#06-12

Ennyire szabad és boldog. :) A sok nyűglődés után ezt is le kell naplózni :)

Egyszerűen nincs semmi, ami visszafogna abban, hogy úgy csináljak mindent, ahogy nekem jó, ahogy én igaznak, őszintének, és ölelni valónak érzem. Imádom! Imádom ezt az érzést! Mindegy mi volt, mindegy ki volt és hogyan, az egész egycsapásra eltűnt a homályban. Azt csinálom, ami belül örömet okoz.

És nem öt perce, hanem hetek óta tart, és már azt érzem, hogy marad is. Valamikor ez nekem alap volt. Nem tudom miért hagytam tönkretenni és tönkremenni. Igaz, sok mindent tanultam is. De már nem érzek hálát e miatt. Megfizettem az árát mindennek, és most szabad vagyok megint. Mint valami dzsin, akinek lekerült a csuklójáról a rabság karperece. Nem hagyom többet, hogy ezt az érzést bárki tönkretegye!

Tudom, kéne erről sztoriznom, hogy érthető és érdekes legyen, de nincs sztori, csak ez a minden jól van érzés, mindenki cuki, mindenhonnan jön valami pozitívum, kurvajó dolgok történnek, és minden olyan egyszerű és természetes.

Bárcsak tudnék belőle adni! :) Bárcsak tudnám hogy történt! :D

Theresa Merritt Hines (September 24, 1922  – June 12, 1998) was an American stage, film, and television actress and singer.

Career

Born in Emporia, Virginia, Merritt appeared in many theatrical productions but gained fame later in life when she starred in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, for which she earned a Tony Award nomination, and The Wiz, in which she replaced Mabel King as Evelline. She left The Wiz, citing the role's harmful effect on her voice. She then starred in the television sitcom That's My Mama.

Her most notable film roles were Aunt Em in the 1978 film version of The Wiz, Mrs. Crosby in the 1977 film adaptation of Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl, and Juanita in the Adam Sandler comedy Billy Madison. She also appeared alongside Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton in the film adaptation of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Personal life and death

Merritt was married to Benjamin Hines and they had four children. During Delta Sigma Theta 34th National convention Merritt and E. Fannie Granton of Jet magazine were made honorary members of the sorority. Merritt died of skin cancer on June 12, 1998, in The Bronx.

Most már felismerem, amikor máson látom. Segíteni nem tudok, csak bölcsen bólintok, „majd elmúlik”. Amikor elkezdtem írni, az nem egy unatkozó, hobbikereső idő volt. A pokol volt belül. Az önmagam keresése, az élet nagy kérdéseire való rádöbbenés, hogy véges, hogy kicsi, hogy nagy, hogy rajtunk múlik, hogy nem rajtunk múlik. És magány, rengeteg sok félelmetes magány mellett a látszani akarás kényszere. A párkapcsolatomban nem látszódtam, és túl voltam egy megrázó és megalázó internetes szerelmen. Rohadtul nem tudtam meghatározni magam. Azt mondják, ha alkotó ember vagy, az valahol kibugyog. Ha elveszted a szemed, vakon fogsz írni, zenét szerezni. Ha elveszted a kezed, akkor elmeséled, megtalálod a módját, mert ha alkotó ember vagy, nem tud benned maradni, mert az alkotás kényszere kitolja belőled a dolgokat. Alkotó embernek lenni nem kiváltság, nem tehetség kérdése csak egy eszköz amire rátaláltál. Valami, amit szenvedéllyel csinálsz, az akármi is, alkotó emberré tesz. Ettől nem értékesebb valaki, de azért sokszor érdekesebb, mert mégiscsak van valami produktumra képes amit mások számára is látható és érzékelhető ingert nyújt. Az ingerek nagyon fontosak. Az ingerek annyira fontosak, hogy még a szar hatásokat is szívesen vesszük, mert még az is mozgásban tartja a belső életünket. Akkortájt rengeteget írtam. Rettentő rosszakat is. Időnként azt gondoltam, hogy minden zseniális amit papírra vetek. Nem azért mert megüt egy általam is elvárt magas irodalmi szintet, hanem pusztán azért mert képes vagyok szavakat történetekké és érzésekké formálni. és ez valami zseniááááliiiiis! :D Nem az. Ezt is meg kellett tanulnom. De a legfőbb hajtóerő mégiscsak az volt, hogy nem volt más módja annak, hogy látszódjak. Az írás volt az eszközöm, hogy legyen egy kontúrja annak, hogy ki vagyok. És volt idő amikor csak az hajtott, hogy visszajelzést, hogy kapcsolatot tudjak teremteni. Ha leírtam 20 sort, már küldtem is valakinek, hogy nézze meg, mondjon valamit, jelezzen vissza. Így visszagondolva, hálás vagyok az ismerőseim türelméért. De amikor ez volt, akkor voltam legkevésbé jól. Nem tudtam beszélni róla, hogy mennyire rosszul vagyok, de írni tudtam róla, benne a történeteimben. Néha egy mellékszereplőbe beleírtam az összes megélt megaláztatást, hát ki venné észre, mindenki azt kérdezi, hogy ugye a főszereplő az X vagy Y? Dehogy az! Sosem az. Egy szerkesztő megkérdezte egyszer, hogy ez ugye nem kulcsregény? (Kulcsregény ami egy az egyben az író élete, csak a szereplők neve meg hasonló apróságok meg vannak változtatva) Magamban kucogtam. Jól van. Nem találtál meg, hogy hol lapulok a történetben. Dehogy az! Sosem az. És volt imposztorszindrómás szakaszom. Attól rettegtem, hogy a történeteimet én valójában olvastam valahol, csak nem emlékszem rá, hogy hol. Merthogy rengeteget olvastam. Ettől mindig az extrémitásba igyekeztem tolni a történeteket, hogy ne hasonlítson semmi másra. Meg kellett tanulnom a türelmet, a lassabb folyást, a lágyabb narrációt, a kevesebb cinizmust és bízni magamban, hogy elég nagy baromságokat ki tudok találni magamtól is.

