Seeking Reconciliation through Historical Truth: Frank X Walker’s Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers

Abstract: In this article, I explore how Frank X Walker’s Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (2013), his thirteenth book and fourth collection of historical poetry, reckons with the past. By conducting extensive archival research, tapping into collective memory, and imagining how real people from history—especially the widow and the assassin of Medgar Evers—might have felt, Walker helps his readers and country begin to heal. Walker’s creative process includes rigorously asking what if Byron De La Beckwith, the white supremacist who murdered Medgar Evers, had found a way through life without hate? And through the perspective of Myrlie Evers, Medgar’s widow, Walker wonders what if she could embrace forgiveness? By uncovering Medgar Evers, whose life has often been overlooked, Walker restores this heroic man to the spotlight, thus contributing to his explicit goal of racial reconciliation.