Every Memorial Day, I try to visit Arlington National Cemetery. I try to do the same thing every July Fourth. I make it a point to visit the same six grave sites. Here they are, in descending order of the esteem I hold for each person.

1. Civil rights activist Medgar Evers: He was born on July 2, 1925. That’s why I try to visit his grave site on July 4. Evers was the field secretary of Mississippi’s NAACP branch in the 1950s and early 1960s.