I am working on a book about nice people. Unfortunately, I am having some difficulty finding women and minorities who are known particularly for being nice. I’ve been reading and watching a lot of stuff about the modern civil rights movement, looking for people who can flesh out what one friend has taken to calling, “Frank’s Nice Guys.” But it is hard to find the niceness of people’s personality when they are in the middle of a struggle for their very lives—in the middle of a war.

I just got a video Free At Least: Civil Rights Heroes—Part 1 Emmett Till / Medgar Evers. I think this title is incorrect, because Till was not a hero: he was just one of many casualties.[1] He was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Or was it that he said, “Bye, baby”? Or did he ask for a date? Or did he do nothing all? Based upon the video, he seems like he was a nice kid. Certainly, his “crime” seems to have been one of niceness.[2] So I’m not inclined to think of niceness as that great a thing just now. And that is the whole problem. Those without power very often are nice. It is when the powerful act like human beings that we take note.

On a more positive note, the more I learn about Medgar Evers, the more I think he was a nice guy in the best possible sense. I think he is going to be one of my nice guys. But it was very hard to watch the video. Myrlie Evers-Williams, Medgar’s wife, spoke very beautifully about their final days together. I can’t imagine knowing that my death (or that of my spouse) was about to happen and being so calm. They are built of better stuff than I. By the end, I was a mess—sobbing uncontrollably. But at least I was that much closer to my goal.

[1] I am inclined to take this back. Perhaps we need to distinguish between Emmett Till the boy and Emmett Till the symbol. Regardless, this is what Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley (who was a hero—there is no doubt of that), said, “I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me, and if the death of my son can mean something to the other unfortunate people all over the world, then for him to have died a hero would mean more to me than for him just to have died.” Indeed.

[2] I can understand that someone can find a sexual advance threatening. Just the same, mating rituals for humans are generally ones of charm rather than coercion. Clearly, Mrs. Bryant felt threatened: she went to her car and got a gun. But that in itself showed the level of control she had. And after the fact, she did not mention it to her husband. Given that, I suspect that after it was over, even she saw that she had over-reacted. And so I don’t imagine that Till was aggressive in any way. Bryant was just hopped up on racist stories of the over-sexed black man and his insatiable desire for white women.

Update

I am watching PBS’s excellent Eyes on the Prize. Because I am an iconoclast, I have always tended to minimize Martin Luther King, Jr. And I still do think that his role in the modern civil rights movement is generally over-stated, in the same way that George Washington’s is in the American revolution. But King as amazingly eloquent. This is especially true when he is speaking extemporaneously. Truly amazing. Watch Eyes on the Prize and see what I mean.