danger. We go cheap down here; you learn to drink that in with your momma’s milk. My life ain’t worth a plugged nickel; I know that. I know they can gun me down in the back any time, jus’ like they did Medgar. But that’s not gonna stop me. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I’m seen so brave or nothin’ like that, but I seen so much death round me it’s jus’ stopped scarin’ me.

The bodyguards don’t really make no difference anyway; if they really want to get you, they’ll get you. They might be able to scare off some nut with a pistol, but not no professional killer. Look how they got Bobby; he was a few feet away, with all his bodyguards around, and it still didn’t do no good. I know that by sayin’ what I say and tellin’ white folks down here that niggers are good as they are, I’ve probably signed my death warrant. But I’ve always believed, and Medgar felt the same way, that what counts isn’t how many years you live or the way you die but what you do while you’re here. And you can’t make no contribution if you live in fear.

PLAYBOY: Have the death threats increased since you entered the gubernatorial race?

EVERS: Oh, yeah, no doubt about it. And funny thing is, a lot of the most vicious threats come from out of state. from places like Florida and New Jersey. Now, what I ever do to rile folks in New Jersey? But there it is. I always used to get some threats when I was field secretary for the NAACP back in the Sixties; some redneck would warn me, “Nigger, we gon’ git you, we gon’ git you like we got your goddamned brother.” But they wasn’t too frequent. Then when I ran for Congress in ’68 against old Charley Griffin and came close enough to scare ’em–I won the primary, and they had to round up every cracker vote in the district to beat me in November–the threats speeded up and they made a couple of attempts to kill me. Once a car circled my home in Jackson and then shot the house up, but nobody was hit.

Then when I got elected mayor of Fayette, the threats started pourin’ in. Kluxers would call me on my unlisted number and tell me there was gonna be one smartass nigger less round soon, and go into everythin’ they’d do before they finished me off. You know, some folks can go to bed with a good book; me, I get these characters callin’ all time of the day and night. And it’s got even worse since I announced my candidacy for governor. But you know, those threats don’t really mean too much, leastwise as long as they stay on the phone or stick to those anonymous letters. When you gotta watch out is when they stop talkin’ and start shootin’.

PLAYBOY: Have there been any serious attempts on your life recently?

EVERS: Well, the really serious ones are the ones you don’t know about till they squeeze the trigger. But I guess the best organized effort was the one back in late 1969, right after I’d been elected mayor. We were really pretty lucky on that one; we were tipped off jus’ in time. I was sittin’ in my office one mornin’ when the phone rang, and a white woman was on the other end; you get pretty good distinguishin’ ‘tween Black and white voices down here, though I guess to an outsider there don’t seem that much difference. Anyhow, this white lady, she says, “Charles”–always the first name for niggers, remember–“Charles,” she says, “they are going to kill you today. I don’t always agree with you, but we can’t afford to have you killed.” Now, like I told you, I was gettin’ these threats all the time, and I thought this one was jus’ a li’l more polite, a li’l more subtle than most, so I jus’ said, “Go to hell!” and hung up. And forgot about it, like you gotta learn to do.

Then about six o’clock, the phone rings again, and this time it’s a man’s voice–a white man–and he tells me the same thing as the woman. I realize now it was probably her husband and they’d got wind of somethin’. But I jus’ said. “I got things to do,” and hung up. But this time I took pause a bit, ’cause there was somethin’ different about these calls. I began to get the feelin’ they wasn’t jivin’. Then at seven-fifteen, just as I’m about to go out for a bite to eat, the phone rings again and this time it’s a Black voice. I figured out later it was probably the white couple’s maid; they’d brought her in on it when I wouldn’t listen to ’em. And she says, “Mr. Evers, I’m a friend of yours, now don’t hang up on me.” And I says, “Look, honey, what is it?” So she says, “There’s three men gon’ kill you.” I sorta snort and say, “Aw, c’mon, now,” but she’s real intense. She says, “They’re drivin’ a 1968 Mustang, they’ve got five guns in the car. They been on the road and bought some clothes for a quick change, and one of ’em is in Natchez in a motel with a getaway car.”

Well, when they get down to things like that, you gotta listen, ’cause this was jus’ a year and a half after they got Martin in Memphis. So I said, “Thank you very much,” and as I hung up, I remembered seein’ a ’68 Mustang cruisin’ round town earlier that day. So I packed my gun and left the office, and the minute I hit the sidewalk, there’s this same Mustang parked across the street. So I call over our police chief, who’s waitin’ outside for me, and he and one of his men, they pull out their guns and surround the car and order the driver out. There was only one guy, a white man, but there was a small arsenal inside the car–a carbine, three shotguns and a .38-caliber pistol. So we asked him what he was doin’ with all those guns and he just snarled right back, “I’m a Mississippi white man–I won’t answer that.” Well, that sorta answer ain’t good enough in Fayette anymore, so we slapped him in jail under $10,000 bond on charges of carryin’ concealed weapons and held him for a hearin’. I disqualified myself as judge to show that justice in Fayette didn’t have no skin color or prejudice.

We found out he was from Tupelo. He turned out to be head of the Knights of the Green Forest, a splinter group of the Klan that had broken off from the Mississippi Klan ’cause it was “too moderate”–if you can believe that. And the next mornin’ Federal agents got in on the case and they picked up his two collaborators. They caught one of ’em holed up in a motel room in Natchez, jus’ like the tip-off call said, with a Thompson submachine gun. And they arrested the other, who was a bodyguard for one of the top segregationist politicians in the state, in Hattiesburg. They was all charged with federal gun violations ’cause of the machine gun, which took ’em out of our jurisdiction.

PLAYBOY: What was the disposition of the charges?

EVERS: I doubt they’ll ever bring ’em guys to trial. But you know, this man we had in our custody. I tried to talk to him. I mean, he’d all but admitted he wanted to kill me, but I wanted to find out what made him tick. So I said, “Listen, I don’t know your story, but why don’t you and me jus’ sit down and talk about it?” But he was real surly; he wouldn’t say nothin’. I told him, “Listen, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. Why would you want to kill me? I don’t want to kill you. I had all the chance in the world to kill you–we coulda dropped you right in your car–but I didn’t. Now, why would you want to kill me?”

Up till then, he’d looked at me with these eyes like li’l snakes, but suddenly he dropped his head; he didn’t know what to say. I think for a second there. I stopped bein’ a symbol–some smartass sassy nigger lookin’ for power–and almost became another human bein’ to him. After we turned the three of ’em over to the federal authorities, he said to me, “You’re fair. But I hate you.” And he told the FBI later that he was still gon’ get me; nobody could stop him. Well, maybe he will someday. But in a funny way, I know he has a different opinion of me than when he came down with his execution squad. If he ever do get me in his cross hairs, at least it’ll be a man he’s shootin.’

PLAYBOY: Has the FBI been active in investigating threats against your life?

EVERS: Not at all. In this particular case, they was forced to act ’cause of all the publicity, and maybe ’cause of some pressure from friends of mine in Washington. But by and large, the FBI jus’ don’t wanna be bothered.

PLAYBOY: A number of civil rights leaders have accused the FBI of deliberately dragging its feet on civil rights violations in the South. Do you agree?

EVERS: I get the impression that the FBI don’t wanna rock the boat down here, maybe ’cause a lot of Southern politicians are real good friends of Mr. Hoover’s. Look at our Senator Eastland–he’s one of the worst racists since Bilbo, but he’s head of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which works hand in glove with the FBI, so Hoover never bothers him. I think Hoover don’t wanna antagonize those allies of his by actively protectin’ our rights. Plus the fact that most of the FBI agents down here are white Southerners to begin with, who have to work real close with the local white police and politicians, and probably share a lotta their prejudices. Far as I can see, their attitude is, “Sure, we’ll investigate a crime once it’s committed, but we won’t do nothin’ to stop it.” You saw that when Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights worker, was murdered on an Alabama highway a few years ago. The FBI had an informant in the Klan; he was right in the car with the Klansmen who shot Mrs. Liuzzo; he was armed himself; but he didn’t do nothin’ to stop it.

Right after Medgar’s death, when I was really holdin’ myself together with an effort, two FBI agents walk into my office and question me about it like I was on their list of suspects. I jus’ looked at ’em; I couldn’t say nothin’. Everybody knew I was in Chicago when it happened, but to say I could kill Medgar when they shoulda been out lookin’ for the ones that did, it was jus’ too much. Well, I got up from behind my desk and kicked ’em right out of the office. I can tell you, the way I felt, if they hadn’t gone quick, there woulda been big trouble. And these are the hot-shot protectors of law and order we hear so much about.

I remember another time one night in Natchez a while back, we was holdin’ a mass meetin’, and this FBI man, he comes over to me and says, “Mr. Evers, I’d advise you not to go out that door tonight, ’cause they’re gonna kill you.” So I say to him, “Who are you to tell me they’re comin’ here to kill me? Can’t you stop ’em?” And he jus’ looks at me real cool and says, “No, our job is not to make arrests before but afterward.” Great. That’s like sayin’, “You jus’ go ahead and get yourself killed, but don’t you worry, we’ll look into it.” Talk about closin’ the barn door after they stole the horse! So I jus’ lost my temper and told him, “Well, I don’t need you round here. Get the hell outa my face!” And I walked out the door and nothin’ happened. But that’s the way they operate. Look at Martin–right up till the end, they was more interested in buggin’ his house and tappin’ his phone than protectin’ his life. With friends like that, you don’t need enemies. So I rely on God and my .45 to protect me–though maybe not in exactly that order.

PLAYBOY: There have been reports that a $15,000 contract was issued on your life the day you announced your candidacy for the governorship. Do you think it would be canceled if you withdrew from the race?

EVERS: Oh, sure, my life would be safe if I shuffled and tommed and said, “Yassuh, Mr. Charley, yassuh, we niggers is real happy, such, jus’ step on us a li’l harder, we love it.” But then I’d be dead already. Anyway, white folks make more outa the danger than I do. It’s jus’ somethin’ you learn to live with if you’re a Black man in Mississippi. There ain’t no certainty in life; you can live all your years cautious and not offend nobody and then get cancer or wrap your car round a pole or drop dead of a heart attack. So I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

Anyway, that’s the way the people closest to me have gone. So many of the people who worked to help the Black man in this state have died violently–Medgar, of course, and so many others. Vernon Dahmer, a man I was very close to, I asked him to become chairman of our voter-registration drive, and a week later they fire-bombed his house in Hattiesburg and burned him to death. The three kids, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mike Schwerner, I remember those boys like it was yesterday. Goodman and Schwerner, they was white, they came down from New York to help our voter-registration drive in ’64, and James Chaney, he was Black, a native of Mississippi. Aaron Henry and me, we sent Goodman over to Meridian to join the other civil rights volunteers, and then him and Schwerner and Chaney set off for Philadelphia, Mississippi–and they got ’em on the way. We never saw ’em alive again.