Napi két poszt, ezzel tartom kordában ezt a blogot. Hogy ennyi elég a pszichologizálásból, az érzelmi kiáradásból, és az interakcióból is. Nem elfojtás, hanem fegyelem és szűrő. Felnőttes dolgok. De belül, belül folyton írok. Állandóan, 24 órában. Kavarog, hullámzik, árad, bugyog, felszínre dob dolgokat, megüt, bánt, elsüllyeszt, felragyogtat, szétolvad, átszíneződik. Aztán egyszercsak valahol mind megtalálja a helyét. Egy történetben.

Ott ültem, két csávóval (többel, de ők most a fókusz), akikből az egyik rajong értem. Szellemesnek tart, csinosnak, érdekesnek, főnyereménynek. Kulturált, jómódú, és nyitott, kommunikatív. Nem is néz ki rosszul. Nos, ő az, aki nem kell nekem. Hát miért is kéne, amikor ott volt az a másik, aki ugyan nem néz ki jobban, de legalább nem rajong értem, kurvára nem akar engem, marha nehéz kihúzni belőle bármit is és egyáltalán nem gondolja, hogy élete főnyereménye lennék. És van választásom! Én meg a boldogtalanságot, az elutasítást választom, mert nem bírom elengedni a fogalmam sincs mit. Az ismerős boldogtalanságot. Mondaná a pszichológia. De kell lennie valami egyéb magyarázatnak. Ami lehet, hogy semmiben sem másabb, mint az amiért emberek újra és újra a fideszre szavaznak. Hogy a tévedésünket az életünk árán is takargatjuk. Mert a szerelemre is kell valami magyarázat, nem mondhatjuk, hogy önmagában egy szóval elintézünk minden szart. A másik pasi ezer százalék, hogy sosem csalna meg, nem hazudna, nem ködösítene. Nem olyan a jelleme. Mi a faszt csinálok és miért? Lehet, hogy beleszoktam a hosszú évek összecsiszolódásában, hogy hát ilyen ez a csávó, ilyen ez a barátság, ennyit tudok belőle kivenni. Amúgy nem panaszkodom, mert mint barát, ő is jól funkcionál. És mielőtt bárki félreértené, nem azon gondolkodom, hogy kezdjek-e kapcsolatot a kedves, nyitott, gazdag és rajongó csávóval, á nem, csak azon gondolkodom, hogy vajon miért vagyok ilyen teljesen nyilvánvalóan idióta. Dinamikák Érdekességek voltak még, hogy a minap összefutottunk az egyik krássom exével meg a nő pasijával. A pasi fényévekkel jobban néz ki, mint az ex, de ez így helyes. Exek amúgyis ne nézzenek ki jól, legyenek szívesek. Sőt, minél szánnivalóbban néznek ki annál jobb. (itt most válasszuk el az iróniát az alacsony önértékelést mutató gonoszságtól. Nem könnyú feladat) Azt lestem, hogy a nőt pontosan ugyanolyan gesztusok jellemzik, mint az egyik barátnőmet, aki szintén erősen túlsúlyos. Azt hiszem ők nagyon dühösek a világra valamiért. Csak erős, pattogó hangon, gesztusokkal tudnak kommunikálni, folyton támadnak-védekeznek, az egész kommunikációjuk arra hasonlít mintha kirohannának a hájhegy várukból, csapkodnának a karjukkal a levegőben, aztán csapkodás közben visszahátrálnának. Ha kedvesek, abban is van valami rémisztő. Nyitnak, zárnak, és amikor beszélnek az akkor sem rólad szól, ha rólad beszélnek, hanem róluk. Ők megmondják mit csinálj, ők jobban tudják, és bár kifejezetten erőszakosnak tűnnek folyamatosan érezni, hogy nem hiszik el hogy van helyük a világban. Ezért is növesztik a hájat, hogy látszódjanak. :( Amikor búcsúztunk, keblencem pat-patot* adott a csajnak. Kötődik hozzá érzelmileg. Összevetve a fent fenti gondolatsorral, meg kell állapítanom: mindenki hülye. Ez a világ megérett a boldogtalanságra.

