Have No Fear: The Charles Evers Story Book

"Charles Evers is a personal hero of mine."—Jesse Jackson

"Many people in Decatur were surprised to see sweet little Medgar Evers grow up to be such a warrior for civil rights. I wasn't surprised one damn bit. I saw the warrior in Medgar when he was a tiny boy. I helped create that warrior."—Charles Evers

A fierce warrior in his own right, the brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers fought on the front lines of the greatest struggle for America's heart and soul since the Civil War. Now, in a work of uncompromising honesty and power, Charles Evers re-creates the raw emotions of those times, conveying all of the rage and hope of a people rising against injustice and demanding equality. Have No Fear is charged with the passion, conviction, and vigorous spirit of a battle-scarred soldier who has met his foe and emerged victorious.

Charles Evers grew up in Mississippi during the 1920s and '30s. Proud and headstrong, quick to action, he lived by his father's creed: Have no fear. Learning early about the harsh realities of poverty and unrelenting racism, and determined to erase the color line, he forged a special pact with his younger brother: "Medgar and I made a sacred oath as young boys: Whatever happened to one of us, the other would carry on." It was a pact that Charles would honor for the rest of his life.

Driven from Mississippi, he made an illicit fortune in Chicago, and sent the money home to help his brother in the fight for civil rights. Shattered by Medgar's assassination in 1963, Charles seized his brother's mantle as head of the Mississippi NAACP. His volatile personality alienated many but inspired more—young and old, rich and poor, black and white. Always a shrewd businessman, he became an even shrewder politician, leading the biracial coalition that unseated an all-white Mississippi delegation at the notorious 1968 Democratic convention. Elected the first black mayor in Mississippi since Reconstruction, he made a courageous run for governor on the campaign promise "Evers for Everybody."

A blunt, often blistering account of one man's lifelong battle for respect—for both himself and all Americans—Have No Fear is packed with insight and little-known details about Charles Evers's friends and allies—Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Nelson Rockefeller, Thurgood Marshall, and Fannie Lou Hamer, among others.

An unflinching witness to history, Charles Evers has been a driving, motivating force, a dedicated leader whose story is a landmark addition to the history of the civil rights years and their turbulent aftermath.

"Charles Evers has given us one of the most extraordinary memoirs about race in America that I know. This holy sinner of the civil rights era, who kept company with mobsters, bootleggers, call girls, Kings, Kennedys, and Rockefellers has produced, with Andrew Szanton, a salient one-man's history of Mississippi and the United States before and after Brown v. Board of Education. The fascinating interplay of racial nihilism and political sagacity is reminiscent of the early Malcolm X and the mature Frederick Douglass."—David Levering Lewis Pulitzer Prize-winning author W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919

"Charles Evers is a gutsy American patriot and treasure. This book is an important, well-written slice of American history."—Dan Rather

"Charles [Evers] shared Medgar's commitment and activism . . . Have No Fear tells the story of his life, which is also inevitably a portrait of his martyred brother, of the Mississippi civil rights movement, and of the nation itself."—Booklist (starred review)

E-mail: szanton&atsign;fas.harvard.edu