For Us, The Living, and for Medgar.

He was coming home from another long day at the office. He pulled his car into the driveway, grabbed a stack of t-shirts for a protest being run the next day from off the seat, and started up the walkway to the house. It was still early though dark, the lights were on and his family was holding dinner for him.

He was late again. His job was field secretary of the NAACP, a tough job in any circumstances, but this was 1963, and Jackson Mississippi. There had already been two attempts on his life in just the last month and constant death threats, both by mail and delivered over the phone by people trying to disguise their voices. Some didn't even bother to try. He knew who they were; the same people who had worked to keep his race down for centuries. On this night, President Kennedy delivered a speech promising to make Civil rights a priority. Maybe things would finally change, or at least ease up a bit.

Medgar Evers never made it to the door.

It's been 57 years since Medgar Evers was killed by a member of the White Citizen Council (who wasn't convicted of the murder until 1994), shot in front of his family by a coward in hiding across the street. For nearly ten years Evers had helped the NAACP fight for the rights and the justice denied the black people of Mississippi, working long and late nights that kept him away from his wife Myrlie and their children. He was a constant target of death threats and attempts on his life, all because he saw injustice, and worked to right it. For that crime, others decided he had to die.

When I was 13, I found a copy of 'For Us, the Living', the book written by Myrlie Evers (who went on to become an accomplished author, activist, and Chairwoman of the NAACP) telling her and Medgar's story. Today, I pause and remember Medgar Evers, and the battle he fought and died for, a battle still not over.

Rest in Peace, sir.