Élettragédiaként életm meg, de idővel el kellett jönnie már annak, hogy elfogadjam magam és elkezdjek hinni benne, hogy van olyan férfi aki ezt konkrétan élvezi. Van róla emlékem, hogy a pasim büszke volt rám, és azt mondta egy társaságban, hogy ha túlélők akarnak lenni, akkor bízzák rám magukat, mert ha én azt mondom, hogy megteszem/megtörténtetem a lehetetlent is, akkor az úgy lesz. De azért az életem nagyobbik részében alámentem a másiknak, hogy ezzel biztosítsam a fölényét és azt, hogy akkor szeretni fog és nem hagy el. De nem fog szeretni. Nem engem fog szeretni, hanem a saját fölényébe lesz szerelmes. Van pórázon egy kutyád? Jópofa. Van pórázon egy oroszlánod? Na, az menő! Az a baj ezzel, hogy az ember alaptermészete (a kirobbanó energiák, a gyors észjárás annak minden pozitív és negatív hozadékával, a türelmetlenség az apró részletek iránt) ez azért átüt. Annyiszor hallotam már életem során tanácsként, hogy lassítsak, a férfiak nem szeretik a domináns nőket. És én elhittem, hogy a férfiak nem szeretik az olyanokat, mint amilyen vagyok. Pedig hihettem volna abban is, hogy megtalál az, aki tudja szeretni.

Alap tézis, hogy az életünket azzal basszuk el leginkább, hogy... dominálni akarunk mások felett viszont el akarjuk kerülni, hogy minket domináljanak, azt akarjuk, hogy igazunk legyen (mármint a vélt igazunk felé fogjuk hajtani a történetünket és nem a boldogság felé), azt akarjuk, hogy jól nézzünk ki (mások szemében tetszetős legyen amit csinálunk), kényelmünk legyen (minden legyen úgy amit már megszoktunk, amiben biztonságunk van és ne érjenek mindket megrázó hatások). „Alárendelem magam, fegyelmezem magam, hogy a másik jól érezze magát a bőrében. És van ennek helye! Amikor bölcsesség, belátás hajtja. De én nem így használom, hanem azért, hogy a másik kötődése felém ne sérüljön.” (by Bölcs Barátnő) Elég volt. Pusztuljon minden kötődés amiben nem lehetek önmagam!

Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist from Mississippi who worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi and to enact social justice and voting rights. He was murdered by a white supremacist and Klansman.

A World War II veteran and college graduate, he became active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. He became a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Following the 1954 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, Evers worked to gain admission for African Americans to the state-supported public University of Mississippi. He also worked on voting rights and registration, economic opportunity, access to public facilities, and other changes in the segregated society.

Evers was murdered by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council, a group formed in 1954 to resist integration of schools and civil rights activity. As a veteran, Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His murder and the resulting trials inspired civil rights protests, as well as numerous works of art, music and film. All-white juries failed to reach verdicts in the first two trials of Beckwith. He was convicted in a new state trial in 1994, based on new evidence.

Myrlie Evers, widow of the activist, became a noted activist in her own right, serving as national chair of the NAACP. His brother Charles Evers was the first African-American mayor elected in Mississippi in the post-Reconstruction era when he won in 1969 in Fayette.

Early life

Evers was born July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, the third of the five children (including older brother Charles Evers) of Jesse (Wright) and James Evers. The family included Jesse's two children from a previous marriage. The Evers family owned a small farm, and James also worked at a sawmill. Evers walked twelve miles to attend segregated schools, and earned his high school diploma.

Evers served in the United States Army during World War II from 1943 to 1945. He was sent to the European Theater and he fought in the Battle of Normandy in June 1944. After the end of the war, Evers was honorably discharged as a sergeant.

In 1948, Evers enrolled at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (a historically black college, now Alcorn State University) majoring in business administration. He also competed on the debate, football, and track teams, sang in the choir, and was junior class president. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1952.

On December 24, 1951, he married classmate Myrlie Beasley. Together they had three children: Darrell Kenyatta, Reena Denise, and James Van Dyke Evers.

Activism

The couple moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi a town developed by African Americans, where Evers became a salesman for T. R. M. Howard's Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. Howard was also president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL); Evers helped organize the RCNL's boycott of gasoline stations that denied blacks the use of the stations' restrooms. Evers and his brother Charles also attended the RCNL's annual conferences in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1954, which drew crowds of ten thousand or more.

In 1954, Evers applied to the segregated University of Mississippi Law School, but his application was rejected because of his race. He submitted his application in concert with the NAACP as a test case. That year the US Supreme Court had ruled that segregation of public schools (which included state universities) was unconstitutional.

On November 24, 1954, Evers was named the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi. In this position, he helped organize boycotts and set up new local chapters of the NAACP. He was involved with James Meredith's efforts to enroll in the University of Mississippi in the early 1960s. Evers also helped Dr. Gilbert Mason, Sr., organize the Biloxi wade-ins, protests against segregation of public beaches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In addition, Evers also helped integrate Jackson's privately owned buses and was trying to integrate the public parks, led voter registration drives, and used boycotts to integrate Leake County schools and the Mississippi State Fair.

