African-American civil rights activist (1925–1963)

Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925:– June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist and the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi who was **inated by a white supremacist. Evers, a decorated U.S. Army combat veteran who had served in World War II, was engaged in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, end the segregation of public facilities, and expand opportunities for African Americans including the enforcement of voting rights.

A college graduate, Evers became active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. Following the 1954 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were uncons*utional, Evers challenged the segregation of the state-supported public University of Mississippi, applying to law school there. He also worked for voting rights, economic opportunity, access to public facilities, and other changes in the segregated society. Evers was awarded the 1963 NAACP Spingarn Medal.

Evers was murdered in 1963 at his home in Jackson, Mississippi, now the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council in Jackson. This group was formed in 1954 in Mississippi to resist the integration of schools and civil rights activism. As a veteran, Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His murder and the resulting trials inspired civil rights protests, and his life and death inspired numerous works of art, music, and film. Although all-white juries failed to reach verdicts in Beckwith's first two trials in the 1960s, he was convicted in 1994 based on new evidence.

Medgar's widow, Myrlie Evers, became a noted activist in her own right, serving as national chair of the NAACP. In 1969 his brother Charles became the first African American to be elected mayor of a Mississippi city in the post-Reconstruction era.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Activism
• 3 **ination
• 4 Trials
• 5 Legacy
• 6 In popular culture
  • 6.1 Music
  • 6.2 Essays and books
  • 6.3 Film
• 7 See also
• 8 References
• 9 Further reading
• 10 External links

Early life

Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, the third of five children (including elder brother Charles Evers) of Jesse (Wright) and James Evers. The family included Jesse's two children from a previous marriage. The Evers family owned a small farm and James also worked at a sawmill. Evers and his siblings walked 12 miles (19 kilometers) a day to attend segregated schools; eventually Medgar earned his high school diploma.

Evers served in the United States Army during World War II from 1943 to 1945. He was sent to the European Theater where he fought in the Battle of Normandy in June 1944. After the end of the war, Evers was honorably discharged as a sergeant.

In 1948, Evers enrolled at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (a historically black college, now Alcorn State University), majoring in business administration. He also competed on the debate, football, and track teams, sang in the choir, and was junior cl* president. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1952.

On December 24, 1951, he married cl*mate Myrlie Beasley. Together they had three children: Darrell Kenyatta, Reena Denise, and James Van Dyke Evers.

Activism

The couple moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, a town developed by African Americans, where Evers became a salesman for T. R. M. Howard's Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company.Evers was also president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), which began to organize actions for civil rights; Evers helped organize the RCNL's boycott of gasoline stations that denied blacks the use of the stations' restrooms.Evers and his brother Charles attended the RCNL's annual conferences in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1954, which drew crowds of 10,000 or more.

In 1954, following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that segregated public schools were uncons*utional, Evers applied to the state-supported University of Mississippi Law School, but his application was rejected because of his race. He submitted his application as part of a test case by the NAACP.

On November 24, 1954, Evers was named as the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi. In this position, he helped organize boycotts and set up new local chapters of the NAACP. He was involved with James Meredith's efforts to enroll in the University of Mississippi in the early 1960s.

Evers also encouraged Dr. Gilbert Mason Sr. in his organizing of the Biloxi wade-ins from 1959 to 1963, protests against segregation of the city's public beaches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Evers conducted actions to help integrate Jackson's privately owned buses and tried to integrate the public parks. He led voter registration drives, and used boycotts to integrate Leake County schools and the Mississippi State Fair.

Evers's civil rights leadership, along with his investigative work, made him a target of white supremacists. Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, local whites founded the White Citizens' Council in Mississippi, and numerous local chapters were started, to resist the integration of schools and facilities. In the weeks before Evers was killed, he encountered new levels of hostility. His public investigations into the 1955 lynching of Chicago teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi, and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard, had made him a prominent black leader. On May 28, 1963, a Molotov *tail was thrown into the carport of his home. On June 7, 1963, Evers was nearly run down by a car after he came out of the NAACP office in Jackson, Mississippi.

