OPINION | Civil Rights Reflection: Medgar Evers Pool and the Naming of Public Places

by Mark Epstein

Over the past 50 years, tens of thousands of people have learned to swim, recreated, and cooled off in the waters of Medgar Evers Pool, located at 500 23rd Ave., just north of Garfield High School. How many of them thought about the name of the pool and its namesake? How many have learned that the pool's construction was the site of a significant battle in the effort to fight desegregation in Seattle? Why is this important to think about?

As the generations who engaged in the Civil Rights Movement pass on, we are in danger of losing their stories. Losing our history comes with great risk. Participants in that struggle who were in their teens are now in their 80s; their stories must not die with them, but instead should be studied, shared, and built upon as the struggle for social justice continues.

During the first week of October, I participated in a civil rights tour of four Southern states, visiting numerous historical sites and hearing the stories of a couple dozen warriors of the historical period, 1954—1968. The first stop on our tour was the city of Jackson, Mississippi, where residents have not been able to drink the city's water for over a year and a half. In Jackson, we visited the former home of Medgar and Myrlie Evers, our newest national monument and the site of Medgar's assassination.

One of the most significant aspects of our trip was hearing from multiple figures who — sometimes for many years — did not speak of the trauma of the brutality they experienced as they stood up to fight racism and segregation. Elizabeth Eckford, of the Little Rock Nine, did not speak of her year of integrating into Central High School for over four decades. Silence perpetuates historical trauma; we know now through epigenetics that trauma can alter the expression of a person's DNA in a single generation. Perhaps it does the same in a society — not recognizing past trauma dooms us to repeat or not recognize it today. The naming and renaming of public places can be a way to concretely battle against historical amnesia; it can be used as a form of renewal and regeneration.

Why Medgar Evers?

When he was 17, Medgar dropped out of high school and soon after joined the U.S. military in World War II. His unit was racially segregated. After fighting to free Europe from racial hatred, he returned to the U.S. determined to do the same at home. The year after he returned from the war, he and other Black veterans attempted to register to vote in Decatur, Michigan, and were chased away by armed white men. Medgar went back to complete high school and went on to graduate from Alcorn State University. He was denied admittance to the University of Mississippi Law School and battled for it to be desegregated. As president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), he organized conferences that attracted over 10,000 attendees during the 1950s.

Medgar led numerous boycotts of racist businesses that refused to serve Black customers across southern Mississippi and became the Mississippi field director of the NAACP. He was active in voter registration drives and relentlessly worked to bring the killers of Emmett Till to justice.

At home, Medgar was a devoted husband to Myrlie Evers and a father of three. Out of caution, he kept his children in their front yard when they played, and was a friend to all on his block. He used his military experience to attempt to keep his family safe, building their house with pebbles on a flat roof to hear intrusions, having no front door but an entrance next to the carport, and always exiting his car from the passenger side to more quickly enter the house with the car as cover.

In spite of their precautions, vioIence wracked the Evers family. In early June 1963, their house was firebombed, and just one week later, Medgar was assassinated — getting out of his car in his driveway — with one shot, which went through Medgar, the front window, and the kitchen wall (Medgar had gone to the driver's side of his car to get a box of T-shirts reading "Jim Crow Must Go"). The killer was Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens' Council member and World War II veteran Byron de la Beckwith. The shooting followed one of President John F. Kennedy's strongest speeches on civil rights by just a couple of hours.

Myrlie drove Medgar to the hospital, but the doctors initially refused to break segregation law (they could have lost their medical licenses for treating him), and he died within an hour.

"Medgar became No. 1 on the Mississippi to-kill list," his widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, told NPR in 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his murder, "and we never knew from one day to the next what would happen. I lived in fear of losing him. He lived being constantly aware that he could be killed at any time."

His killer failed to be convicted twice by all-white hung juries. Later, he bragged about the killing at KKK rallies and was celebrated with a parade by the governor of Mississippi.

Myrlie Evers-Williams would spend much of the next three decades carrying on Medgar's work within the NAACP, even becoming its national chair, and attempting to bring his killer to justice. In 1994, a break was made in the case when the rifle used by Beckwith, which still bore his fingerprints, was found in the house of one of the judges in the case. After uncovering and exposing racism in the jury selection process, and with the new evidence, Beckwith was convicted and died in prison a decade later.