Evers' civil rights leadership and investigative work made him a target of white supremacists. The White Citizens' Council was founded in Mississippi, with numerous local chapters, to resist integration of schools and civil rights goals. In the weeks before Evers' death, the leader encountered new levels of hostility. His public investigations into the 1955 lynching of teenaged Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard had made him a prominent black leader. On May 28, 1963, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home. On June 7, 1963, Evers was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the NAACP office in Jackson.

Assassination

Medgar Evers lived with the constant threat of death upon him, living in an area with a heavy Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist population in the areain which he both lived and advocated. The risk had grown so great in the time before his death that Evers and his wife Myrlie had trained their children on exactly what to do if their was a shooting, bombing, or other kind attack on their lives. Evers, who was regularly followed home by at least two FBI cars and one police car, arrived at his home on the morning of his death without an escort, with none of his usual protection for reasons unspecified by the FBI or local police. Many believe that many members of the police force at the time were members of the Klan.

In the early morning of June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's nationally televised Civil Rights Address, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Evers family had worried for his safety the day of his assassination, and Evers himself had warned his wife that he felt himself in a greater danger than usual. When he arrived home, Evers' family was waiting for him, and his children exclaimed to his wife, Myrlie, that he had arrived. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go", Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917 rifle; the bullet ripped through his heart. Initially thrown to the ground by the impact of the shot, Evers rose and staggered 30 feet (9.1 meters) before collapsing. His wife Myrlie was the first to find him outside of their front door. He was taken to the local hospital in Jackson, Mississippi where he was initially refused entry because of his race. His family explained who he was and he was admitted; he died in the hospital 50 minutes later. Evers was the first African American to be admitted to an all white hospital in Mississippi, an ironic final achievement for the dying activist.

After Evers was assassinated, an estimated 5,000 people marched from the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street to the Collins Funeral Home on North Farish Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Allen Johnson, Reverend Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders led the procession. Outraged at the death of one of the most loved Mississippi civil rights leaders, the protests quickly got out of hand. The Mississippi police were prepared for the assault, with riot gear and rifles waiting for the protesters were they to turn violent. While tensions flared initially in the stand off, and in many similar ones around the state, leaders of the movement were able to reel in their followers and maintain a nonviolent atmosphere.

Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors before a crowd of more than 3,000.

On June 21, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan), was arrested for Evers' murder. District Attorney and future governor Bill Waller prosecuted De La Beckwith. All-white juries twice that year - February and April 1964 - deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt and failed to reach a verdict. At the time, most blacks were disenfranchised by Mississippi's constitution and voter registration practices; this meant they were also excluded from juries, which were based on registered voters.

Myrlie Evers never gave up the fight for a conviction of her husbands murderer, and waited until a new judge had been assigned in the county before taking action to take her case against De La Beckwith back into the courtroom. In 1994, De La Beckwith was prosecuted by the state based on new evidence. Bobby DeLaughter was the prosecutor. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for an autopsy. De La Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, after having lived as a free man for much of the three decades following the killing. (He had been imprisoned from 1977 to 1980 on separate charges: conspiring to murder A.I. Botnick.) In 1997,De La Beckwith appealed his conviction in the Evers' case, but the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld it. He later died at age 80 in prison in January 2001.

Legacy

Evers was memorialized by leading Mississippi and national authors, both black and white: Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Margaret Walker and Anne Moody. In 1963, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. In 1969, Medgar Evers College was established in Brooklyn, New York, as part of the City University of New York.

Evers's widow, Myrlie Evers co-wrote the book For Us, the Living with William Peters in 1967. In 1983, a movie was made based on the book. Celebrating Evers's life and career, it starred Howard Rollins Jr. and Irene Cara as Medgar and Myrlie Evers, airing on PBS. The film won the Writers Guild of America award for Best Adapted Drama.

In 1969 a community pool in the Central District neighborhood of Seattle, WA was named after Evers, honoring his life.

On June 28, 1992, the city of Jackson, Mississippi, erected a statue in honor of Evers. All of Delta Drive (part of U.S. Highway 49) in Jackson was renamed in Evers' honor. In December 2004, the Jackson City Council changed the name of the city's airport to "Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport" (Jackson-Evers International Airport) in his honor.

His widow Myrlie Evers became a noted activist in her own right, eventually serving as chairperson of the NAACP. Medgar's brother Charles Evers returned to Jackson in July 1963 and served briefly with the NAACP in his slain brother's place. He remained involved in Mississippi civil rights activities for many years, was the first African-American mayor elected in the state in 1969, and resides in Jackson.

On the 40-year anniversary of Evers' assassination, hundreds of civil rights veterans, government officials, and students from across the country gathered around his grave site at Arlington National Cemetery to celebrate his life and legacy. Barry Bradford and three students—Sharmistha Dev, Jajah Wu and Debra Siegel, formerly of Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois—planned and hosted the commemoration in his honor. Evers was the subject of the students' research project.

In October 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced that USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE-13), a Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship, would be named in the activist's honor. The ship was christened by Myrlie Evers-Williams on November 12, 2011.

