When NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers lay in a pool of blood in the carport of his Jackson, Mississippi, home on June 12 of 1963, it was the passing of yet another civil rights martyr during America’s long struggle towards living up to its credo of liberty, freedom and justice for all.

More recently, a memorial service for his brother Charles Evers, 97, was held in Thalia Mara Hall in downtown Jackson.

In attendance were top-tier representatives of the Mississippi Republican Party and the national GOP. Evers, a former longtime Democrat-turned Republican, was being mourned as a trailblazer. A man who transcended political parties and race. After all, he had co-chaired Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign in the Magnolia State in 1968.

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Charles Evers’ death on July 22 followed closely that of U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a Democrat, who was nearly billy-clubbed to death on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., 55 years ago as and he and throng of other freedom fighters attempted to walk across it on March 7, 1965. Lewis and Charles Evers would be on opposite sides of the fence when President Donald J. Trump came to Jackson in December of 2017 to dedicate Mississippi’s two stellar museums, each dedicated to civil rights and the state’s rich but turbulent history. Lewis had called for President Trump to stay put in the nation’s capital instead of coming to Jackson. Evers, a Trump supporter, greeted the President on the tarmac at the airport named in his brother’s honor.

Evers was no stranger to criticism. There was suspicion of Charles Evers by white conservatives when he returned to his native Mississippi following his brother’s death in 1963. Little did they know, he would someday join their ranks.

Evers, who would be elected as the first African-American mayor of a racially mixed Mississippi town — and the first since Reconstruction — would mount a gubernatorial bid to become Mississippi’s first Black governor in 1971. He ran as an independent. There would be an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate and another attempt at being elected governor.

In 1971, our first-grade teacher, Mrs. Ann Malone Hopper, asked her students to choose a famous political figure from history and portray that person in class. To her surprise and I am sure others in my all-white classroom, I chose to portray Charles Evers.

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Evers had been in the news. He was shaking things up. He did not fit neatly into any category or box that others had proscribed for him. His independence, his insouciance was a breath of fresh air.

Too often, people attempt to drape the cloak of their own rigid political garb around the shoulders of others when it just doesn’t fit. When someone, even within a political affiliation, dares to step across “the party line,” to embrace common sense or a nobler, high ideal, out come the thought police. Out come the trolls. In this highly partisan era, we need more people like Charles Evers who defied labels. History will show he was a man who locked arms when necessary, but a man who was not afraid to reach out and across to extend his hand and help people make it to the other side.