Mississippi politicos feud over civil rights monument status
Posted Mar 14, 2019 3:43 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi’s white Republican governor and the state’s only black Democratic congressman are feuding over who should get credit for the home of a slain civil rights leader becoming a national monument.
President Donald Trump signed a bill Wednesday creating five new national monuments, including the Medgar and Myrlie Evers home in Jackson. Medgar Evers was the Mississippi NAACP leader when he was assassinated outside the home in June 1963 while his wife, Myrlie, and their three children were inside.
On Twitter, Gov. Phil Bryant praised Trump and Mississippi’s two Republican U.S. senators for the monument designation.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson tweeted back: “Give adequate credit. I’ve worked on this for 16 years.”
Bryant responded that Thompson was showing “anger and hatred … that separated our people in the civil rights era.”
Emily Wagster Pettus, The Associated Press
