The new film, “A Complete Unknown,” tells the story of Bob Dylan’s rise to success in the early 1960s, but the movie leaves out two fascinating Mississippi stories.

On the evening of June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his first civil rights speech in which he declared that the grandchildren of enslaved Black Americans “are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”

Hours later, Mississippi NAACP leader and World War II veteran Medgar Evers was fatally shot in the back outside his home in Jackson.

Less than a month later, Dylan (portrayed in the movie by Timothée Chalamet) unveiled a new song in a cotton field several miles south of Greenwood, where Evers’ assassin, Byron De La Beckwith, lived.

That field happened to be owned by Laura McGhee, the sister of Gus Courts, who was forced to flee Mississippi after surviving an assassination attempt in 1955. Her three sons, Clarence, Silas and Jake, took part in protests that helped integrate the Leflore Theatre in Greenwood. Her house was shot into and firebombed, but she and her sons kept on fighting.

Dozens of Black Americans listened as they parked under umbrellas to block out the blazing sun while Dylan debuted the song, a scene that Danny Lyon captured in photos.

As he strummed chords, he told those gathered, “I just wanted to sing one song because I haven’t slept in two nights, and I’m a little shaky. But this is about Medgar Evers.”

His shakiness showed. He had to restart once before continuing.

Titled “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Dylan’s song focused on how Evers’ assassin and other poor white Mississippians are nothing more than a pawn in the white politicians’ “game.”

A South politician preaches to the poor white man

“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain

You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain

And the Negro’s name

Is used, it is plain

For the politician’s gain

As he rises to fame

And the poor white remains

On the caboose of the train

But it ain’t him to blame

He’s only a pawn in their game

In the final verse, Dylan spoke about the civil rights leader.

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught

They lowered him down as a king

But when the shadowy sun sets on the one

That fired the gun

He’ll see by his grave

On the stone that remains

Carved next to his name

His epitaph plain

Only a pawn in their game

Dylan also sang, “Blowing in the Wind,” which Peter, Paul and Mary had just turned into a top hit.

Dylan’s mentor, Pete Seeger (portrayed in the movie by Edward Norton) also performed at this music festival organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had been fighting to register Black Mississippians to vote.

Dylan returned to New York City. During the day, he would hang out at the SNCC office, recalled civil rights leader Joyce Ladner. “He would get on the typewriter and start writing.”

She and her sister, Dorie, were no strangers to the civil rights movement. They had been expelled from Jackson State University in 1961 for taking part in a silent protest in support of the Tougaloo College students arrested for integrating the downtown Jackson library.

Now attending Tougaloo, the sisters helped with preparations for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. After working days at the SNCC office, they would spend nights at the apartment of Rachelle Horowitz, the march’s transportation coordinator.

Each night, they arrived at about 11 p.m., only for Dylan to sing his new songs to Dorie until well past midnight, Ladner said.

That annoyed her because she was trying to get some sleep. Each night when they arrived, “we could hear him from the elevator,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, God, not him again.’”

At the August 1963 march, Dylan performed the two same songs he sang in that Delta cotton field, as well as others, this time before a crowd of more than 250,000. Folk singer Joan Baez (portrayed in the movie by Monica Barbaro) harmonized.

Not long after that performance, Ladner said Dylan visited Dorie at Tougaloo and once again sang her some of his songs before he said that he and the others “had to be going. They were driving down Highway 61.”

That highway connects Dylan’s birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota, to the Mississippi Delta. In 1965, Dylan released “Highway 61 Revisited,” generally regarded as one of the best albums of all time.

Dylan moved on, but Ladner said Dylan never forgot her sister, Dorie, a major civil rights figure who passed away last year.

“Whenever he performed in Washington, D.C., she would hang out backstage with him and the guys,” Ladner recalled. “That went on for years.”

She said she believes Dylan penned “Outlaw Blues” about her sister.

I got a girl in Jackson, I ain’t gonna say her name

I got a girl in Jackson, I ain’t gonna say her name

She’s a brown-skin woman, but I love her just the same.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Jan. 8, 1815 

A U.S. Army unit that included Black and Choctaw soldiers helped defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans. 

While peace negotiations to end the War of 1812 were underway, the British carried out a raid in hopes of capturing New Orleans. After the British captured a gunboat flotilla, Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson put the city under martial law. 

Despite being outnumbered, the U.S. Army force of about 2,000 (including a battalion of free Black men, mostly refugees from Santo Domingo, and up to 60 Choctaw Indians) defeated the British. 

After the victory, Andrew Jackson honored these soldiers of color with a proclamation: “I invited you to share in the perils and to divide the glory of your white countrymen. I expected much from you, for I was not uninformed of those qualities which must render you so formidable to an invading foe. I knew that you could endure hunger and thirst and all the hardships of war. I knew that you loved the land of your nativity, and that, like ourselves, you had to defend all that is most dear to man – But you surpass my hopes. I have found in you, united to these qualities, that noble enthusiasm which impels to great deeds.” 

Prior to the battle, Jackson had promised Black soldiers pay, acres of property and freedom to those who were enslaved. That inspired James Roberts to fight as hard as he could in the Battle of New Orleans. 

“In hope of freedom,” he said, “we would run through a troop and leap over a wall.” 

Although Roberts would lose a finger and suffer a serious wound to the head, the pledge proved hollow for him, just as it was in the Revolutionary War when he had been promised freedom and instead was separated from his wife and children and sold for $1,500. 

The memoir he self-published in 1858 is once again available for sale.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Mississippi Legislature returned to the State Capitol on Tuesday for the start of the legislative session in Jackson.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.