Navy honors civil rights martyr Medgar Evers

[Blue_Tires]

JACKSON, Miss. – The widow of slain civil-rights pioneer Medgar Evers fought tears Friday as Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced he's naming a new Navy supply ship for Evers' late husband.

"I think of those who will serve on this ship and those who will see it in different parts of the world. And perhaps they, too, will come to know who Medgar Evers was and what he stood for," Myrlie Evers-Williams said at Jackson State University, where Mabus made the announcement.

Evers was Mississippi field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People when he was assassinated outside his Jackson home on June 12, 1963. He was 37.

"He gave his life for his country," Mabus told an audience of about 200.

Mabus embraced Evers-Williams and Medgar Evers' brother, Charles Evers, as they stood before a screen with a color likeness of the ship and a black-and-white photograph of Medgar Evers.

The USNS Medgar Evers will be built at General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, and Mabus said construction of the 689-foot vessel would take up to two years. The ship will deliver food, ammunition and parts to other ships at sea.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Medgar Evers organized nonviolent protests, voter registration drives and boycotts in his home state.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091010/ap_on_re_us/us_medgar_evers_navy;_ylt=AngnURYpLHC1WBCJBPTjv9hH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTE1Y2ZwbTZlBHBvcwM1BHNlYwN5bi1jaGFubmVsBHNsawNuYXZ5aG9ub3JzY2k-

[kwassa]

1. Why not an aircraft carrier?

Naming a supply ship is no biggie, and to me it reflects the role that segregated black troops played in the Second World War and other eras; that of supply troops. Is that the role they still play?

[Fire1]

2. I guess there are several ways to look at it. Are there any

ships at all named after an AA? If not, then this is a good start, albeit long overdue.