After his assassination, Medgar's name was honored in numerous ways across the United States, including the Jackson Airport, a college in Brooklyn, and one of the new swimming pools being built in Seattle in 1970. He was also memorialized in song by Nina Simone ("Mississippi Goddam") and Bob Dylan ("Only a Pawn in Their Game"). The picture of Ms. Evers embracing their son, Darrell Kenyatta Evers, at Medgar's funeral was on the cover of the June 28, 1963, issue of Life magazine. His killing was considered an assassination, not a lynching, and his body was received in Washington, D.C., where the family met with President John F. Kennedy.

Fighting Racism and Segregation in Seattle

As the 1960s began, Seattle still used racist residential covenants, with banks redlining neighborhoods such as the Central District and the Rainier Valley, and segregation was rampant in the trade unions. By 1969, one year after Dr. King's assassination, Seattle's racial and discriminatory policies were a focus of the Civil Rights Movement. The Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party was providing free school breakfasts and establishing medical clinics and growing in strength. Edwin T. Pratt, the director of the Urban League, was killed in his home in January 1969. Racist policies were under attack by a broad cross-section of the population; people were using a variety of tactics.

Of approximately 1,000 construction workers in each of the main building trades working on city projects, only about 10 were African American. During the summer of 1969, construction worker and longtime Seattle activist Tyree Scott, working with the Central Contractors Association, the Black Panther Party, and others, led a group of about 100 Black construction workers and community members in hard hats to the job site where Medgar Evers Pool was under construction. They surrounded and shut down the work site, demanding Black representation on the project. Their actions that summer included shutting down construction at Harborview Medical Center, Red Square on the University of Washington campus, and a runway at SeaTac airport in protest of discrimination faced by Black contractors and construction workers.

The Power of Naming

In his new book, Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, Thomas Ricks views the strategies, decisions, and participants in the Civil Rights Movement through the lens of a 14-year battle. Like Medgar and Myrlie Evers, most of the people involved actively as daily foot soldiers suffered trauma from fighting the battle. They often endured abuse at the hands of police as well as racist violence and consequences, such as loss of jobs, jailings, and isolation from family members. Many of them kept quiet about their suffering and the wounds and trauma that resulted from their involvement, yet their fear was overwhelmed by their love for each other and their people, and by their vision of living a different, better reality.

Their stories are essential for people today to understand, and naming a facility, a city, or a street offers an opportunity to share their lived experience with others today. A sense of hopelessness is the greatest trauma overwhelming people amid the threats of pandemic, climate change, war, continuing racism, and economic insecurity. Knowing the vision and sacrifices of others can shine a light for those who feel like they cannot find a reason to fight, much less hope for a better future.

Wendy Van De Sompele, the pool's current aquatic coordinator, says, "We honor Mr. Evers' legacy by recruiting staff who reflect the diverse Central District community and are relatable role models for children in the neighborhood. We provide scholarships and discounted swimming so that everyone has equitable access to the critical life skill of swimming, in our city surrounded by water."

Renaming places that have been named after slave owners and killers of Indigenous people, or places whose names are degrading to groups of people, is also an educative process that can bring healing. Natural features, such as Tahoma (Mount Rainier) and the Salish Sea (Puget Sound), one can argue, should be known as they were and have been called by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Dual-naming can also be used, calling a place by both its currently used common name and one that reflects and teaches history.

Our guide at the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Mississippi, an African American woman and recent college graduate, discussed the change in U.S. policy on declaring a place a national monument to be shifting from a geographical focus to a historical one. Responding to the many challenges today to teaching about the nation's racial history, she said she "gets to be a teller of this story, and she feels responsible to fill the void of stories that people are trying to ban today." Those who dip their toes in the waters of Medgar Evers Pool or march across the new John Lewis Foot and Bicycle Bridge to Northgate Mall; those who are served by the Odessa Brown or Carolyn Downs clinics; those who read in the Douglass-Truth Library, attend cultural performances at the Langston Hughes Center, or study and learn in the newly built James Baldwin Elementary School; Rainier Beach High School students who watch performances in the Paul Robeson Performing Arts Center; and those who cool off or learn art at Edwin Pratt Park deserve to know the stories of these namesakes and to feel their inspiration.

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Mark Epstein is a 31-year South Seattle resident. He taught elementary and high school for 35 years, with the last 25 at Rainier Beach High School. He is a devoted father and grandfather, with daily walks and love from his pandemic puppy. He has been a career-long union activist, and since his retirement in 2019, he has been active in support of immigrant communities in our state. A lover of music and growing food, he is also an avid biker for transportation.

Featured Image: Medgar Evers Pool is an indoor pool facility located on 23rd Avenue next to Garfield Community Center. (Photo courtesy of the City of Seattle Municipal Archives, 178917/195941.)