In that wider world—that distant planet called “Europe”—Medgar Evers was a man; a technician fifth grade in the Quartermaster Corps of the U.S. Army, with the rank of sergeant, after serving in England, at Liege and Antwerp in Belgium, and in France in La Havre, Cherbourg, and Omaha Beach. He was an American, who had seen more of the world than the vast majority of white Americans. He was a World War II veteran and a human being. Yet the moment he returned to Mississippi he was nothing but a nigger.