Then there was Wharlest Jackson, a good friend of mine, the treasurer of the NAACP branch in Natchez. The last time I saw him, he came to visit me in Fayette and I recall him askin’ me, “Charles, how we gon’ change white men’s hearts? We gotta change their hearts.” Three days later, he stepped on the starter of his pickup truck in Natchez and a bomb blew him to bits. George Metcalf, the president of our Natchez branch, his car had blown up when he turned on the ignition, too, but he survived. And oh, God, so many others, people I never knew personally, but I feel I knew ’em jus’ the same. Emmett Till, the little kid from Chicago; after they was acquitted by an all-white jury, the two men who murdered him boasted to reporters how they’d done it.

In Port Gibson, they killed a Negro boy, cut off his genitals and then left him in the middle of the road for the vultures. Also in Port Gibson, an old Black man who was crippled and wheeled himself round on a li’l wagon, he was on the icehouse steps when a white cop walked up and said, “Nigger, get outa my way.” He tried to pull his li’l wagon round, but he didn’t move fast enough, so the policeman drew his service revolver and shot him five times, kept shootin’ as he bounced down the steps. Then he went in and placed his order for ice. Nobody touched him. Nobody touches any of ’em.

Jus’ last year somebody planted a rumor at Jackson State College that I’d been assassinated, and this set off a demonstration, so I went out on the campus and I told the kids, “Now, cool it, ’cause these bigots’ll kill you. They’re murderers, they killed my brother, they killed Martin, maybe they even killed Jack and Bobby, and the same kind of ism that killed them will kill you.” And they promised me they’d wind things down, but while some students were still out on the street, the state highway patrol arrived–they’re sort of the Mississippi SS –and with no provocation, with no warnin’s to disperse, nothin’, they opened fire with shotguns loaded with double-O shot, the biggest and deadliest shot there is. And when they finished, two Black students was lyin’ there dead and another 12 was wounded, some serious. One of the white cops got on the radio; it was recorded. He said, “Better send an ambulance, we killed us a few niggers here.” Jus’ like that. A grand jury later ruled that the troopers “had a right and were justified” in shootin’ off their 150-round fusillade, although none of the kids were armed or bein’ anythin’ more than noisy.

So that’s the way it goes down here: murder followed by whitewash, followed by more murder. And after a while, white folks get the idea it’s no crime killin’ Black folks, ’cause they always get away with it. And for every one of us we know gets murdered, how many others been killed and buried deep in the forests or fed to the gators in the swamps? So that’s why I don’t get as riled up at the thought of my own death as some of my friends up North do. When death been walkin’ right behind you since you’re a baby, you get used to it. I grew up with death. He’s almost one of the family by now.

PLAYBOY: You were raised in the Mississippi of the Thirties. What effect did that have on you as a child?

EVERS: Well, you realize pretty early that white folks don’t put no stock on your life. I’ll never forget, I was ten and Medgar was eight when it happened, but it’s clear as yesterday: We saw our first lynchin’. We was livin’ in Decatur and there was this good friend of my father’s–Mr. Tingle was his name, Willie Tingle. Somebody said he looked funny at a white woman, an insultin’ look, and a mob got together and tied him to a wagon and dragged him through the streets. Then they hung him up from as tree and shot him full of holes. For months afterward, his clothes was lyin’ in that field, all bloodstained, and Medgar and I would see ’em every day. I can close my eyes and still see ’em, real as life. We was jus’ kids, but it shocked the daylights outa us. I went to my daddy right after it happened and I asked, “Why did they kill him?” and he say, “Jus’ ’cause he was a colored man.” So then I asked, “Could they kill you, too?” and he told me, “If I did anythin’ they didn’t like, they sure could.” I guess I grew up a little that day.

PLAYBOY: Did that kind of fear permeate your childhood?

EVERS: Well, like I say, you learn to live with it. And I’m grateful to my daddy; he taught me never to be afraid of nobody. My daddy was strong and he was mean. White folks used to call him a “crazy nigger,” ’cause they couldn’t scare him or make him crawl. Never. His name was Jim Evers and he was a big man, over six feet tall, jus’ like me. And he worked hard, from sunup to sundown, but he never let white folks break his spirit. Lookin’ back, I don’t know how he ever survived, back in the Twenties and Thirties, when the Klan was ridin’ high and things was so bad. But he would always stand up to white folks, even though it wasn’t nothin’ to kill a nigger in those days, when all the whites would say, “Niggers no damn good anyway, let’s jus’ go out and kill us one.” But they was afraid of my daddy, and that’s a lesson he taught me–that most bigots are cowards. If they haven’t got you outnumbered ten to one, they’ll back down, ’cause they’re afraid to meet you face to face.

I remember on Christmas Eve the white folks would always celebrate by shootin’ off fireworks, Roman candles and sparklers and firecrackers. And Medgar and me, we felt bad ’cause we wasn’t allowed to see it; no colored folks was allowed in town by the Klan. But our daddy, he saw how we felt and he told us, “C’mon, boys, we goin’ to town.” And he took a baseball bat he’d made for us out of an old broom handle, and he said, “If anybody throws a firecracker at us, we gon’ use this on him.”

So we walked down the road to Decatur and the white folks along the way jus’ stood there starin’ at us, their mouths hangin’ open. Once a white kid ran up in front of us and he was about to light a firecracker, so my daddy said, “You throw that firecracker and I’ll bust your brains out.” He ran and told his father, who came up all mad-lookin’, but my daddy jus’ told him, “That goes for you, too!” The white man backed right down and nobody gave us no trouble. That night we thought the Klan might come out to get us, so we sat up all Christmas Eve with rifles, waitin’ for ’em, but nobody came. It was lucky for ’em they didn’t; we’d have killed every one of ’em. Medgar and me, we was really disappointed they didn’t come.

PLAYBOY: Did local whites ever take any reprisals against your father because of his attitude?

EVERS: No, he always got away with it, and nobody ever laid a hand on him. If you’re afraid, they’ll smell your fear and be right after you. But not my daddy. I remember one time, I must have been about nine, when Daddy took Medgar and me into the commissary at the sawmill where he worked then. It was a real company store; you could buy on credit, but they’d squeeze your lifeblood outa you. Daddy would buy all our stuff there, groceries and a box of snuff for himself–Black folks always dip snuff down here–and jus’ say, “Charge it,” and then he’d pay out of his pay check every Saturday. The owner there was a real mean red-neck; he hated niggers. Now, he knew that Daddy couldn’t read or write, but what he didn’t know was that my daddy had this natural gift for figures; he could add and subtract and multiply in his head faster and better than most folks can on paper. So this time, when he took Medgar and me into the store to pay his bill, he figured out that the owner had overcharged him by five dollars–and in those days, and with the little Daddy was makin’, that was big money.

So Daddy told the man he was wrong, and that red-neck got nasty as a rattlesnake. “Nigger,” he screamed, “don’t you tell me I’m tellin’ a lie.” Now, this was a real mean racist; he was always beatin’ on Black folks; he had a reputation for it. But my daddy, he wasn’t frightened at all. He jus’ said, “You’re wrong. I don’t owe that much.” That white man’s eyes looked like they could drip poison then and he shouted, “You callin’ me a liar, nigger?” But Daddy stayed cool, he answered him real calm and said, “Well, I don’t owe that and I’m not goin’ to pay it.” And then the man moved behind the counter to grab his gun and Daddy, he snatched a Coke bottle, broke it off at the neck and got between him and his gun. There was ten or fifteen whites in the store then, all mean, so Medgar and me, we both grabbed Coke bottles and got behind Daddy. He turned to us and said, “Get outside, boys,” but we told him, “No, Dad, we’re not gonna leave you in here.” And the owner, he screamed, “I’ll kill you, you Black son of a bitch!” But Daddy said real soft, “You better not move, you better not go round that counter.” Now, all Daddy had was a broken Coke bottle, and the owner could’ve got his gun, and so could his friends; but they was all afraid to move. And that owner, he was shakin’ like a leaf.

So Daddy jus’ backed out of the store and he bluffed all of ’em. When we got outside, Medgar and me wanted to run, we thought they’d follow us and whip us, but Daddy told us, “Don’t run, don’t run. They’re nothin’ but a bunch of cowards.” And they was. We walked back home along the railroad tracks and nobody followed us. We was real proud of Daddy and we put our arms round his waist and he patted us on the head and told us, “Don’t never let anybody beat you. Don’t never let any white folks beat you.” And he said, “If anyone ever kicks you, you kick hell out of him.” That stayed with me all the time I was growin’ up in Mississippi and white folks tried to hassle me. It’s ’cause of my daddy that my nonviolence goes just so far.

PLAYBOY: Were you hassled much as you grew up?

EVERS: Well, it wasn’t all bad. Medgar and me, we had fun like other kids did. But in the back of your mind, you always had this feelin’ that you was different; you knew that to white folks you jus’ wasn’t a full human bein’. And you can never get rid of that feelin’. At church the preacher would always tell us, “We all God’s chillen” and “Nobody’s different from nobody else,” and I’d come back and ask Daddy, “Why are we different? The preacher don’t say we gotta be different.” And he’d tell us, “Well, son, that’s the way it is, and they ain’t nothin’ we can do about it. ‘Cause if we try to do anythin’ about it, they kill us.” That’s somethin’ no white folks can understand, growin’ up Black in a white world, always bein’ an outsider, scared for your life if you speak out. It’s a horrible feelin’, and it’s crushed a lot of our people, drove ’em to whiskey or drugs. And those of us who did keep goin’, God, think of all the time and potential we had to waste jus’ tryin’ to survive. Even my daddy, strong as he was, and the way he’d face up to individual white men, he’d given up hope of ever changin’ the system itself. He was resigned to it; he accepted it, much as he hated it. That was the one area where Medgar and I differed from Daddy. We never accepted it. When he told us the good jobs were white man’s jobs, that Blacks could never rise, we jus’ wouldn’t accept it. We vowed we’d change things, that we’d make things better. Even as kids we felt that way.

PLAYBOY: Do you remember your first conscious act of rebellion?

