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. Joyce and Dorie Ladner discuss their roles in the civil rights movement. Credit: Library of Congress 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. The post Mississippi is ‘A Complete Unknown’ in Bob Dylan biopic appeared first on Mississippi Today.