Friday’s memorial celebration for Wharlest Jackson Sr. was overdue and a rightful commemoration of the lynching-bombing-murdering of the freedom fighting heroic man, son, uncle, husband and father who is no less violently dead than Martin L. King, Jr., Medgar Evers, Emmit Till, Henry Dee, Charles Moore, the four little girls of Birmingham and all the others.

This is a story of another of many supreme sacrifices made by a freedom fighter for truth, justice, civil and human rights for our people such as Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, Queen Nzinga, Patrice Lumumba, Samura Marcel, Nehanda, Ya Asantewa, Viola Luizzo, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and many others.

They tried to silence, put down, checkmate and destroy our modern civil and human rights struggle for justice and equality in Adams County and Natchez through the same kind of intimidation, brutalizing and terrorizing of civil and human rights freedom fighters that had gone on nonstop for 80 years since those short lived years of freedom after slavery.

I want ya’ll to understand that the lynching-bombing murder of Wharlest Jackson Sr., was intended to silence the struggle. Instead it lit up the struggle. It exploded the struggle into a whole new wake up African-Americans’ self-determination to kill Jim Crow and make our city and county better.

The explosion was heard all over Adams County and Mississippi on February 27, 1967. It was heard over the United States. It was heard around the world. It was heard from hell to heaven.

It was an explosion whose impact tore Wharlest Jackson Sr.’s body in ways that even today, turns your stomach to look at pictures of it in the Jet Magazine.

None of us can tell or feel how that explosion impacted the descendents of Wharlest Jackson Sr. then and how it continues to impact them today. There are others who were impacted then and still today.

This is a commemoration to help overcome a serious illness in our African-American community of forgetting our past. Lest we forget that the lynching-bombing explosion on February 27, 1967, did brutally bring down the young heroic freedom fighter Wharlest Jackson Sr. But it had a more positive rippling effect and greater reaction.

It began the effective bringing down of the walls of Jericho Jim Crow of Adams County and Natchez.

That is how it was done in Natchez and later the Natchez civil rights, tactical, model example was adopted and applied all over our Mississippi and beyond bringing down the greater walls of Jericho Jim Crow.

Members of the Wharlest Jackson Sr. family, relatives, friends, associates, Natchez Deacon For Defense and justice and co-freedom fighters gathered Friday to commemorate. And I ask you to now on celebrate the legacy of the supreme sacrifice made on the cross of freedom struggle, that rekindled the movement in reaction to the bombing that led to the death of Mississippi’s Jim Crow.

In his speech at the Eighth Annual Natchez Historic Conference last month, former and well renowned Mississippi Governor William F. Winter, a descendant of Nathan Bedford Forrest an alleged founder of the Ku Klux Klan, said one of the two things that caused Mississippi to become progressive was getting rid of Jim Crow.

So Deacons for Defense and Justice, Parchman Prison 500, NAACPers of those days and Wharlest Jackson Sr. family, rejoice in this true history, heritage and legacy like many others of the past that have given us the freedom to make choices today.

There is a saying around here that it is “too painful” to talk about slavery and civil rights.

Build a monument memorial here and rename Minor Street which commemorates an enslaving family.

Break the silence, get over the pain by commemorating and don’t ever allow injustice to be cloaked in silentness darkness. What’s hidden in darkness is sure to come to light.

What goes around is sure to come around. Let your candles light up truth, justice, righteousness, harmony, peace, love and reciprocity.

Ser Seshs Ab Heter-CM Boxley is affiliated with the Africa House Ya Providence Educulture Museum and Gallery and Natchez Deacon For Defense and Justice member for life.