Katryn <streepmuis@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> skryf:
> Vir eers, wil ek graag vir jou 'n liedjie van Bob Dylan, wat
>hy in 1963 geskryf het, pos. Kou so bietjie daaraan....
Torreke, net so bietjie agtergrond oor hierdie liedjie - vanuit
Wikipedia:
Medgar Evers (July 2, 1925–June 12, 1963) was an African American
civil rights activist from Mississippi.
Evers was a native of Decatur, Mississippi, and a graduate of Alcorn
State University, located in Lorman, Mississippi. Upon completing his
degree, he applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi
Law School, basing his attempt on the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling
in the case of Brown v. Board of Education 347 US 483 that segregation
was unconstitutional. When his application was rejected on grounds of
race, Evers became the focus of an NAACP campaign to desegregate the
school.
Evers himself became the NAACP's first field officer in Mississippi.
He was involved in a boycott campaign against white merchants in
Jackson and instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of
Mississippi when it was finally forced to enroll James Meredith in
1962.
Just after midnight on 12 June 1963, Medgar Evers was assassinated
just after pulling into his driveway. His death was mourned
nationally, and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Bob
Dylan wrote the song "Only a Pawn in their Game" about Evers and his
assassin, and Nina Simone wrote "Mississippi Goddamn" in response to
the event. The man believed to have been his assassin, white racist
Byron De La Beckwith, was twice acquitted when all-white juries could
not reach agreement, but in 1994 Beckwith was brought to trial on new
evidence based on statements he made to others. During the trial, the
body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for autopsy, and found to be
in a surprisingly excellent state of preservation. Byron De La
Beckwith was finally convicted on February 5, 1994, more than three
decades after the murder. Beckwith appealed the verdict
unsuccessfully, and he died in prison in 2001.
The 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi tells the story of the 1994 trial.
The Bob Dylan song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" focused on Evers'
killing as an example of lowly operatives, doing the dirty work for
their evil masters: "Two eyes took the aim/Behind a man's brain/But he
can't be blamed/He's only a pawn in their game."
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