On a summer night in 1963, Myrlie Evers was in her home with her three young children. She heard a car pull into the driveway, and knew it was her husband returning home from the office. Medgar Evers worked late that particular evening because President John Kennedy gave a major Oval Office speech to the nation announcing his proposed Civil Rights Act which he was sending to Congress.
Directly she heard the car engine shut down, and the car door open. Mrs. Evers then heard a solitary gunshot ... and her husband was dead. Medgar Evers was one of a number of civil rights -- human rights -- leaders to be assassinated in the 1960s.
At the present time, we are working on the script to the play entitled Call Me Mrs. Evers, which tells the story of Myrlie Evers, from the date of her husband's cold-blooded murder forward in her life. The play is a part of the Iconic Women Theatre Series. Other plays in the series include The Hours of Anne (Anne Boleyn), The Bonfils Girl (Helen Bonfils), La Primera Mujer (Eva Peron) and Stand Still and Look Stupid (Hedy Lamarr).
Call Me Mrs. Evers traces the history of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, particularly the violence that ripped through the nation during that time period. The play is slated to premiere in September this year. As we work on this script, we have come to understand that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Racially-associated violence is occurring with alarming frequency at this juncture in time.
We decided to blog as we work on the script, and to continue blogging as the play moves into production. We want our play to not only celebrate the life of Myrlie Evers, but to provide a mechanism to remember our shared roots as human beings -- as people not separated but connected by our racial backgrounds.
We have entitled this blog, using a quote from Medgar Evers himself:
Freedom has never been free.
We close this initial post with another quote from Medgar Evers:
You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.
Seth Holley
Mike Broemmel