In June 2013, a statue of Evers was erected at his alma mater, Alcorn State University, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death. Alumni and guests from around the world gathered to recognize his contributions to American society.

Evers was honored in a tribute at Arlington National Cemetery on the 50th anniversary of his death. Former President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, Senator Roger Wicker and NAACP President Benjamin Jealous all spoke commemorating Evers. Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, spoke on his contributions to the advancement of civil rights:

"Medgar was a man who never wanted adoration, who never wanted to be in the limelight. He was a man who saw a job that needed to be done and he answered the call and the fight for freedom, dignity and justice not just for his people but all people."

He was identified as a Freedom hero by The My Hero Project.

In 2017, the Medgar and Myrlie Evers House was named as a National Historic Landmark.

In popular culture

Musician Bob Dylan wrote his 1963 song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" about the assassination. Nina Simone wrote and sang "Mississippi Goddam" about the Evers case, and Phil Ochs wrote the songs "Another Country" and "Too Many Martyrs" (also titled "The Ballad Of Medgar Evers") in response to the killing. Matthew Jones and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers recorded the latter song. Eudora Welty's short story "Where is the Voice Coming From", in which the speaker is the imagined assassin of Medgar Evers, was published in The New Yorker in July 1963.

The film Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) directed by Rob Reiner, tells the story of the 1994 trial of Beckwith, in which prosecutor DeLaughter of the Hinds County District Attorney's office secured a conviction in state court. Beckwith and DeLaughter were played by James Woods and Alec Baldwin, respectively; Whoopi Goldberg played Myrlie Evers. Evers was portrayed by James Pickens Jr. The film was based on a book of the same name.

Robert DeLaughter wrote a first-person narrative article entitled "Mississippi Justice" published in Reader's Digest, and a book, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case (2001), based on his experiences.

Wadada Leo Smith's album Ten Freedom Summers contains a track called "Medgar Evers: A Love-Voice of a Thousand Years' Journey for Liberty and Justice".

The 2016 documentary I am not your Negro describes the author James Baldwin's reaction to Evers' assassination.

Geri Allen (born June 12, 1957) is an American composer, educator, and jazz pianist, raised in Detroit, Michigan, and educated in the Detroit Public Schools. Allen has worked with many of the greats of modern music, including Ornette Coleman, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, and Charles Lloyd. She cites her primary influences to be her parents, Mount Vernell Allen Jr, and Barbara Jean Allen, and her primary musical influences to be mentors Marcus Belgrave, Donald Walden, and Betty Carter, as well as pianists Herbie Hancock, Mary Lou Williams, Hank Jones, Alice Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Bud Powell, and mentor Dr. Billy Taylor. Allen is an Associate Professor of Music and the Director of the Jazz Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Early life

Allen was born in Pontiac, Michigan. She received her early music education at the Cass Technical High School in Detroit and the Jazz Development Workshop, where her mentor was the trumpeter/teacher Marcus Belgrave. In 1979, Allen earned her bachelor's degree in jazz studies from Howard University in Washington, D.C. She studied under composer Thomas Kerr, and pianists Raymond Jackson, John Malachi, Fred Irby, Arthur Dawkins, and Komla Amoaku. After graduation, she moved to New York City, where she studied with the veteran bop pianist Kenny Barron. From there, at the behest of the jazz educator Nathan Davis, Allen attended the University of Pittsburgh, earning a master's degree in ethnomusicology, returning to New York in 1982, and began touring with Mary Wilson and The Supremes.

Later life and career

In the mid-1980s, Allen became a charter member of both the Black Rock Coalition and the Brooklyn M-Base movement, a collective including saxophonists Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, Gary Thomas, and vocalist Cassandra Wilson among others. Allen played on several of Coleman's albums, including his first, 1985's Motherland Pulse, providing the composition "The Glide Was in the Ride", a track listed on the New Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz. She also was the original keyboarder of the band initially most associated with M-Base: the funk-oriented Steve Coleman and Five Elements.

Allen's own 1984 debut album as a leader, The Printmakers, with Anthony Cox and Andrew Cyrille, was recorded in Germany and the first album to be released by the newly founded German label Minor Music. She went on playing with AACM's Joseph Jarman, Frank Lowe, then toured and recorded with altoist Oliver Lake. She released a solo piano album in 1985, Home Grown, followed by an album and a concert tour with the large ensemble project Open on All Sides in the Middle that featured vocalist Shahita Nurallah and veteran tap dancer Lloyd Story alongside Steve Coleman, Robin Eubanks and percussionist Mino Cinelu. Bassist Jaribu Shahid and drummer Tani Tabbal also joined Allen for her last recording for Minor Music, Twylight, released in 1989, again featuring vocals on two tracks, additional percussionists and herself also on synthesizer.

