And so there's the kind of that massive Southern contradiction that we have, and all kind of wrapped up in him. And yet he was very kind to his wife, very gentlemanly. It's just one racial epithet or comment after another. MITCHELL: He's actually the most racist person I ever spent any time with. You actually interviewed the man who was convicted of killing Medgar Evers. MARTIN: You have a special connection to this story. And I think even those outside Jackson will connect with it.Īnd I think any time you connect with real events and real people, I think it brings a power that you don't have in fiction alone. And those were from Jackson and know Jackson will obviously recognize those things and connect with them. I think it's more powerful to have the real landmarks, the real person, Medgar Evers, as opposed to a fictional name, Roland Summers. MARTIN: Do you think as a reader it is more powerful to read the piece with these names?
And because of the arrest of Byron De La Beckwith, 10 days later, they ended up changing it, you know, for libel reasons, et cetera, that kind of thing. And so, we just thought that it made the story more real, more authentic, more like she originally meant it. MARTIN: That was a made-up name they assigned. You know, Jackson becomes Thermopylae in the fictional version. And she use Medgar Evers' name, real Jackson landmarks. She was so upset about it but she felt like she knew the mind of the killer, the man who had done this, and so she wrote it from that perspective. And she wrote it the same day that Medgar Evers was assassinated. MITCHELL: Well, when she wrote at the time, as she put it, it was the only thing she ever wrote in anger. MARTIN: So this story by Eudora Welty, when The New Yorker published it they titled it "Where the Voice is Coming From?" It is now being published in its original form.
Jerry Mitchell is a reporter for the Clarion-Ledger. Now, 50 years later, the Jackson newspaper, the Clarion-Ledger, is publishing Welty's original story, names included. The New Yorker magazine decided to publish it, but they stripped the story of all references to Evers and the city where he was killed, Jackson, Mississippi. In 1963, Eudora Welty wrote a story about the assassination of civil rights leader Medger Evers.
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