Media 2070 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 45
social equality and intermarriage of whites and Negroes,”
wrote Beard. “As it has been our policy not to permit local
or network propaganda on either side to be broadcast or
telecast.”22
He also acknowledged that he was a member of the
“Citizens’ Council Association” and described it as a group
that was formed to “keep racial elements in the state from
taking hold and causing acts of violence.”23 He added
that the group’s membership was “made up of the most
outstanding business men in the state,” and that it was
“to the advantage of every one that such an organization
exists.”24
Despite the danger, Medgar Evers persisted
and was finally permitted to appear on WLBT,
where he delivered a heroic 17-minute speech
denouncing segregation and appealing to
whites in Jackson who supported integration:
Tonight the Negro plantation worker in the Delta
knows from his radio and television what happened
today all over the world. He knows what Black
people are doing and he knows what white people
are doing. He can see on the 6:00 o’clock news
screen the picture of a 3:00 o’clock bite by a police
dog ... He knows about the new free nations in
Africa and knows that a Congo native can be a
locomotive engineer, but in Jackson he cannot even
drive a garbage truck ...
Journalist Hodding Carter III once called Beard “little
more than … an unofficial mouthpiece for the total
resistance line of the Citizens’ Council,” noting that nearly
all Jackson television stations were “geared to a far rightwing, rigid segregationist approach.”25
He sees a city over 150,000, of which 40% is Negro,
in which there is not a single Negro policeman
or policewoman, school crossing guard, fireman,
clerk, stenographer, or supervisor employed in any
city department or the Mayor’s office in other than
menial capacities ...
Evers continued to repeatedly request equal time to
respond to WLBT’s racist programming, including in 1957
when the station aired the views of segregationists who
opposed the integration of Little Rock Central High School
in Arkansas.26
What then does the Negro want?
So when Mayor Allen C. Thompson appeared on local
Jackson stations in 1963 to oppose civil-rights leaders’
efforts to integrate the city’s public institutions, Evers
requested equal time to respond. This time, WLBT
relented.27
He wants to get rid of racial segregation in
Mississippi life ... The Negro citizen wants to
register and vote without special handicaps imposed
on him alone ... The Negro Mississippian wants
more jobs above the menial level in stores where he
spends his money.
Few people had heard Evers’ voice, or the voice of any
Black person on the air denouncing segregation. His
presence on the local airwaves would make him a bigger
threat to segregationists, and left his wife, Myrlie Evers,
nervous about her husband’s safety.
He believes that new industries that have come to
Mississippi should employ him above the laboring
category. He wants the public schools and colleges
desegregated so that his children can receive the best
education that Mississippi has to offer.
“Thousands of Mississippi Whites who had never seen a
picture of him would now be seeing Medgar on television,”
Myrlie Evers recalled. “They would have time to become
familiar with his appearance. When it was over, he would
be recognized everywhere: at a stop light in the city, on a
lonely road in the Delta, in the light from the fuel pump at
a gas station.”28
The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a
total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else;
this country is his home ... Let me appeal to the
consciences of many silent, responsible citizens
of the white community who know that a victory
for democracy in Jackson will be a victory for
democracy everywhere.29
Less than a month later, Evers was assassinated in his
driveway.30
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