EVERS: Well, in a way, thinkin’ free was an act of rebellion in itself, ’cause racism was so shot through the system that it warped a lot of Black folks’ minds, made ’em believe they was inferior. So many parents would up and tell their kids, “It’s a white man’s world and you jus’ happen to be here, nigger.” And Black kids saw all the power and all the money and all the decent livin’ on the side of the whites, and a lot of ’em thought, hell, there must be somethin’ wrong with us to live like this. I mean, even the standards of beauty you’d see in papers and magazines and movies were all white standards; Black kids grew up thinkin’ they was ugly, and nothin’ destroys your self-respect more than that. So it’s a real step forward jus’ to free yourself of that conditionin’ and vow that someday you’ll make things different.

I guess the first real action we took was when I was ten or eleven and Medgar was eight or nine. We wanted to make us some money, so we figured we’d sell newspapers. We sent away to Chicago for copies of the Defender, the Negro newspaper, and we planned to sell ’em to Black folks. But the whites in town, they stopped us, they said, “That’s a job for white boys.” I suppose, lookin’ back, it was a small thing, but it really hurt us at the time. We didn’t take it lyin’ down, though. I said to Medgar, “If we can’t sell our papers, why should they sell their papers to us?” So whenever a white boy would come sellin’ papers in our part of town, we’d lay for him and jump out from the bushes and slap a toe sack over his head and take his papers and tear ’em up and throw ’em in the woods.

Now, that may sound like kids’ roughhouse, but in Mississippi, Black folks got killed for a lot less. Some white folks, they heard about it and got riled and they went to my daddy and said, “Jim, you better do somethin’ about those kids of yours.” And Daddy called us in and he said, “What you been up to?” And we told him how they wouldn’t let us sell papers and that we was gettin’ back for it. Daddy, he was jus’ silent for a minute; then he said, “Well, don’t get in no trouble, now.” And from our daddy, that was like approval, ’cause he was a real old-fashioned disciplinarian, none of that permissive stuff you have today. We were smartass kids and Daddy knew how to handle us; he’d tan our hides if we done wrong or was disrespectful to him or Momma. So I always thought he was secretly glad his kids was standin’ up to white folks. A lotta Black folks, you know, their spirit had been broken, and if a white man came to ’em about anythin’, they’d quiver and shake. You can’t blame ’em, considerin’ the kind of society they lived in, but Daddy wasn’t that way. He was mean and though and proud, and we loved him.

PLAYBOY: Did your father always work at the sawmill?

EVERS: He had lots of jobs, but mostly what he did was survive, and keep his family together, and in Mississippi 30 years ago, for a Black man, that’s like sayin’ he was a brain surgeon. He’d work his back off for us, all kinds of jobs, in the sawmills, and on the side he even ran a small undertakin’ business with a rickety old hearse. And my momma, she was the same way, jus’ like Daddy. She’d work all day as a maid for a couple of white folks, hard work, and at the end of the day, she’d come home all tired and drained, and right away she’d have to start washin’ the white folks’ laundry. I can still see her strong hands workin’ over that laundry. We was never allowed in the kitchen when she was doin’ it, for fear we’d mess it up. And when we helped her fold, she’d say, “Now, boys, be careful, don’t wrinkle Mr. Gaines’s shirts. Mr. Gaines’ll get mad if you wrinkle his shirts.” And we’d take this big load of laundry over with her and we’d watch Mrs. Gaines give Momma a paltry 50 cents for washin’ and ironin’ 15 or 20 shirts, overalls, dresses, socks and underclothes and maybe a dozen big sheets. And she always had to go to the back door. All day she’d washed their dirty linen, fixed their beds, cooked their food, washed and combed their kids, and we still wasn’t good enough to be let in the front door. Momma would work six long hard days for the Gaines, and they’d pay her a lousy two-fifty a week. Medgar and me was only kids, but we decided we’d be buried in hell three times over if we ever let our kids work and live like that.

Sometimes I wonder where she got her strength, and how she’d always have time for a smile and a pat for us, no matter how exhausted she was. It must have come from God. Dear Momma. Her name was Jessie; she was part Indian, Creole Indian, and she liked to pad round in her bare feet. Tiny li’l feet, like a bird’s, must have been a size four. She was real small, about five feet, two, and stout, but she must have been a real looker when she was young. She was a devoutly religious woman, Momma was, she read the Bible all the time and she drew a lotta solace from it. She always pounded it in our heads that we was gonna get an education and make somethin’ of ourselves; she always wanted the best for us. Once I was elected mayor of Fayette, all I could think was: I wish Momma was here today. Medgar and me was really lucky we had parents who not only loved us but who we could respect and look up to.

PLAYBOY: How many were there in your family?

EVERS: There was me and Medgar and our two sisters, Liz and Ruth. Ruth died when she was 21 and Liz has a grocery store in Chicago. We also had two half-brothers and a half-sister from Momma’s previous marriage–Eddie, Gene and Eva. Momma’s grandfather was half white, and he looked all white, which is pretty common in Mississippi. You hear all that jive about racial purity and mongrelization from the Kluxers, but they’re the ones who been slippin’ into bed with our women for 300 years. Elsewise, where do all those pale-skinned Negroes come from? The white Southerner has always lived white and slept Black, which makes all that talk about miscegenation so much hypocrisy on his part. Anyway, we was a real close-knit family. Momma and Daddy, they loved each other, and when there’s love in a house, it reaches out and warms everybody in it. She was proud of Daddy, and she didn’t give him no back talk. Our house wouldn’t have been very fertile groun’ for women’s lib, I’ll tell you that. But at night, Medgar and I would lie in bed and hear ’em talkin’ over the day and makin’ plans, talkin’ on way into the night together. They really enjoyed each other.

Of course, all married couples have problems, and Momma and Daddy had their share. Daddy tended to be tightfisted, and when you got so little money comin’ in, that can be a real problem. But the most serious problems they had was his flings with other women. There was a spell, I must have been 14 then, when it got really bad, and I realized what was goin’ on. Daddy was stayin’ away from home a lot and spendin’ time with a lady we knew; her kids were our friends. I’d see Daddy over there and he’d give her things, and her kids things, new clothes and stuff, even when we had nothin’. And that hurt, it really did. I felt Daddy had let Momma down. Let us all down, denied us. Finally, Momma told us what was happenin’, but she never would say one word against him to us. “We jus’ gonna pray for him,” she tell Medgar and me. “Someday he’ll change.” Well, he did. He carried on with this other woman a while longer, but finally he broke it off and for the rest of his life, he was as good and loyal and devoted a husband as a woman could want. So I guess Momma’s prayers was answered.

But I’ll tell you, that incident did somethin’ to me; it left scars, I guess. I mean, a mother is closer to a son than to anybody else, even his daddy, and it did somethin’ bad to me to see her hurt, even though she tried to put a good face on it. And it wasn’t fair, but I used to blame Daddy’s women more than him for what was goin’ on. Us kids used to make trouble for his girlfriends whenever we saw ’em, insult ’em and sometimes throw things at ’em. I guess in our childish way we was tryin’ to protect Momma. But the thing bred a kind of hate for women in me. I know it don’t make no sense, but I came to identify all women with Momma’s pain, and I wanted to get back at ’em. I made a solemn oath to myself then that I’d never give a girl flowers or candy or a valentine, or treat her with anythin’ but contempt. And even though I know it’s not right, that attitude stuck with me. I’ve used women, I’ve made ’em pregnant and dumped ’em, I’ve put ’em in whorehouses, but I’ve never respected ’em.

PLAYBOY: Not even your wife?

EVERS: No, Nan is different. I love Nan, jus’ like I loved Momma. I’ll admit I have my own fling now and then, but I never allowed any other woman to come between us. I told Momma that my wife would never suffer because of some other woman, and she hasn’t. I may have somethin’ on the side now and then, but nothin’ serious, nothin’ that will endanger our marriage. And I’d never come between any other man and his wife and family.

PLAYBOY: Isn’t your attitude toward women–your mother and your wife on a pedestal and all others dirt–unhealthy as well as irrational?

EVERS: It may be, but I can’t change the way I feel. Momma used to say to me. “Now, Charles, don’t you go round tryin’ to hurt women.” But I disobeyed her there. I always tried to get even with women for Momma’s sake, to avenge her; and right down to this day, I have a hard time likin’ most women. That’s why I’ve never been too popular with girls. But I’m bein’ frank with you, and healthy or unhealthy, that’s the way I am, and it’s too late to change now.

PLAYBOY: Did Medgar share your hostile attitude toward women?

EVERS: Oh, no, not Medgar. Medgar was always different from me; he was kind and gentle; he never wanted to hurt nobody. I was the rough one, the trouble-maker. All the fights and messes we got into, it was my fault, not his. Medgar, he liked gentle girls, shy girls, young girls. But not me. I liked ’em older and sassy, gals who’d take care of me and give me some money for clothes and things. But Medgar, he was a romantic. I guess. He was always considerate, worried about people’s feelin’s whereas I was willin’ to ride over ’em roughshod to get what I wanted.

PLAYBOY: Were you and Medgar always close?

EVERS: Oh, yeah. I loved him. I was kind of fatherly toward him. I mean, he was my baby brother, and I’d try to take care of him, look after him. We went every-where together, did everythin’ together. We used to sleep with each other, and one of us was always kickin’ the other one out of bed. I remember those cold winter nights–and it gets cold down here, believe me–I always warmed the bed for him. God Almighty, was those old sack sheets cold! I’d warm up a spot for Medgar, then shift over and give it to him. I used to put my legs on him to keep him warm. It seems just like yesterday. It’s hard to believe he’s gone.

PLAYBOY: Can you remember when you and Medgar first became aware of white hostility?

EVERS: Well, that’s sorta like askin’, “When did you first realize you’re Black?” A lotta white folks ask that. What they don’t understand is that you realize you’re Black almost from the day you’re born. We come into the world in an old shack with some ancient midwife who pulls us outa our momma’s womb, while the white kids are born in a fine modern hospital with doctors and nurses. The infant-mortality rate is very low with white kids; with Black kids up to two years old, it’s almost 50 percent. We’re reared in houses with flies and roaches, with roofs that leak when it rains, with rickety old furniture that’s fallin’ apart, without even a coat of paint on the outside. Bein’ Black is in the air you breathe, and from the time you’re a baby, your momma and daddy tell you how the white folks hate you and how you gotta be careful how you deal with ’em or they can kill you just’ as quick as they’d step on a bug. And you see that hostility all round you. Sometimes it’s open and raw, other times it’s subtle, but it’s always there, it dogs your heels like a shadow. When you’re Black, most times your childhood jus’ ain’t no fun at all. All the time it’s bein’ drilled into you to learn your place, to get off the street and into the gutter when a white woman passes by, so there’s no chance you might brush against her and defile her.

I recall when we were livin’ in Decatur as boys, Medgar and I used to hate it when Momma would send us into the local store to buy sugar or flour. The minute we got inside, the white men hangin’ round would start insultin’ us and pushin’ us around. “Dance, niggers!” they shouted at us all the time. The owner, the man who took our money, he was worse than any of ’em. I used to vow to Medgar that someday I’d have a store of my own and I’d make the white man dance to my tune. Well, I have several today, but I don’t insult or mistreat anybody, Black or white. But you know, things like that, they get you down. I mean, why should kids have to dread jus’ goin’ into the community store? And there were so many things like that, so many little humiliations that finally build and build till they’re crushin’ down on your back like a millstone. If I done nothin’ else in my life, I seen to it that my kids ain’t had to grow up like that.

PLAYBOY: Were all the whites you came into contact with hostile to you?

EVERS: Oh, no, not at all. There was a lotta good white folks, decent people, kind people. But the over-all atmosphere was so hostile, so sick, that the whites with decent instincts were afraid to speak out. They might be nice to us personally, but they’d never dare to challenge the system, so they left the field to the Kluxers. Moderates may be a silent majority in Mississippi, but if so, up to recently they been stone-mute. There are exceptions, though–people like Hodding Carter, Jr., a white newspaper publisher in Greenville who’s fought racism for 30 years, and some li’l people. One of the white men Momma used to clean house for, he gave Medgar a letter of recommendation when he was applyin’ to Ole Miss, and believe me, that takes some guts.

PLAYBOY: Did you have any white friends as a child?

EVERS: Oh, yeah, and that’s sad, too, ’cause white and Black kids have always grown up together in the South, played together, become friends. But only until they reach a certain age, and then a kinda curtain drops down between them, and that’s the end of it. When Medgar and I was kids, we always played with white kids, mostly the children of people Momma worked for. The Gaines kids, Margaret and Bobby, we grew up together, we played together, we ate together, we slept together. We loved each other, we was close as peas in a pod. We knew we was Black and they was white, but we was so close it jus’ didn’t seem to matter. But then we started to grow up, and all of a sudden, it did matter. I’ll never forget one day Momma was leavin’ to clean up the Gaines house and Medgar and me, we said, “Momma, we wanna go, too. We wanna play with Margaret and Bobby.” Momma jus’ looked at us kinda funny and said, “You can’t play with ’em no more.” “Why, Momma?” we asked. We jus’ couldn’t understand it; I mean, these were our friends. I realize now that Mrs. Gaines must have called Momma aside and said, “Jessie, Margaret’s becomin’ a woman, so it’s time you told Medgar and Charles….” Momma woulda got the message; that’s an unwritten law down here.

Anyway, that was that. Jus’ overnight you lost your friends. Sometimes after-ward, we’d meet Margaret on the road into town and she’d chat with us, and we kept thinkin’ of her as a friend, ’cause she always made it clear she remembered our closeness as kids. But she was an exception. Our other white friends, they never bothered to look back at us. One time when I was goin’ to high school, I ran into one of the white Time boys Medgar and I had grown up with. We’d been very close, and I was glad to see him again, so I said hello and called him by his first name. But his eyes narrowed and his face got strange and tight and he told me, “Listen. James Charles, you call me mister.” When I told Momma and Daddy, they jus’ said, “Well, that’s the way white people are; they think they’re better than we are.” But I jus’ wouldn’t accept it. That kinda thing was happen-in’ all the time, and it jus’ sorta made you lose faith in people.

PLAYBOY: Did you respond with hatred of your own?

EVERS: I’m sorry to say I did; both Medgar and I did. That’s one of the worst things the white racists did–they taught us to hate. Momma saw it happenin’ and she argued with us; she prayed for us every night and tried to make us understand that hatred jus’ breeds more hatred and never solves nothin’. But we saw too much brutality and exploitation of Black folks all round us, and we began to grow bitter and wouldn’t listen to her. Back in those days, in the Thirties and Forties, the Klan had everythin’ its own way, and the atmosphere in the state was really bad. All across Mississippi the racists put up big signs outside their towns: Negro, Read. If you can’t read, Run anyhow. And a lot of our people had to run in those days, jus’ to stay alive. And a lot of others never made it. There was lynchin’s practically every other day and countless beatin’s and burnin’s of Black homes.

And Medgar and I saw all this, and we said, “Well, if they hate us so much, we’ll hate back, and if they shoot at us, we’ll shoot back, too.” For a while, we even discussed the idea of formin’ a Black Mau Mau underground movement, like Jomo Kenyatta was leadin’ against the British in Kenya, assassinatin’ whites and slaughterin’ families at night and makin’ hit-and-run raids. Fortunately, it was only talk, but that shows where we’d got to. But Medgar was by nature so gentle that he managed to overcome his hate and he grew to really believe in brotherhood between Blacks and whites and the power of love. Those weren’t jus’ words from a pulpit to him; he really came to believe in that, deeply. Me, it took longer, but finally I managed to purge the hate out of my system. It wasn’t easy, though, believe me.

PLAYBOY: Did Mississippi Blacks make any organized attempt at armed self-defense during your boyhood?

EVERS: No, we was too disorganized, and jus’ too plain scared for our lives. Some of us would have guns and fire back if we were attacked, and once in a while a Klansman would catch a bullet himself. But there wasn’t no drive or movement. And back in those days, with the climate not only in Mississippi but in the country as a whole the way it was, I don’t think any such effort would’ve stood much chance of success. You gotta remember that when people are Completely cowed and suppressed, they don’t make revolutions. They too busy jus’ scratchin’ out a livin’ or stayin’ clear of a lynch mob. It’s only when things get a li’l bit better, when a chink of light shows through, that people see how much better things could and should be, and start to organize and take action. Our people were so poor, so scared and so poorly educated that they couldn’t fight back in any organized way.

PLAYBOY: As far as education goes, defenders of segregation have maintained that until the Supreme Court desegregation ruling, Black schools in the South, although separate, were genuinely equal to white schools–and sometimes even better. Is there any truth to that?

EVERS: I always get a laugh when I hear that line about separate-but-equal schoolin’. The school Medgar and I went to was typical of the whole system, and it was about as bad as a school could be. To start off with, we could only attend school from mid-October to mid-February, when the whites shut the schools down so Black youngsters would be free to work as field hands to plow and clear for the spring plantin’. So we only had four months of school. Think about that; we was only allowed to attend school when the whites didn’t need us for nothin’. I remember how we’d get up for school in the mornin’s, it was generally cold and we’d have to go out and get wood for a fire. Momma had to go off at sunrise every mornin’ to make the Gaines’s breakfast and help “Miss Ann” get her kids ready for the white school. So we’d have to get up and slop the hogs and wash and iron our clothes while Momma was off workin’, and for our breakfast we’d have to eat cold corn bread or chittlins or anythin’ left over from dinner the day before. Then Medgar and I had to walk the three miles to our school along the dusty roads or in the rain, shiverin’ in our patched-up jeans, while the big new yellow school bus would pass by, takin’ the white kids to their expensive modern school. And as they’d pass, they’d jeer at us and call us dirty niggers and spit at us and sometimes throw rocks at us. The driver always slowed down to give ’em a good shot, and we’d have to jump off into the ditch and go to school all muddy and damp.

Not that there was much need to dress up for our school. It was jus’ a dingy old one-room shack with shingle walls and roof, so when it rained in the winter, it’d rain right on you and a cold wind jus’ cut right through the buildin’ with nothin’ to stop it. There was an old potbellied stove in the middle of the room, and our teacher, Miz Atkins, would send Medgar and me out to get wood for a fire first thing we got in, and all the other kids would sit shiverin’ in their hand-me-down clothes till we could get the fire goin’. The girls, they wrapped their feet in pieces of old horse blankets so they wouldn’t freeze. Once our teeth had stopped chatterin’, we’d get in some spellin’ or arithmetic, but it was generally so cold that we couldn’t concentrate much. Neither us nor the teacher. And she couldn’t give us no real individual attention, ’cause there was almost 100 kids squeezed into that one room. Then, finally, three o’clock rolled round and we had the three-mile walk back home, and along the way the white school bus would pass us again, and the kids our mommas had fed and sent off to their brand-new school that mornin’ would yell, “Let’s see you run, niggers!” and the driver would try to sideswipe us so we’d have to jump off the road to avoid bein’ hit. That was our typical school day, and it was pretty much the same for Black kids all across the state and in most of the rest of the South. Our Black teachers tried hard, but they jus’ didn’t have the equipment or the trainin’ or the environment to do the kinda job they would’ve liked to. Hell, a lotta Black schools didn’t even have textbooks for the kids. White folks, you know, they used to figure, well, a dumb nigger is a contented nigger, so they did the best they could to keep us dumb.

PLAYBOY: You attended a Black college, Alcorn A&M. Was the Black higher educational system any better?

EVERS: Not much, though I’m happy to say things have improved considerably in recent years. And the improvement in grade and high schools has been terrific since the Supreme Court’s desegregation rulin’ was finally enforced. Now our kids are goin’ to the modern white schools and gettin’ a chance at a decent education. But it was different in my day. I have a degree from Alcorn, but I couldn’t pass a tough grammar school test today. So I’m a product of the Mississippi so called separate-but-equal educational system, and I can assure you that the last thing it is is educational. That’s why I think Black kids who get that kind of inferior education should have an opportunity to use a preparatory tutoring service to qualify them to go on from shanty schools to good universities.

I’m also 100 percent in favor of Black-studies programs, in high schools as well as colleges, for whites and Blacks alike. Black kids ain’t been taught nothin’ about their heritage and culture and historical accomplishments. When I was in school, all we learned in our text books–when we learned anythin’–was about white culture and history. The few references to Blacks jus’ described them as ignorant savages or beasts of burden with strong backs and weak minds. One of the problems is that so many white historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries were racists and passed on their prejudices in their books. Look at the completely negative picture most all history books paint of Reconstruction, which was the first genuine attempt to integrate the races in the South and would’ve worked if a political compromise hadn’t been worked out in Washington in 1877 that sold the Blacks down the river. But the history books that both white and Black kids read are too often distorted. I’ve read enough objective Black history–after I finished college–to know that.

PLAYBOY: You sound as if you don’t think college was worthwhile.

EVERS: I learned most of my lessons from life, not from books; from travelin’ and meetin’ people. That was one of the reasons I enlisted in the Army in 1940, to get away from Mississippi and see somethin’ of the world.

