This Just In: Be Brave. Be a Voter.

This Just In – We citizens have a lot of work to do. It’s not too early to start doing it.

In learning more and more about the life and death of Medgar Evers, plainly visible are striking parallels between the 39 years of his life and its challenges and the events of the current day.

When Evers returned from WWII, he could have done what many Black veterans did. He could have left his home in notoriously segregated and racist Mississippi and relocated north to Chicago. For him, this was off the menu. He loved Mississippi and wanted to make it better.

Pausing there … he wasn’t blind to the dangers of remaining and demanding his civil rights. He just thought that it was worth the risk to make a better life for his children.

Evers wasn’t a charismatic, high-profile preacher. He was an insurance salesman. As a volunteer, he was NAACP’s first field secretary for Mississippi. His primary responsibility was to help grow the organization, but he also became convinced that he should engage in more radical activism – supporting sit-ins and demonstrations involving lots of young people.

Joy-Ann Reid’s book, Medgar and Myrlie not only tells us the love story of this iconic couple, but also documents that Myrlie Evers didn’t want to be married to a hero (and certainly not a martyr). She wanted, like most of us, to spend her lifetime minding her business, raising her children and growing old peacefully.

Evers’ story is undoubtedly a tale of great courage, but Reid points out in important ways how the actions of Black people of Mississippi are equally dramatic. When Black voter registration was underway in Mississippi, the suppression efforts were both massive and far from subtle.

The desire to vote was strong. The desire to go to work, church and school and simply avoid lynching was also strong. Political violence was always in the air. In 1960, about 7% of eligible Black Mississippi voters were registered.

The story of these suppression efforts includes lots of chillingly familiar characteristics. The use of disinformation, sending “poll watchers” to polling sites, descriptions of Black voters (including decorated veterans) as sub-human “others” who were not patriotic and somehow threatened American life as some form of invader.

These ordinary people did what was brave and heroic. They stayed within the law and they VOTED. They did the thing that, in 1960, was stirring and courageous. Starting in humble numbers, they turned out and voted.

In the current day, we are bombarded with extreme rhetoric and a narrative that declares our country is almost inextricably divided. It’s just not true. The message of extreme political division is disinformation intended to cause us to throw up our hands and declare “It doesn’t matter – one’s as bad as the other.”

Low and fractured voter turnout is what makes it possible for a presidential candidate who loses the popular votes by a count in the millions to win the presidency.

Our work in the next five months is coming into full view. It’s not about the economy or foreign policy. It’s about voting. This will take bravery and determination. This will take patriotism. This is not about one candidate or another, either. It’s about VOTING – about letting the people decide, then honoring their decision for the sacred civic action that it is.

After the November election, we can get ourselves wrapped around what it means to get in the game much, much earlier – to attract quality candidates at every level of every ballot. There’s a lot of work to do. Let’s get to it. Be brave. BE A VOTER.

Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.

Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc

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