Anger over Medgar Evers killing turned into obsession for writer Eudora Welty

"Where Is the Voice Coming From?" is the only thing Eudora Welty ever wrote in anger.

On June 12, 1963, Eudora Welty reacted with fury to the news that Mississippi's most prominent civil rights leader had been killed at his Jackson home less than 4 miles from her doorstep.

More: 60th anniversary of civil rights activist Medgar Evers' death

"That hot ... night when Medgar Evers, the local civil rights leader, was shot down from behind in Jackson, I thought, with overwhelming directness: Whoever the murderer is, I know him: not his identity, but his coming about, in this time and place," Eudora Welty said in an interview.

For her, it became "the strangest feeling of horror and compulsion all in one," she told the Paris Review.

What began as outrage turned into obsession.

She became, in her words, a real-life detective, "trying to discover who did it. I don't mean the name of the murderer but his nature."

She wrote a furious first draft overnight from the point of view of the assassin.

She also experimented with titles, including "From the Unknown" and "It Ain't Even July Yet."

None of them satisfied her.

The morning after Medgar Evers was killed, Jackson police found the murder weapon, a .30-06 rifle, in a honeysuckle bush and lifted a fingerprint from the rifle scope.

That rifle and fingerprint belonged to Byron De La Beckwith, a salesman from Greenwood. After his arrest, Welty and her editor scrambled to make revisions.

In the July 6, 1963, issue of The New Yorker, Medgar Evers became Roland Summers. Jackson became Thermopylae. Delta Drive became Nathan Bedford Forrest Road.

Welty spoke a number of times about this piece, which failed to gain the critical praise of some other work.

" 'Voice' is a very powerful story, and the more I read it, the more impressed I am," said Welty biographer and friend Suzanne Marrs. "Eudora herself worried that her writing out of anger might have had a negative impact on the story. I don't think so. I admire it greatly."

To learn more

The Eudora Welty House and Garden in 2023 unveiled a new permanent exhibit honoring slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Immediately after his murder, Welty wrote “Where Is the Voice Coming From?”, a short story about the attack, which The New Yorker published on July 6, 1963. The new exhibit follows the making of Welty’s piece.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Anger over Medgar Evers killing turned into obsession for Eudora Welty