PLAYBOY: Wasn’t the Army in those days almost as segregated as Mississippi?

EVERS: It was pretty bad. All our officers were white, racist whites, and they treated us like dirt. They did everythin’ short of callin’ us nigger, and you jus’ knew they thought nigger. And they always gave us the worst type of assignments–latrine cleanin’, that sorta thing–and imposed really stranglin’ restrictions and doled out vicious punishment for the tiniest infractions or for no infractions at all, jus’ ’cause they felt like it. So it was rough to be a Black soldier. But I’ll tell you somethin’, I was so glad to escape from Mississippi that I put up with it gladly. And there was an awful lotta Black kids like me, who’d rather be duckin’ bullets in a foxhole than livin’ the way they was. And then Medgar joined up, too. We were still full of hate in those days, and we figured we’d use the Army to teach us how to kill white folks. But within a few months we were in World War Two, and we soon learned what a horrible thing killin’ really is.

PLAYBOY: Did you see any overseas action?

EVERS: Yeah, more than enough for me–in the South Pacific. At first, though, I was stationed in Hattiesburg, in an all-Negro unit, and in 1942 I was transferred to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. It was there, by the way, I had an affair with a white woman. She was workin’ in the PX and we got friendly over coffee and one thing led to another and pretty soon we were in bed. She was the first white woman I ever made love to.

PLAYBOY: Was it because she was white that you were attracted to her?

EVERS: No, not really. But she was good for me ’cause she was white, ’cause before I met her, when my mind was still poisoned with all this hate for white folks, I’d say to myself: Every white woman I find, I’m gonna take, and I’m gonna do everythin’ I can do to her to make up for what they’ve done to us. I wasn’t thinkin’ of rape, jus’ to use ’em for my own pleasure, exploit ’em, degrade ’em. But this woman, I found myself gettin’ close to her, not as a white woman or a Black woman but as a human bein’. More than sex came to be involved, and I learned that if a woman loves you and cares about you and worries over you, it don’t make no difference what color her skin is. So I think she helped defuse some of that hate that had been growin’ up inside me, and I’m grateful to her for that.

Anyway, I was sent on to several different camps after that, in Louisiana and Oklahoma, and I was beginnin’ to adjust real well to Army life. I always had an eye for a fast buck and I found plenty of opportunities to make money in the Army. I’d run crap games in the barracks and sometimes make 25 or 30 bucks a night. And the money I got together I saved, ’cause I never gambled or drank or smoked. I didn’t like my vices to be expensive. And the money I saved I used to start a loan operation, at 100 percent interest: I’d loan a dollar for a dollar. God, I’d do anythin’ to earn money: Each GI was allotted a beer ration, and I’d sell mine; if the PX charged 30 cents a bottle, I’d charge 50 cents, and I’d get away with it. I was a good hustler in those days, I’ll tell you.

PLAYBOY: When did you go overseas?

EVERS: In ’43, first to Australia and then on to New Guinea, with the combat engineers. Was that a godforsaken place! Nothin’ to do but sweat and sleep on the ground and fight off bugs and eat coconuts for nine months. You almost got to welcome a Japanese raid as a change from the boredom. I broke a knee over there and they reclassified me outa combat into administration, and then I was sent into the Philippines, to Luzon, right after the invasion. I was never scratched, but it was there I really got my face rubbed in the reality of death. After the last Jap holdouts had been cleaned out, we moved into Quezon City, a lovely place with old Spanish architecture. That was where I really began to rake in the money–by operatin’ a string of brothels. All those combat-weary GIs wanted some action, and I gave it to ’em. My biggest house was located on Quezon Boulevard, with about ten girls, all clean and pretty, and I had a chain of small huts and another smaller house downtown. Filipino pimps procured the girls for me, and I treated ’em well, never abused ’em or threatened ’em if they decided to leave. I always kept the place clean, with hot and cold runnin’ water, and we changed the sheets several times each day. I always checked out the customers at the door, and if they was drunk or dirty or lookin’ for trouble, I wouldn’t let ’em in.

PLAYBOY: Did you ever have any moral qualms about your business?

EVERS: Now I’m ashamed. But not then. Even then, though, I never had anythin’ to do with the girls personally. I could never understand how anybody would want to sleep with a girl who’d had sex with maybe ten other guys that day. I mean, think of the diseases you could catch. To me it was just a business, and if some folks enjoyed it, I was there to provide a service. And I really cleaned up. We’d charge enlisted men five dollars for a short time and brass ten dollars. And believe me, I made sure it was a short time. My profits depended on a fast turnover, and I’d rush ’em in and rush ’em out on an assembly-line basis. I mean, if a guy stays a half hour, I’m already losin’ money. Anyway, most of those GIs were no great lovers, and they was generally in and out within ten or fifteen minutes at the most.

PLAYBOY: How much money did you make from your brothels?

EVERS: Over $3000 profit, which to me was a fortune then. And all this time I was goin’ to the University of Manila business-law school, where they gave classes in English. It was about this time I met a girl named Felicia. She was half French and part Filipino, and I would’ve married her, but she was white and I could never take her back to Mississippi with me–not unless I wanted to commit suicide. She was lovely in every way. And you know, she was such a devout Catholic that she wouldn’t dream of ever havin’ sex before marriage. We was goin’ together over a year before she unbent enough to kiss me. And we never did get beyond that. I guess bein’ round prostitutes all the time, I welcomed and respected her purity. When I was transferred back to the States, she begged me to stay, and I wanted to. She came down to the ship with her parents and her brothers and sisters and she cried and screamed and tried to hold onto me till the very last moment. When that ship pulled out, I was sick, physically sick, and I stayed sick for weeks afterward. Wherever she is today, I hope she’s happy and well.

PLAYBOY: Did you take up brothel keeping again in civilian life?

EVERS: Years later in Chicago, when I was broke, I went back to it for a while. But when I got outa the Army, I went home to Decatur, and a little later Medgar came back from France. His French girlfriend was writin’ him love letters, and I was gettin’ a letter every day from Felicia. I tell you, the war sure broadened the outlook of a lotta Black Mississippians! I went back to school, finished high school and then went to Alcorn A&M on the GI Bill. The $3000 I’d made in the Philippines I used to start a small taxi business, and I became the official driver for the school. A lotta the students on the GI Bill were gettin’ their Government checks at this time, so I’d cash the checks for ’em for a 50cent fee. They saved themselves 50 cents that way, ’cause otherwise they’d have had to pay me a dollar to drive ’em into Port Gibson in my taxi to cash their checks. So I got ’em comin’ and I got ’em goin’, and in between my courses, I was pickin’ up a pretty buck.

PLAYBOY: What did you study at Alcorn?

EVERS: I took up social studies, and Medgar, who was attendin’ along with me, he chose business administration. You’d think it should’ve been the other way round. But it didn’t matter what I was takin’, ’cause I was a pretty indifferent student; all I thought about was makin’ money. But Medgar was different, he was serious. He was editor of the school paper and a member of the debatin’ team, and he made good grades. He was studious and disciplined, and all I wanted was to have a good time; I guess I’d been in the Army too long. I was really sowin’ my wild oats, too. Within a couple of months, I’d got three girls pregnant, and the girls were after me, their parents was after me and my own momma and daddy was after me. The girls kept sayin’, “You gotta marry me,” but I’d have to have been a Mormon to do right by all three of ’em. I told ’em, “I’m not gonna marry any of you!” But finally, this one girl went to the dean and the president of the school, and more out of sheer weariness than anythin’ else, I finally agreed to marry her. But we never did live together and we had the thing dissolved after a while. But I always recognized all my illegitimate kids. I never denied ’em, and I do my best to take care of ’em. After all, they didn’t ask me to bring ’em into the world.

PLAYBOY: Were you completely out for yourself at that time, or had you begun to take an interest in politics or civil rights?

EVERS: Can’t stay in the sack all the time. No, I was always involved, whether I was hustlin’ or studyin’. I mean, in Mississippi, civil rights wasn’t somethin’ you could take up and then put down again when you felt like it. It was our lives at stake, and our kids’ futures. And after the war, you began to see the first stirrin’s of an awakenin’ in Mississippi. Black GIs who’d gone out and fought for their country came back second-class citizens and they didn’t accept it no longer. They knew things could be different, and should be different. In 1946, Medgar and I decided we was gonna register and vote, which was unheard of for Black folks in those days. Before we went out to the county courthouse to register, we went and told Momma what we was gonna do. I can see her still: She was washin’ clothes in a tin bucket with homemade lye soap, and she didn’t say a word, she jus’ stood there churnin’ the clothes with an old stick, her lips movin’. She was prayin’.

Anyway, when we showed up at the county courthouse, they wouldn’t let us register. The clerk said, “Who you niggers think you are?” And I told him, “We’ve grown up here, we’ve fought for this country and we think we should register.” He said no again, and when we insisted, they threatened us. But we kept comin’ back and finally they gave in. And then some local racists called on Daddy and they warned him. “Your boys better not come vote, ’cause we gon’ git’ em if they do.” As the election approached, old Bilbo was goin’ up and down the state sayin’, “The best way to stop niggers from votin’ is to visit ’em the night before election.” And Medgar and me, we said, “Let ’em come on and visit us. We’ll kill ’em if they do.” But nobody never came, and on the day of the election. Medgar and me and some friends went down to the courthouse to vote, and the place was surrounded by about 200 crackers, all with rifles and shotguns and pistols. I never saw so many guns in one place, not even in the Army. They was all over the courthouse square and sittin’ in their pickup trucks.

When we started to go into the courthouse, they blocked us off from the entrance, and we stood there on the courthouse steps, eyeballin’ ’em. We had guns, too, and I had a long-handled .38 and a switchblade knife in my pockets. The old circuit clerk, Mr. Brand, he scurried over and said, “Charles, you and Medgar. you all go back, you gon’ cause trouble.” And I said, “Lemme tell you somethin’, Mr. Brand. We gon’ vote or else we all gon’ go to hell. It’s up to you. Give us our ballots.” He just turned tail and hurried away. Well, we split up and tried to get in by some of the side entrances, but they was all blocked by gun-carryin’ red-necks. And then, as I came up to one door, I suddenly spotted a familiar face. It was the druggist we’d bought all our drugs and tooth paste from for years. We’d always considered him a friend. So I was glad to see him, and I said hello. But he jus’ patted the gun in his hip pocket and hissed at me, “Listen, nigger, ain’t nothin’ happened to you yet.” You could jus’ hear the hate drip from his words.

