Back in October 2018, I wrote an article here on Ricochet entitled, “Perhaps They Should Have Appointed This Guy as US Senator for Mississippi.”

When there was the mess with the special election in Alabama last year with Luther Strange vs. Roy Moore vs. Mo Brooks, part of me was thinking why didn’t they just appoint a black Republican to that seat. There has to be one in the entire state. …  So I was wondering who would have been a good choice if the Mississippi governor had wanted to appoint a black Republican to Thad Cochran’s Senate seat.

The Deep South Republicans had a third chance to this less than three years by appointing Martin Luther King’s Trump-supporting niece Alveda to a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, but once again they struck out.  Heck, Herman Cain, and several other black Republicans in Georgia were probably other good options.  When the third opportunity came, I didn’t see a point to speak up.  Three strikes and you are out!  The country was not to be deprived of the great Southern wisdom of cookie-cutter Republicans like Luther Strange, Cindy Hyde-Smith, and Kelly Loeffler.  Jim DeMint and Nikki Haley did give us Senator Tim Scott though.

I didn’t remember Charles Evers being in his late 90s though.  He looked and acted younger than that.  As I wrote previously…

Charles Evers, brother of murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers, was the first black mayor of a biracial town in Mississippi in the post-Reconstruction era, a former field secretary for the NAACP, and an unsuccessful former candidate for governor in 1971 and the U.S. Senate in 1978 when running as an Independent. He apparently has been a Republican since 1978 or 1980 when he endorsed Ronald Reagan. That’s not long after Thad Cochran and Trent Lott apparently switched parties… I seem to remember reading a story during the 2016 election that when Mississippi was to appoint Republican delegates to the 1952 convention that nobody knew what to do as there really weren’t any Republicans in the state. Apparently they finally decided to appoint an all-black delegation which mostly lived in Washington DC, and which supported Senator Robert Taft over General Eisenhower. I watched a few Charles Evers videos on YouTube. Although his sister-in-law was a chairwoman of the NAACP, was Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year, and delivered the invocation at the second inauguration of Barack Obama, Charles seems to be a rather conventional Republican. He says that the topic with which he disagrees with conventional wisdom the most is his hatred of welfare. It appears that he perhaps also supports more marijuana decriminalization/legalization. He says that he had a bit of a falling out with George W. Bush over the war, but I think a World War II veteran is entitled to have an opinion about military matters. Apparently Evers has been a friend or advisor to people as diverse as George H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and even segregationists like George Wallace, while criticizing Louis Farrakhan and those associated with the Black Panther movement.

Donald Trump: “I am deeply saddened by the loss of my friend Charles Evers. Charles was a trailblazer in politics and a fearless leader, alongside his brother Medgar, for Civil Rights.“

Pamela Junior, Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Director: “(The first time she met him) he asked me, what kind of work do you do? I told him I worked in Parks and Recreation. Man, Mr. Evers sat up straight and said to me, daughter I remember a time when colored folks couldn’t go into the parks nor work there!”

During World War II, Charles and Medgar Evers both served in the United States Army.  Charles fell in love with a Philippine woman while stationed overseas.  He could not marry her and bring her home to his native Mississippi because the state’s constitution prohibited interracial marriages.

Probably not a lot of people had their picture taken in White House with both President John F. Kennedy and President Donald Trump.

Charles Evers requested to be cremated years ago. His wish was for the ashes to be spread across his brother’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery.