The Spirit of Justice
The following is adapted from The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance. Get your copy HERE.
Myrlie Evers-Williams had salt-and-pepper black hair cropped short, and she wore a patterned red and black scarf draped across her shoulders like a queen’s robe. She held herself with such regal dignity that the wheelchair she sat upon seemed to become a throne. She spoke with a deliberateness and profundity that made us all lean forward to catch every utterance.
We were in Jackson, Mississippi. I was part of a group of journalists and writers who had been granted a private audience with this legend of the civil rights movement on the grand opening day of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on December 9, 2017.
The occasion was packed with political baggage. The president at the time, Donald J. Trump, had hinted that he might attend the grand opening of the museum. His presence there, as a man who had often trafficked in racist tropes and prejudices, represented an affront to the museum’s mission to accurately tell the racist history of the state of Mississippi and be part of the effort to move beyond it. Notable invitees such as Congressmen Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and John Lewis of Georgia declined to attend because of Trump’s presence. Myrlie Evers-Williams, however, still spoke at the event.
At eighty-four years old, Myrlie Evers-Williams still sounded a note of hope in her public remarks. “Going through the museums, I wept because I felt the blows, I felt the bullets, I felt the tears, I felt the cries. But I also sensed the hope that dwelt in all those people,” she said.
The Murder of Medgar Evers
Her dedication to justice and interracial fellowship was improbable given what she had experienced. Most people know Myrlie Evers- Williams as the widow of Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary of Mississippi who was gunned down in his driveway by a white supremacist.
Born in 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi, Medgar Evers became the first field secretary for the Mississippi branch of the NAACP in 1954. The Mississippi movement had been persistent but lacked unified leadership until Evers came to the helm. Evers helped organize Black people in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. After the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955, Evers dressed up as a field hand to blend in and put people at ease as he gathered eyewitness accounts. He championed people like James Meredith, helping Meredith get admitted to the University of Mississippi, and organized economic boycotts. Medgar and Myrlie met at college in Mississippi, and they became cola- borers in the NAACP and civil rights activism. Both of them shared a strong sense of justice, a deep affection for one another, and an abiding faith in God.
In the aftermath of her husband’s death, Myrlie Evers-Williams became a renowned activist in her own right. She moved her family to California, where she twice ran for Congress. She led the NAACP as the chairperson of their board of directors for several years. She delivered the invocation at Barack Obama’s second presidential inauguration and received numerous accolades for her contributions to civil rights along the way.
Now she was back in her home state of Mississippi, addressing crowds at the museum that exhibited the same gun used to murder her husband more than half a century prior.
“But It’s Something about the Spirit of Justice”
After the public portion of the grand opening, she took time to answer our questions in a smaller gathering. One journalist asked her about the state of race relations today. I’m glad I was recording because her words helped inspire this book.
“I see something today that I had hoped I would never see again. That is prejudice, hatred, negativism that comes from the highest points across America,” she told us. Then, with the candor that comes with old age, she said, “And I found myself asking Medgar in the conversations that I have with him: Is this really what's happening again in this country? And asking for guidance because—I don't mind admitting this to the press—I’m a little weary at this point.”
At that moment, I fully expected her to expound on the weariness of fighting for racial justice for decades. To vent about her frustrations with people who still oppose the laws and policies that would move us closer to racial progress. To say that she was passing the torch to another generation and that she had earned her rest. But she took her comments in a different direction—one that pointed to the strength and resolve of the staunchest defenders of justice.
“But it’s something about the spirit of justice that raises up like a war horse. That horse that stands with its back sunk in and hears that bell—I like to say the ‘bell of freedom.’ And all of a sudden, it becomes straight, and the back becomes stiff. And you become determined all over again.”
Here was a woman who had endured decades of exclusion and injustice, punctuated by the assassination of her husband. She had fought and labored her entire life for change. Yet even in the ninth decade of her life, she still had the resolve to continue the struggle for racial justice. I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t make it make sense.
My mind lingered on a phrase she used: the spirit of justice.
What Is the Spirit of Justice?
The spirit of justice is the inner force that moves us to demand dignity and respect for ourselves and others. It is the cry of our souls for the world to be a fair and kind place. It is the power that inspires people to speak up when others remain silent. To move when others stand still. To put themselves on the line when others choose to remain comfortable.
The spirit of justice belongs to all of us, and you have access to it right now. Reading this book will help you become a leader in the journey toward racial justice. We study history to recognize how the spirit of justice was at work in the past so we can continue the struggle against racism in the present. Fighting racism is not for the weak. But you are stronger than you realize because you have the spirit of justice.