In 1988 came Etudes, a cooperative trio effort with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Until 1990 several recordings of the trio followed, released on different labels. Allen also played on the drummer's 1989 Monk in Motian, and was part of Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra Montreal concert in 1989. In 1995, she was the first recipient of Soul Train's Lady of Soul Award for jazz album of the year for Twenty-One, featuring Tony Williams and Ron Carter, and the first woman, and youngest person to receive the Danish "Jazz Par Prize". Allen continued to push the improvisational envelope with Sound Museum, a 1996 recording made under the leadership of Ornette Coleman. The Gathering followed in 1998. The Life of a Song was recorded with veterans Dave Holland on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Her 2010 album Flying Toward the Sound was rated one of the Best Of 2010 on NPR, Downbeat, All About Jazz, and the Village Voice's Jazz Critics' Poll that year. "Timeless Portraits and Dreams" featured NEA Jazz Masters Jimmy Cobb and Ron Carter, as well as opera icon George Shirley singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing", saxophonist and mentor Donald Walden, vocalist Carmen Lundy, and the Atlanta Jazz Chorus under the direction of composer/multi-reedist Dwight Andrews.

In 2006, Allen was commissioned to compose "For the Healing of the Nations", a Sacred Jazz Suite for Voices, written in tribute to the victims, survivors and their families of the 9/11 attacks. The suite was performed by Howard University's Afro-Blue Jazz Choir, under the direction of Connaitre Miller. Oliver Lake, Craig Harris, Andy Bey, Dwight Andrews, Mary Stallings, Carmen Lundy, Nneena Freelon, Jay Hoggard, and other jazz musicians also participated. The poetry was contributed by Sandra Turner-Barnes.

Allen took part in a documentary film titled Live Music, Community & Social Conscience (2007) while performing at the Frog Island Music Festival in Michigan. Allen contributed original music to the documentary film Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, directed by Lisa Gay Hamilton, which received a Peabody Award. Also, Allen contributed orchestrations to Andy Bey's "American Song" which was nominated for a Grammy Award. She was the recipient of a 2008 Guggenheim fellowship. Allen's composition "Refractions" was released in response to her Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition, as "Flying Towards The Sound", along with three short art films by film maker/photographer, Carrie Mae Weems, for Motema Music in 2010. Geri Allen & Timeline Live, her second recording for Motema, featured bassist Kenny Davis, drummer Kassa Overall and tap dancer Maurice Chestnut, and was released simultaneously with Flying Toward The Sound.

Allen received the "African-American Classical Music Award" from the Women of the New Jersey Chapter of Spelman College, and also received "A Salute to African-American Women: Phenomenal Woman" from the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Epsilon chapter at the University of Michigan, in 2008. Allen received a nomination in 2011 for the NAACP Image Award for Best Jazz Album, Geri Allen & Timeline Live. She was also nominated for both The 10th Annual Independent Music Awards in 2011 under the Live Performance Album category, and for "Best Jazz Pianist", by the Jazz Journalists Association.

Allen performed this year in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Monument Unveiling Concert, A Theatrical & Musical Celebration Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., MLK: A Monumental Life, presented in Constitution Hall, by Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

Allen previously served as an Associate Professor of Jazz & Contemporary Improvisation at the School Of Music Theatre & Dance, at the University of Michigan, and, as of July 2012, was a curator in New York City at the STONE. In 2013, Allen returned to her alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, as an Associate Professor of Music and to replace her retired former mentor, Nathan Davis, as the Director of the Jazz Studies Program at the university. In May 2014, Allen was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.. In spring 2017 she toured Europe as a guest artist with McCoy Tyner.

Discography

As leader/co-leaderAs sidewoman

With Roy Brooks

Duet in Detroit (Enja, 1989 [1993])

With Betty Carter

Droppin' Things (Verve, 1993)

Feed the Fire (Verve, 1993)

With Ornette Coleman

Sound Museum: Hidden Man (Harmolodic/Verve, 1996)

Sound Museum: Three Women (Harmolodic/Verve, 1996)

With Steve Coleman

Motherland Pulse (JMT, 1985)

And Five Elements: On the Edge of Tomorrow (JMT, 1986)

And Five Elements: World Expansion (JMT, 1986)

And Five Elements: Sine Die (Pangaea, 1986) on one track only

With Buddy Collette

Flute Talk (Soul Note, 1988) with James Newton

With Charlie Haden

Etudes (Soul Note, 1987)

The Montreal Tapes: with Geri Allen and Paul Motian (Verve, 1989 [1997])

The Montreal Tapes: Liberation Music Orchestra (Verve, 1989 [1999])

With Oliver Lake

Expandable Language (Black Saint, 1984)

Otherside (Gramavision, 1988)

Talkin' Stick (Passin' Thru, 2000)

At This Time (Intakt, 2009)

With Charles Lloyd

Lift Every Voice (ECM, 2002)

Jumping the Creek (ECM, 2004)

With Frank Lowe

Decision in Paradise (Soul Note, 1984)

With Paul Motian

Monk in Motian (JMT, 1988)

With Greg Osby

Mindgames (JMT, 1988)

With Dewey Redman

Living on the Edge (Black Saint, 1989)

With Gregory Charles Royal

Dream Come True (GCR 1979 reissued Celeste Japan 2008)

With Woody Shaw

Bemsha Swing (Blue Note, 1986 [1997])

With John Stubblefield

Bushman Song (Enja, 1986)

With Gary Thomas

By Any Means Necessary (JMT, 1989)

With Trio 3 (Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman & Andrew Cyrille)

At This Time (Intakt, 2009)

Celebrating Mary Lou Williams (Intakt, 2011)

With the Mary Lou Williams Collective

Zodiac Suite: Revisited (Mary, 2006)

Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist from Mississippi who worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi and to enact social justice and voting rights. He was murdered by a white supremacist and Klansman.