Somehow, that really hurt, ’cause I’d always thought he was real good folks; I’d believed in that man, and I felt like somethin’ died inside me and suddenly I thought, what the hell, I don’t care if they kill me, what difference does it make, anyway? I think at that moment I really wanted to die, but I wasn’t gonna give those red-necks the satisfaction of knowin’ it. So I jus’ pointed to the .38 stickin’ outa my pocket and I flashed my switchblade, and I said, “Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen to me.” And I pushed by him and he didn’t do a thing.

Once we all finally got inside the courthouse, we got hold of our ballots, but then we found we still couldn’t vote, ’cause they’d locked the ballot box inside an office, and they was standin’ three deep in front of the entrance. I said, “I’m goin’ through ’em,” but Medgar, he put his hand on my arm and said. “No, Charley, don’t try. It ain’t worth it.” He led me away, sayin’, “We’ll get ’em next time.” And as we left, the druggist shouted at us, “You niggers better get away from here ‘fore somethin’ happens!” I jus’ looked at him cold as ice and said, “Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen to us ‘cept what happens to you.” And he knew I meant it. A bunch of ’em followed us, chantin’, “We’ll git you tonight, niggers,” but we pulled our guns and said, “All right, crackers, we gon’ git you. Come on down here– now!” But they were cowards; they was afraid of us, even though they had us outnumbered ten to one, and they turned heel and went away. But they taught us an important lesson that day. By guardin’ that ballot box so tight, they told us there was somethin’ vital about votin’, that it’s the key to power. And we never forgot that lesson.

PLAYBOY: How long was it before you were allowed to vote?

EVERS: Jus’ one year. We voted in the next county election, in 1947. But we was still the exception at that time, of course. Most Blacks was still too intimidated to take the risk.

PLAYBOY: When did you and Medgar become active in the NAACP?

EVERS: In the late Forties, when it began organizin’ state-wide. Meanwhile, we’d both graduated from college, and Medgar had gone to Mound Bayou, a small all-Negro town in the Delta, to sell insurance. I went back into the Service durin’ the Korean War, and it was in those days that I married Nan. When I got outa the Army, we moved to Philadelphia, Mississippi, and I worked teachin’ school for a while; I taught history and coached football. I got $100 a month. We was livin’ over a funeral parlor owned by our uncle, Mark Thomas, and I managed it for him. It was at this time that my daddy got sick over in Decatur, seriously sick. We rushed him to the white hospital in Union, but they wouldn’t admit him to a room or a ward like white patients; they jus’ stretched him out on a cot in the basement, all damp and dark and crawlin’ with rats and roaches. I fought with ’em, I argued and pleaded with ’em to put him in a ward, but they wouldn’t listen to me.

That was in ’53, and no white hospitals would go outa their way for a Black patient. Some wouldn’t even put him in the basement; they’d jus’ turn him away. Anyway, with proper care, he might’ve got better, but down in that basement, he jus’ wasted away and died. When they called and told me he was dead, I jumped into the hearse and drove to the hospital to get him. I’d had enough experience in the undertakin’ business to know how dead bodies was treated, and I didn’t want nobody to mess with Daddy’s body but me. And when I put his body in the hearse, this white doctor comes up to me and says, “How in hell can you do somethin’ like that? If you can pick up your own dead daddy and drive him back, then you ain’t got no kind of heart.” I jus’ told him, “How much heart does it take to put him down in a place like this and let him die?” I took him back to Philadelphia, and I was in sort of a daze. I wanted to embalm him myself, but my family stopped me from that. But I dressed him myself. At church, I finally couldn’t hold back anymore, and I jus’ broke up and collapsed.

And then, jus’ a little while later, almost as if she wanted to follow Daddy, Momma died, too. Those were bad days. I tried to get outside of myself and my grief, and I threw myself into civil rights activity. I kicked off a Black voter-registration campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and I was elected voter-registration chairman for the Negroes of Mississippi. I pressed Medgar to be the first Negro to enroll at Ole Miss, and in early 1954 he applied for admission. That really riled every red-neck in the state. His wife Myrlie was afraid they’d try to kill him, but Medgar jus’ said, “You have to make sacrifices to make progress.” He always believed that, right to the day he sacrificed his life for what he believed in. The board of higher learnin’ rejected Medgar’s application, but he had become an important symbol to Mississippi Blacks, and he was appointed state field secretary for the NAACP, which was preparin’ a big push in Mississippi after the Supreme Court’s school-desegregation rulin’.

PLAYBOY: Were you working closely with him at that time?

EVERS: Yes, I was, ‘specially on voter registration. I was also runnin’ several businesses of my own at this time. In addition to my colored cab company, the first in the state, I had a burial-insurance business, as well as runnin’ my uncle’s funeral parlor. I also ran a small hotel with a café, which gave local Black folks the first chance in their life to have a Coke or milk shake while they was sittin’ down; always before, they could only buy ’em from a takeout stand at the white drugstore. I was also the first Black disc jockey in Mississippi, on station WHOC, and I had a large, loyal audience. And I’d always urge Black folks over the air to go out and pay their poll tax and register to vote. The white racists was mad about that, and they was also mad that I was on my way to becomin’ a successful businessman with a healthy bank balance. Nothin’ riles ’em more than seein’ a Black man make good, ‘specially a Black man who won’t crawl to ’em and shuffle and beg. So they saw me as a threat, and a bunch of ’em started out to destroy me financially. And they succeeded. They pressured the owner of my hotel and restaurant not to renew my lease, and they arranged it so I couldn’t renew my cab license either. Then they hassled the man who sold me caskets and first he cut off my credit and then refused to sell to me at all.

They also manufactured incidents, like they’d drive their cars into the side of my hearse or one of my cabs, and then they’d sue me for damages. And in those local white courts, they wouldn’t have no trouble collectin’, neither. Finally, after suin’ me several times, they got a judgment of $5000 against me and I just couldn’t raise the money to pay it, so they took all my possessions and attached all my property. They stripped our house bare of furniture and auctioned it all off. I lost everythin’. They even put so much pressure on Mr. Cole, the owner of the radio station, that I resigned my job there rather than see him lose his advertisin’ and go broke. I was completely cleaned out. We didn’t even have enough money to get outa Philadelphia, so our friends and neighbors took a collection and they raised $26 in pennies and dimes. I sent my wife and our kids off to her mother’s house and I headed for Flint, Michigan, to find a job. My money ran out in Chicago, so I stayed on there at my sister’s place. That was 1956, and I stayed in Chicago until 1963.

PLAYBOY: Were you inactive in the civil rights movement during that period?

EVERS: No, not completely. I still visited Mississippi regular, and I’d help out any way I could when I was there, and I kept in close touch with Medgar on issues of strategy and organization. We was always jawin’ over the phone about one thing or another. But in the beginnin’, my main thought was gettin’ enough money to keep my family together. It was rough at first. I worked as a men’s-room attendant in the Conrad Hilton at night for a salary of three dollars and a percentage of the tips, and durin’ the day I worked in a meat-packin’ house in the stockyards for $60 a week. And I was in a mean mood those days. Any drunk come in the hotel washroom, I’d roll him quick, have his wallet out, empty it and back in his pocket before he ever guessed what was happenin’. And after a while, I drifted into the numbers racket as a policy runner. I was more or less workin’ for the Syndicate, but eventually I got my own personal operation goin’ right under their nose. I was never greedy, but I skimmed off $400 to $500 a week. I was never arrested, neither; I kept the cops paid off and stayed outa trouble. I ran some girls for a while, too, but I got outa that after a year or so. After a while, I was back on my feet again and had some money in the bank, so I got outa the numbers game and I invested my money. I bought three bars, and I also got into the jukebox business, though the Syndicate tried to frighten me away. I also ran an after-hours place called The Club House, and ran a good boot-leggin’ business on the side. And all the while, I was also teachin’ school; I taught history and physical education in Robbins, Illinois, an old Black town outside of Chicago. I must’ve been the only policy-runnin’, bootleggin’ schoolteacher in Illinois!

PLAYBOY: What did Medgar think of your illegal activities?

EVERS: Well, like I told you, much as Medgar and I loved each other, we was two different people with two different outlooks on life. I’d send him money all along–he never had nothin’–but I didn’t have the heart to tell him where it came from. He would’ve thought it was dirty money, and he would’ve been right. Medgar was a saintly man; he wasn’t interested in money, only in justice for our people. I used to argue with him and urge him to stress Black business development more, ’cause without green power, you never gonna have no real Black power. You can’t spend civil rights, and a man ain’t really free unless he has economic freedom as well as political and social freedom. Medgar always used to say get the vote, and I’d say get the dollar. We was both right. But there was really no fundamental difference between me and Medgar, jus’ a difference of emphasis. It’s funny, you know, I could never do some of the things today I did back in Chicago. Not ’cause I’m so pure or nothin’, but after Medgar’s death, somethin’ happened to me. I felt he had to live on through me, and I had to live my life in a way he’d be proud of. That’s why I’m a reformed hustler. I don’t wanna let Medgar down, or the principles he died for.

PLAYBOY: Did you feel you’d let him down by not being there when he was killed?

EVERS: That’s somethin’ I can never forgive myself for. I’ve accepted my daddy’s death, and my momma’s death, and my sister Ruth’s death, but I’ve never been able to accept Medgar’s death, ’cause I wasn’t there. I know everybody says I couldn’t have prevented it if I’d been there, and that’s probably true. But in my heart, I can never accept the fact that I wasn’t there beside him. Never.

PLAYBOY: How did you react to the news of his murder?

EVERS: God, it’s still like a nightmare, jus’ thinkin’ about it. I’d spoken to Medgar on the phone jus’ three days before his death and he’d said to me, “Now, Charley, be careful, ’cause it’s worse there than it is here.” And I said, “No, you’re the one to be careful, ’cause you know all those Kluxers down there are after you for registerin’ all those black folks. And if they can stop you, they’ll feel like they’ve got everythin’ under control.” But he said, “Don’t worry about me, I’m gonna make it. You jus’ be careful.” And, I don’t know, maybe we both sensed somethin’, ’cause suddenly we was both cryin’ over the phone. So I said, “Look, you want me to come on down there?” And he said, “No, you’re due to come anyway next week.” That was Sunday, and that Wednesday I came home around three A.M. and as I drove up, I saw all the lights were on in our house. I knew somethin’ was wrong, and I pulled out my gun–I always packed a gun in Chicago–and ran up to the porch.

