Gwin honors civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Hutchins Lecture

His life and work were the focus of a talk by author and English professor Minrose Gwin as she spoke to an overflowing room at the Alumni Center on Tuesday.

Evers died in what Gwin called a cold-blooded political assassination in 1963. Gwin said although people do not think of Evers first in the discussion of civil rights, Evers was the first martyr of the movement.

Gwin spoke of Evers’ legacy as part of the ongoing Hutchins lecture series. She said though Evers is rarely remembered, his impact paralleled that of famous civil rights leaders like Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.

“Evers wasn’t a figure taught to us in high school,” said Sallie Routh, an English student.

Gwin said the perspective Evers brought should be remembered, and added his death foreshadowed the bloody civil rights movement.

The crowd included Marguerite Hutchins, widow of James Hutchins, an alumnus of the University and the namesake of the lecture series.

“The history of the American South is very important and we have so much to learn,” Hutchins said, adding she continues to sponsor the event because the South needs to learn from its history.

“It all happened for a reason: so we can learn,” she said.

Gwin, whose current project is a book on Evers’ life, said her goal is to allow people to learn from his legacy.

“The past can help in thinking where we need to go in the future. That’s why Evers matters,” she said.

Gwin said that Evers’ home state still suffers from racial tensions.

“Things are very, very bad there still,” she said.

An audience member pointed out civil rights issues in Mississippi might receive considerable national attention in the coming months, as the state’s governor, Haley Barbour, eyes a run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

Barbour made a comment during an interview in December that drew criticism from the Mississippi National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and civil rights groups around the country.

The lecture also plucked an emotional chord with audience members, many of whom lived through the civil rights movement.

Janeen Vanhooke, a research assistant professor of pharmacology and UNC alumna, brought Gwin to tears when she thanked her for the lecture.

“Being an African American hearing a white women retell the struggles of an African American was moving,” Vanhooke said.

“Our memory of these events will shape our future.”

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