A World War II veteran and college graduate, he became active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. He became a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Following the 1954 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, Evers worked to gain admission for African Americans to the state-supported public University of Mississippi. He also worked on voting rights and registration, economic opportunity, access to public facilities, and other changes in the segregated society.

Evers was murdered by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council, a group formed in 1954 to resist integration of schools and civil rights activity. As a veteran, Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His murder and the resulting trials inspired civil rights protests, as well as numerous works of art, music and film. All-white juries failed to reach verdicts in the first two trials of Beckwith. He was convicted in a new state trial in 1994, based on new evidence.

Myrlie Evers, widow of the activist, became a noted activist in her own right, serving as national chair of the NAACP. His brother Charles Evers was the first African-American mayor elected in Mississippi in the post-Reconstruction era when he won in 1969 in Fayette.

Early life

Evers was born July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, the third of the five children (including older brother Charles Evers) of Jesse (Wright) and James Evers. The family included Jesse's two children from a previous marriage. The Evers family owned a small farm, and James also worked at a sawmill. Evers walked twelve miles to attend segregated schools, and earned his high school diploma.

Evers served in the United States Army during World War II from 1943 to 1945. He was sent to the European Theater and he fought in the Battle of Normandy in June 1944. After the end of the war, Evers was honorably discharged as a sergeant.

In 1948, Evers enrolled at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (a historically black college, now Alcorn State University) majoring in business administration. He also competed on the debate, football, and track teams, sang in the choir, and was junior class president. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1952.

On December 24, 1951, he married classmate Myrlie Beasley. Together they had three children: Darrell Kenyatta, Reena Denise, and James Van Dyke Evers.

Activism

The couple moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi a town developed by African Americans, where Evers became a salesman for T. R. M. Howard's Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. Howard was also president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL); Evers helped organize the RCNL's boycott of gasoline stations that denied blacks the use of the stations' restrooms. Evers and his brother Charles also attended the RCNL's annual conferences in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1954, which drew crowds of ten thousand or more.

In 1954, Evers applied to the segregated University of Mississippi Law School, but his application was rejected because of his race. He submitted his application in concert with the NAACP as a test case. That year the US Supreme Court had ruled that segregation of public schools (which included state universities) was unconstitutional.

On November 24, 1954, Evers was named the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi. In this position, he helped organize boycotts and set up new local chapters of the NAACP. He was involved with James Meredith's efforts to enroll in the University of Mississippi in the early 1960s. Evers also helped Dr. Gilbert Mason, Sr., organize the Biloxi wade-ins, protests against segregation of public beaches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In addition, Evers also helped integrate Jackson's privately owned buses and was trying to integrate the public parks, led voter registration drives, and used boycotts to integrate Leake County schools and the Mississippi State Fair.

Evers' civil rights leadership and investigative work made him a target of white supremacists. The White Citizens' Council was founded in Mississippi, with numerous local chapters, to resist integration of schools and civil rights goals. In the weeks before Evers' death, the leader encountered new levels of hostility. His public investigations into the 1955 lynching of teenaged Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard had made him a prominent black leader. On May 28, 1963, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home. On June 7, 1963, Evers was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the NAACP office in Jackson.

Assassination

Medgar Evers lived with the constant threat of death upon him, living in an area with a heavy Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist population in the areain which he both lived and advocated. The risk had grown so great in the time before his death that Evers and his wife Myrlie had trained their children on exactly what to do if their was a shooting, bombing, or other kind attack on their lives. Evers, who was regularly followed home by at least two FBI cars and one police car, arrived at his home on the morning of his death without an escort, with none of his usual protection for reasons unspecified by the FBI or local police. Many believe that many members of the police force at the time were members of the Klan.

In the early morning of June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's nationally televised Civil Rights Address, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Evers family had worried for his safety the day of his assassination, and Evers himself had warned his wife that he felt himself in a greater danger than usual. When he arrived home, Evers' family was waiting for him, and his children exclaimed to his wife, Myrlie, that he had arrived. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go", Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917 rifle; the bullet ripped through his heart. Initially thrown to the ground by the impact of the shot, Evers rose and staggered 30 feet (9.1 meters) before collapsing. His wife Myrlie was the first to find him outside of their front door. He was taken to the local hospital in Jackson, Mississippi where he was initially refused entry because of his race. His family explained who he was and he was admitted; he died in the hospital 50 minutes later. Evers was the first African American to be admitted to an all white hospital in Mississippi, an ironic final achievement for the dying activist.

After Evers was assassinated, an estimated 5,000 people marched from the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street to the Collins Funeral Home on North Farish Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Allen Johnson, Reverend Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders led the procession. Outraged at the death of one of the most loved Mississippi civil rights leaders, the protests quickly got out of hand. The Mississippi police were prepared for the assault, with riot gear and rifles waiting for the protesters were they to turn violent. While tensions flared initially in the stand off, and in many similar ones around the state, leaders of the movement were able to reel in their followers and maintain a nonviolent atmosphere.

Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors before a crowd of more than 3,000.

On June 21, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan), was arrested for Evers' murder. District Attorney and future governor Bill Waller prosecuted De La Beckwith. All-white juries twice that year - February and April 1964 - deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt and failed to reach a verdict. At the time, most blacks were disenfranchised by Mississippi's constitution and voter registration practices; this meant they were also excluded from juries, which were based on registered voters.

Myrlie Evers never gave up the fight for a conviction of her husbands murderer, and waited until a new judge had been assigned in the county before taking action to take her case against De La Beckwith back into the courtroom. In 1994, De La Beckwith was prosecuted by the state based on new evidence. Bobby DeLaughter was the prosecutor. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for an autopsy. De La Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, after having lived as a free man for much of the three decades following the killing. (He had been imprisoned from 1977 to 1980 on separate charges: conspiring to murder A.I. Botnick.) In 1997,De La Beckwith appealed his conviction in the Evers' case, but the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld it. He later died at age 80 in prison in January 2001.

Legacy

Evers was memorialized by leading Mississippi and national authors, both black and white: Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Margaret Walker and Anne Moody. In 1963, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. In 1969, Medgar Evers College was established in Brooklyn, New York, as part of the City University of New York.

Evers's widow, Myrlie Evers co-wrote the book For Us, the Living with William Peters in 1967. In 1983, a movie was made based on the book. Celebrating Evers's life and career, it starred Howard Rollins Jr. and Irene Cara as Medgar and Myrlie Evers, airing on PBS. The film won the Writers Guild of America award for Best Adapted Drama.

In 1969 a community pool in the Central District neighborhood of Seattle, WA was named after Evers, honoring his life.

On June 28, 1992, the city of Jackson, Mississippi, erected a statue in honor of Evers. All of Delta Drive (part of U.S. Highway 49) in Jackson was renamed in Evers' honor. In December 2004, the Jackson City Council changed the name of the city's airport to "Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport" (Jackson-Evers International Airport) in his honor.

His widow Myrlie Evers became a noted activist in her own right, eventually serving as chairperson of the NAACP. Medgar's brother Charles Evers returned to Jackson in July 1963 and served briefly with the NAACP in his slain brother's place. He remained involved in Mississippi civil rights activities for many years, was the first African-American mayor elected in the state in 1969, and resides in Jackson.

On the 40-year anniversary of Evers' assassination, hundreds of civil rights veterans, government officials, and students from across the country gathered around his grave site at Arlington National Cemetery to celebrate his life and legacy. Barry Bradford and three students—Sharmistha Dev, Jajah Wu and Debra Siegel, formerly of Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois—planned and hosted the commemoration in his honor. Evers was the subject of the students' research project.

In October 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced that USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE-13), a Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship, would be named in the activist's honor. The ship was christened by Myrlie Evers-Williams on November 12, 2011.

In June 2013, a statue of Evers was erected at his alma mater, Alcorn State University, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death. Alumni and guests from around the world gathered to recognize his contributions to American society.

Evers was honored in a tribute at Arlington National Cemetery on the 50th anniversary of his death. Former President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, Senator Roger Wicker and NAACP President Benjamin Jealous all spoke commemorating Evers. Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, spoke on his contributions to the advancement of civil rights:

"Medgar was a man who never wanted adoration, who never wanted to be in the limelight. He was a man who saw a job that needed to be done and he answered the call and the fight for freedom, dignity and justice not just for his people but all people."

He was identified as a Freedom hero by The My Hero Project.

In 2017, the Medgar and Myrlie Evers House was named as a National Historic Landmark.

In popular culture

Musician Bob Dylan wrote his 1963 song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" about the assassination. Nina Simone wrote and sang "Mississippi Goddam" about the Evers case, and Phil Ochs wrote the songs "Another Country" and "Too Many Martyrs" (also titled "The Ballad Of Medgar Evers") in response to the killing. Matthew Jones and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers recorded the latter song. Eudora Welty's short story "Where is the Voice Coming From", in which the speaker is the imagined assassin of Medgar Evers, was published in The New Yorker in July 1963.

The film Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) directed by Rob Reiner, tells the story of the 1994 trial of Beckwith, in which prosecutor DeLaughter of the Hinds County District Attorney's office secured a conviction in state court. Beckwith and DeLaughter were played by James Woods and Alec Baldwin, respectively; Whoopi Goldberg played Myrlie Evers. Evers was portrayed by James Pickens Jr. The film was based on a book of the same name.

Robert DeLaughter wrote a first-person narrative article entitled "Mississippi Justice" published in Reader's Digest, and a book, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case (2001), based on his experiences.

Wadada Leo Smith's album Ten Freedom Summers contains a track called "Medgar Evers: A Love-Voice of a Thousand Years' Journey for Liberty and Justice".

The 2016 documentary I am not your Negro describes the author James Baldwin's reaction to Evers' assassination.