Inside, the house was filled with people, and Nan came up to me and said quietly, “Come on back here, Charles,” and pulled me toward a back room. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Somethin’ happen to Medgar?” I think I’d suspected it from the beginnin’. “Yes,” Nan said, “they shot him.” “Well,” I said, “they probably jus’ winged him. They can’t kill the Evers boys; they been tryin’ for years.” “No, Charles,” Nan told me softly, “he’s dead.” And I don’t remember anythin’ after that till I got off a plane in Jackson the next mornin’. I must’ve been in a state of shock. My daughter told me later that I’d told her, “I’ll never come back to Chicago. I ain’t comin’ back. I shouldn’t have left Mississippi in the first place.” And God, how all that old hatred of the white man poured back. I thought I’d outgrown it, but now it was stronger than ever. But most of all I hated Charles Evers, ’cause I couldn’t free myself of the feelin’ that if I’d been there with Medgar, I might’ve saved his life. I carried a gun, and I kept thinkin’ I might’ve done somethin’. That thought ate away at me; it wouldn’t let me sleep at night.

PLAYBOY: Medgar was shot from hiding by a high-powered rifle. What difference would your presence have made?

EVERS: I know, I know, that’s what Nan tells me; that’s what everybody tells me. But it still don’t free me of that guilt. And what a cowardly way to kill a good man like Medgar, shootin’ him in the back from some bushes. Jus’ a few weeks before, they’d fire-bombed his house, you know, and after that, Medgar trained his kids to drop flat to the floor whenever they heard an unusual noise. He tried to turn it into a game, sayin’, “That’s what Daddy did in the Army.” But they knew it wasn’t a game, and they’d say to him all the time, “Daddy, please be careful.” And he’d get all those death threats on his phone, jus’ like I do today. He’d try to talk to ’em, but they jus’ hung up. And then that night around 12:30, he pulled up outside the house, got out of the car and the bastard shot him in the back. When his wife ran to open the door, he was lyin’ there dyin’ on the front steps in a pool of blood. The children saw it all, and over and over again, they begged him to get up. But he was dead. Medgar was dead.

PLAYBOY: Byron de la Beckwith, an arch segregationist Greenwood businessman, was tried for the murder and released after two hung juries. Do you think that was another example of “Mississippi justice”?

EVERS: Of course it was. Beckwith’s fingerprints were found on the murder weapon; his car was placed at the scene; in any other state, he would’ve been convicted of first-degree murder. But to a great many white Mississippians, Beckwith was a hero. I remember when they was impanelin’ the jurors at his trial, the first question the prosecutor asked potential jurors was, “Do you believe it’s a crime for a white man to kill a nigger?” And they had quite a delay in the proceedin’s until they could find 12 Mississippi whites who did–or at least were willin’ to say they did. While the trial was on, Governor Ross Barnett came into the courtroom and shook Beckwith’s hand and hugged him. And General Edwin Walker, the Bircher, came all the way down from Dallas to congratulate Beckwith and lend him his support. When Beckwith was let off and returned to his home town of Greenwood, he was greeted with big welcomin’ signs and cheers, everythin’ but ticker tape. He ran for lieutenant governor a few years back, and although he lost, he got a big vote. What a way to make a reputation.

PLAYBOY: What would you do if you came face to face with Medgar’s murderer today?

EVERS: Well, I can tell you what I would’ve done a few years ago: I would’ve killed him. Jus’ like that. I would’ve broke his dirty slimy neck. But I think–I hope, anyway–that if I saw him today, I’d just pity him. I may be a sinner, but I’m also a religious man, and I believe that if he doesn’t get his punishment in this life, he’ll get it in the next. But I’d fight to control my own emotions, ’cause if I resorted to violence, I’d be just as low as he was. I think I’ve done more to kill Medgar’s killer by registerin’ 200,000 Blacks across the state, by bein’ elected mayor of Fayette and by runnin’ for governor than if I put a bullet through him. ‘Cause when he killed Medgar, he thought he was killin’ Black progress in this state. But he didn’t. We’re ten times stronger today than we was then, and we’ll be even stronger tomorrow.

PLAYBOY: Why did you decide to take over Medgar’s role as state NAACP leader?

EVERS: I felt so guilty about not bein’ with Medgar when they killed him that I wanted with all my heart to carry on his work. I couldn’t desert him a second time. So the day before Medgar’s funeral in Jackson, when some Black people was tryin’ to find somebody to lead the movement, I told ’em, “You don’t have to look any further, ’cause I’m gon’ take his place.” I didn’t give a damn for his title, but I was determined to see his work go forward. The NAACP national office in New York wasn’t too happy about it; there’s never been too much love lost between me and Roy Wilkins, ’cause he can’t control me. But they couldn’t do much else other than accept it, since the local people were all behind me. But I tell you, it wasn’t easy for me to go on. I jus’ prayed I wouldn’t have a breakdown, ’cause I knew Medgar would’ve expected me to keep goin’. But I was filled with such hate, hate for myself and for white folks, it was like a sickness.

PLAYBOY: Did you entertain any thoughts of going after Medgar’s killer yourself?

EVERS: I wanted to kill any white man then. I planned to revive the idea Medgar and I had when we was kids of formin’ a Mau Mau band and roamin’ round the state killin’ a white man at random once a week, always in a different part of the state and with a different weapon each time. Some I’d shoot, others I’d stab, others I’d poison. I’d pick the leadin’ racists in each county and knock ’em off one by one. Jus’ killin’ the man who murdered Medgar wouldn’t have been enough. I was really hungry for white folks’ blood. I must’ve been a little unhinged after Medgar’s death, ’cause I was really serious about the whole thing. I even stockpiled some guns and ammunition.

But in the back of my mind, somethin’ always held me back. I could hear Medgar’s soft voice whisperin’, “That’s not the way, Charles, that’s not the way.” And finally, that murderous mood passed away. I came to realize that if I let ’em turn me into a Black racist, if I learned to hate all white people blindly, jus’ like Klansmen hate all Black people, then they would’ve won, and Medgar and everythin’ he stood for would’ve lost. So I decided to fight white racism economically and politically, by registerin’ Black voters and electin’ Black candidates to office, not by killin’ nobody or creatin’ more violence and more polarization. I know now that’s what Medgar would’ve wanted me to do, and all that hate sickness has gone outa my mind. I can’t say that the scars Medgar’s death left me with are healed, ’cause they never will be. But I don’t think of revenge no more. And I was helped a great deal in those dark months after Medgar’s death by two men I grew very close to–Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. I never dreamed when we were together that they’d be cut down just like Medgar within a few years.

PLAYBOY: What was your relationship with Dr. King?

EVERS: I’d never met him until Medgar’s funeral, but we liked each other right away and soon became close friends. Whenever he was organizin’ a march or demonstration or an organizational project, I’d try to help him out, and he’d do the same for me in Mississippi. He was a fine man, and he did a lot of good. Maybe the most important contribution he made was to awaken the conscience of moderate American whites, people who’d closed their eyes too long to the plight of the Black man. He was a moral leader of the highest caliber, a really good man, a pure man. That’s why it was so sickenin’ when J. Edgar Hoover floated that rumor that he had files and recordin’s of Martin with women. Now, Martin was a minister, but he was also a human bein’ and a normal man, and even if he did have a hankerin’ for women, what business is it of that shriveled-up old tyrant J. Edgar Hoover? Lord knows, nobody could ever accuse him of likin’ women. Why doesn’t somebody check his sex life out? But instead of tryin’ to protect Martin’s life, he was busy havin’ his agents invade his privacy and try to blackmail him.

PLAYBOY: There seems to be a consensus among Black leaders that Dr. King’s murder was the result of a well-organized conspiracy. Do you agree?

EVERS: Of course I do. I think anybody with any sense does. And James Earl Ray has admitted as much. If you follow his movements all across America and Canada and Europe and the large sums of money that were available to him and the forged passports and travel documents and the circumstances of the shootin’ itself, you can’t come to any other conclusion. This was a dumb petty criminal whose only talent was he was a good shot. He was a loser; he’d never even managed to stick up a gas station before, and suddenly he’s travelin’ all over the world like James Bond. There was big money behind King’s death, white-racist money. King knew they wanted him dead; he’d come to accept the idea philosophically. And they got him.

PLAYBOY: You said earlier that your capacity for Dr. King’s kind of nonviolence goes only so far. How far?

EVERS: I’m not quite as absolute on it as Martin was, or Gandhi before him. Maybe it’s jus’ my temperament. I remember once before the James Meredith march, Martin spent a week with me in my home in Jackson, which was full of guns–rifles, pistols, even automatic weapons–’cause we’d had a lotta threats and harassment and I wasn’t takin’ no chances. And Martin, he said to me, “Charles, I’m nonviolent, but I feel safer when I’m around you than I do with anybody. I know you got plenty of protection.” God, when I think of him goin’ out on that motel balcony in Memphis for a breath of fresh air and gettin’ drilled through the head, it was like Medgar all over again. But one thing about both Martin and Medgar, the hope and spirit they inspired in people won’t die with ’em. But it was a terrible blow jus’ the same. When we were at Martin’s funeral in Atlanta, I jus’ broke down again, like I did back at Medgar’s funeral, and I felt the same way. But Bobby and Ethel Kennedy was with me, and they consoled me; they helped me pull myself together.

PLAYBOY: By all accounts, you developed a remarkably close relationship with Robert Kennedy. And yet, on the surface, at least, no two men could have been less alike. How do you account for it?

EVERS: We was different in background and education and power, but we also was similar in a lotta ways. We was both tough, aggressive, ambitious and– most important of all–we both had brothers who were assassinated.

PLAYBOY: How did you get to know the Kennedys?

EVERS: Medgar and I had campaigned for John in Mississippi in 1960, when very few Black leaders were supportin’ him, and that was how we first met John and Bobby, though at the beginnin’ it was jus’ a political alliance, not real friendship. I met and talked with the President several times, but I could never say I was close to him. But right after Medgar’s death, he called me to the White House and we sat and talked about Medgar. I remember him sayin’, “I will do anything I can to keep something like this from happening again. We can’t let your brother die in vain.” Five months later, they blew his brains out in Dallas. After Medgar was shot, Bobby would telephone me, and when his brother was murdered the same way, I rushed to the phone and told him I was comin’ to be by his side, and I stayed with him in Washington durin’ his darkest moments. We’d already become friends, but then we really grew close. And over the years, we became like brothers. I loved that man.

PLAYBOY: Did it bother you that his initial record on civil rights was rather equivocal?

