We had an entirely different song in mind for today, before we were reminded that 50 years ago today, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot and killed in Mississippi. An Army veteran who spent many very dangerous years representing the NAACP in Mississippi, when the Klan and white supremacists were openly violent, Evers was ambushed and shot in the back by a low-life by the name of Byron De La Beckwith. In homage to Evers, Bob Dylan wrote this trenchant song, "Only A Pawn In Their Game," which refers to the manipulation of poor whites to keep African-Americans down. In many ways, the Rethugs' old "Southern Strategy" and the current tea bagger movement has kept the "game" alive, for example in the form of voter suppression, attacks on the Voting Rights Act, calls for eliminating programs for the working poor, and opposing immigration reform.
Medgar Evers....RIP.
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