Part of the Way

"My husband made it as close as Arlington [National Cemetery]," Medgar Evers' widow Myrlie said in Mississippi last week. "Maybe Charles will go all the way to Washington."

Charles Evers, 45, has already come quite far since he took over as field secretary of Mississippi's N.A.A.C.P. in 1963, when his brother was cut down by a sniper. Last week, in a special election conducted to fill the congressional seat that was vacated by racist Governor John Bell Williams, Evers polled 33,713 of 114,767 votes in a race against six white conservative candidates. His trip is likely to end there, however--at least for this year.

Although Evers led all of his opponents and would like to become his state's first Negro in Congress since Reconstruction, the twelve-county Third District in southwest Mississippi is roughly 55% white; registered Negro voters, moreover, are outnumbered by about 125,000 to 70,000 at the polls. Since none of the candidates gained a majority in last week's election, Evers and the runner-up, Charles Griffin, 41, a longtime congressional aide to John Bell Williams, who picked up 28,806 votes, will face each other in a March 12 runoff.

Evers knows he must gain substantial white support and promises: "We're going to represent all of our people, black and white, 'cause we're all God's children." But the prospect is that whites, who scattered their votes in last week's election, will coalesce to defeat Evers in the runoff.

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