EVERS: Yeah, but unlike so many others, Bobby had the ability to grow, to change his mind and learn from his mistakes. When I first got to know him, he was jus’ like any other white politician. He wasn’t a racist, but he was arrogant and he was vain and he didn’t think the problems of poor people or Black people were his problems. But he began to find out they were, and he began to change his ideas. I think the biggest reason for that change was the fact he was very warm and human deep inside, despite his reputation for bein’ cold and ruthless, and he could reach out to people with real understandin’ and compassion. Once he found out about the awful conditions Black people live under in this country, he was moved to do somethin’ about it. He had a strong sense of responsibility, and he came to deeply believe it was his duty to improve the lot of Black Americans, and poor Americans of all races.

I remember once we were on a tour of the poverty areas in the Mississippi Delta, and he sat down on some rickety old bed in a sharecropper’s shack outside of Greenville, and tears just streamed from his eyes. “I’m going back to Washington and do something about this,” he promised. And that was one thing about Bobby: If he said he was gonna do somethin’, he’d do it. You could always trust him; he’d never break his word to you or let you down the minute your back was turned. That’s why I had so much faith in him, and why I campaigned for him when he ran for the Senate in New York and when he ran for the Presidency in ’68. Things would’ve been a lot different in this country if that man had been elected President, I’ll tell you that. But in the end, they got him, too.

PLAYBOY: You were with Kennedy in Los Angeles when he was assassinated. Can you describe that night?

EVERS: Well, it’s still hard for me to talk about it, ’cause he meant so much to me. In a way, he was the country’s last hope, and it jus’ don’t make any sense. It’s so insane, such a waste. I remember the night he was shot, we was all sittin’ round in his suite at the Ambassador listenin’ to the returns come in, showin’ that he’d won the California primary. And that meant that the road was clear to the nomination, and maybe to the White House. And everybody was happy and relaxed. And then we heard the crowd in the ballroom chantin’, “We want Kennedy! We want Kennedy!” and we could see ’em dancin’ round on the TV.

Bobby got up to go downstairs and make his victory speech, but first he walked up to each of us who’d worked with him and shook our hand and thanked us. I jus’ told him, “Don’t thank me. I’m doin’ what I’m doin’ ’cause I believe in you.” And then he started for the door with Rosey Grier and Rafer Johnson and his staff and when I jus’ sat there, he said, “Charles, aren’t you going?” And I told him, “No, you don’t need all your Black boys with you. I’m gonna stay behind and watch you from here.” He said, “Aw, come on.” I said I’d rather relax and watch him on TV and he said OK and left.

But the minute the door closed behind him, I had a funny feelin’, a feelin’ I should go along with him and I should be with him, like I should’ve been with Medgar. So I jumped up and went down after him and pushed my way through the crowd toward the speaker’s platform and crooked one of my fingers–a kind of signal we used–and he nodded in recognition. Then he made his speech and there was more cheerin’ and balloons all over the place, and he made his way off the platform. Bodies was packed so thick it was hard to follow him; I was only about five feet away, but I could hardly move. I waved my hand at him to indicate I’d catch up later and that instant I heard that phat-phat sound–I thought it was balloons breakin’–and suddenly the crowd jus’ writhed like a livin’ thing and somebody shrieked, “Oh, my God, they shot the Senator!”

All I knew was I had to get to Bobby and I jus’ plowed through that crowd like a football player knockin’ down anybody who got in my way. When I got to Bobby, Ethel was crouched over him screamin’ and there was puddles of blood, blood everywhere, and I could see the head wound and I knew he was gone. I don’t know, somethin’ jus’ seemed to drain outa me then; jus’ like when Medgar died, it was like part of me was dyin’ with him. And we got him to the hospital and some people still had hope, people who hadn’t seen him, but I’d seen that head wound and for Bobby’s sake, I prayed that he wouldn’t make it, because with that kind of brain damage, he could never be anythin’ more than a vegetable. So I wanted him to go clean. I don’t know, even talkin’ about it brings tears to my eyes. When Frank Mankiewicz came out and told us he was dead, even though I expected it, I still couldn’t believe it. In a way, I still can’t.

Sometimes the phone rings and I’ll look up and for a second–if I’m overtired or lost in work–I’ll wonder if it’s Bobby. Or Martin. Or Medgar. Three times–everybody who was really close to me, everybody who offered hope. After Bobby, I had to hold myself together real tight, ’cause I knew I could go either way–either I’d jus’ give up or I’d double my efforts for what they believed in, to carry on their work. And I took the second road. I feel a li’l bit of each of ’em is still alive inside me, you know, jus’ like a prod goadin’ me on. And I tell you somethin’, I got no death wish or nothin’ like that, but if I go, I wanna go jus’ like each of ’em, not in my bed old and senile but fightin’ and kickin’ to the end for a good cause.

PLAYBOY: Are you as close to Teddy as you were to Bobby?

EVERS: No. I like and respect Teddy and we get along fine, but we never developed the same personal relationship as me and Bobby. But I’ve stayed very close to Ethel; we phone each other and visit when I’m in Washington. She’s a wonderful woman, strong as a rock.

PLAYBOY: What did you do after Bobby’s assassination?

EVERS: I went back to Mississippi. There was nothin’ I could do on the national scene, now that Bobby was gone. That was when I decided to run for mayor of Fayette and show white folks we could run a town where we was in the majority, and run it well and fair.

PLAYBOY: What changes have taken place in Fayette in the two years since you were elected?

EVERS: The difference is like night and day. Ten years ago, if a Black man was drivin’ through Fayette, he jus’ prayed his car wouldn’t break down. Fayette was one of the most racist towns in the whole South. They had several old white policemen, they was practically illiterate, and their sole job was to keep the niggers in their place. And they’d do it with as much brutality as they wanted. Why, Blacks wasn’t even allowed to wear a white shirt on the street unless they was a minister or a teacher, ’cause it was a sign they was bein’ “uppity.”

And economically, the town was a disaster area; nothin’ was bein’ done to bring in outside industry and increase employment. When I took office, 60 percent of the Blacks in Fayette was on welfare and most of the rest was unemployed or underemployed. The segregated school system was even worse than most other places in Mississippi, if that’s possible, and no Black child could get any kind of a decent education. But if you visit Fayette today, you won’t even recognize the town of jus’ two years ago. We’ve been able to bring in new industry, give people jobs and take ’em off welfare, give ’em a new lease on life.

ITT is settin’ up an automobile electrical-components plant that will employ 150 people with a monthly payroll of $40,000; the Commercial Chemical Corporation has built a half-million-dollar factory; and a concrete-manufacturin’ company has come in with a plant to produce concrete for home construction. We’re also puttin’ together a $6,000,000 health program with Federal grants, which’ll be the first time Black folks in this area have ever had decent medical or dental care, and we got a Ford Foundation loan of $400,000 for town development.

Our main goal is to completely kill off welfare in Jefferson County, and we’ve set up a vocational school to train unskilled Blacks in carpentry, brick masonry, concrete work and weldin’ and electrician techniques. I own a motel and restaurant and the Medgar Evers Shopping Center, which employs 20 people–and at livable wages, not the old starvation wages the white merchants used to pay. But it’s not jus’ the economic benefits comin’ in that’s important; it’s the whole atmosphere of the town. For the first time, Black people feel they have a community of their own that they can take pride in buildin’ and improvin’. We’re gettin’ Black youngsters involved in community work, and it’s givin’ ’em a new sense of self-respect. Black people hold their heads high in Fayette today.

PLAYBOY: What about the town’s whites? How do you treat them?

EVERS: Same as Blacks. I don’t want Fayette to be an all-Black town. The Kluxers been tryin’ to segregate us for years; why should we turn round now and do their job for ’em? I employ white as well as Black people on the town payroll–ten of ’em, in fact. The only way I judge a man is by his intentions and his efforts, not the color of his skin. I’m an integrationist, remember that, and I won’t have no truck with separatism, whether it’s a Kluxer preachin’ it or a so-called Black militant. We’re creatin’ somethin’ wonderful and important here in Fayette–a genuinely biracial town where Blacks and whites can live together in harmony and mutual respect. And it’s vital we succeed, ’cause Fayette is a testin’ ground, a chance to see if reason and tolerance can win out over the extremists on both sides.

Fayette, you know–and this is so important to remember–is a microcosm of Mississippi, in a raw form, a microcosm of the sickness that infects the country as a whole. If we can lick it in Fayette, we can lick it in the state, and if we can lick it in the state, we can lick it in the nation. But if we fail in Fayette, if we’re allowed to go down the drain ’cause of hate and indifference, then a lot more than Fayette will be lost. That’s why I’m runnin’ for governor of Mississippi, to try to make the state capital in Jackson a second Fayette. And we can do it. We gotta do it.

PLAYBOY: Do you really believe you have a chance to win the governorship?

EVERS: Yes, I do. The odds are against us, but we could win, and I’ll tell you how. What we need is a coalition, a coalition of Blacks and white moderates. Now, Blacks make up 37 percent of Mississippi’s population, and we’ve got 275,000 of ’em registered to vote. Then there’s a growin’ number of white moderates fed up with racism and ready for a change. I’m hopin’ that what they’ve read and seen of our work in Fayette will convince ’em that I’d be a responsible governor for all the people. A few years ago, I got 4000 white votes in a local Congressional race when most whites didn’t really know much about me, and I hope to increase my percentage in November. And a third factor in our favor is the 18-year-old vote. Many white kids are fed up with the system, and I hope to get their votes, too. So if all of these three groups–the white moderates, the Blacks and the young–support me, I could well be this state’s next governor.

That’s a big if, of course. Hell, you can’t even count on the Black vote down here. You gotta get ’em to the polls and also persuade ’em you’re the best man for the job. Not every Black man will vote Black, by any reckonin’. But if we can deliver 250,000 Black votes, 25,000 young whites, plus 25,000 white-moderate votes, we’ve got a total of 300,000 votes, and 300,000 will win any election in this state. So that’s what we’re aimin’ for. It’s a gamble, sure, but one thing Bobby taught me was that life itself is a gamble. And I think we’re gonna win. We’re gonna turn this state around and head it into the 20th Century. And it’s gonna be one hell of an adventure.

Mark my words, you’re gonna see more real racial progress here in Mississippi in the next few years than anywhere else in the country. ‘Cause vicious as the race hate has been down here, it’s become like a boil that’s ripe to bust, and when it does, all the poison will drain away and the scars will heal and we can start fresh. I believe in that with all my heart and soul. All the sufferin’, all the deprivation, all the murders and misery ain’t been in vain. A new day’s dawnin’ down here, and it’s gonna spread its light all over the country. I only wish Medgar was gonna be around to see it. And Martin, and Bobby, and all the others. But they’re all part of it, God rest their souls.

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