Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America

by Joy-Ann Reid

Lincoln’s words on the plaque were published in Harper’s Weekly in July 1865, three months after his assassination: “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for that day.”

Johnson, a man of the South, understood that Washington needed to respond. A country ruled by violence and repression couldn’t remain a country for long, that was a lesson the nation ought to have learned during the Civil War.