**ination

The rifle used by De La Beckwith to **inate Evers The Evers' house at 2332 Margaret Walker Alexander Drive, now the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, where Medgar Evers was fatally shot after getting out of his car.

Medgar Evers lived with the constant threat of death. A large white supremacist population and the Ku Klux Klan were present in Jackson and its suburbs. The risk was so high that before his death, Evers and his wife Myrlie had trained their children on what to do in case of a shooting, bombing or other kind of attack on their lives. Evers, who was regularly followed home by at least two FBI cars and one police car, arrived at his home on the morning of his death without an escort. None of his usual protection was present, for reasons unspecified by the FBI or local police. There has been speculation that many members of the police force at the time were members of the Klan.

In the early morning of Wednesday, June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's nationally televised Civil Rights Address, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Evers' family had worried for his safety that day, and Evers himself had warned his wife that he felt in greater danger than usual.

Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go", Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Eddystone Enfield 1917 rifle; the bullet p*ed through his heart. Initially thrown to the ground by the impact of the shot, Evers rose and staggered 30 feet (10 meters) before collapsing outside his front door. His wife, Myrlie, was the first to find him.

He was taken to the local hospital in Jackson, where he was initially refused entry because of his race. His family explained who he was and he was admitted; he died in the hospital 50 minutes later. He was 37 years old. Evers was the first black man to be admitted to an all-white hospital in Mississippi. Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors before a crowd of more than 3,000.

After Evers was **inated, an estimated 5,000 people marched from the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street to the Collins Funeral Home on North Farish Street in Jackson. Allen Johnson, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders led the procession. The Mississippi police came prepared with riot gear and rifles in case the protests turned violent. While tensions were initially high in the stand-off between police and marchers, both in Jackson and in many similar marches around the state, leaders of the movement maintained nonviolence among their followers.

Trials

On June 21, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan), was arrested for Evers' murder. District Attorney and future governor Bill Waller prosecuted De La Beckwith. All-white juries in February and April 1964 deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt and failed to reach a verdict. At the time, most black people were still disenfranchised by Mississippi's cons*ution and voter registration practices; this meant they were also excluded from juries, which were drawn from the pool of registered voters.

Myrlie Evers did not give up the fight for the conviction of her husband's killer. She waited until a new judge had been *igned in the county to take her case against De La Beckwith back into the courtroom. In 1994, De La Beckwith was prosecuted by the state based on new evidence. Bobby DeLaughter was the prosecutor. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed for an autopsy.

De La Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, after having lived as a free man for much of the three decades following the killing. (He had been imprisoned from 1977 to 1980 on separate charges: conspiring to murder A. I. Botnick.) In 1997, De La Beckwith appealed his conviction in the Evers case, but the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld it and the US Supreme Court declined to hear it. He died at age 80 in prison on January 21, 2001.

Legacy

Medgar Evers's grave in Arlington National Cemetery in 2007

Evers was memorialized by leading Mississippi and national authors both black and white: James Baldwin, Margaret Walker, Eudora Welty, and Anne Moody. In 1963, Evers was posthumously awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP. In 1969, Medgar Evers College was established in Brooklyn, New York, as part of the City University of New York.

Evers's widow Myrlie Evers co-wrote the 1967 book For Us, the Living with William Peters. In 1983, a television movie was made based on the book. Celebrating Evers's life and career, it starred Howard Rollins Jr. and Irene Cara as Medgar and Myrlie Evers, airing on PBS. The film won the Writers Guild of America award for Best Adapted Drama.

In 1969, a community pool in the Central District neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, was named after Evers, honoring his life.

On June 28, 1992, the city of Jackson, Mississippi, erected a statue in honor of Evers. All of Delta Drive (part of U.S. Highway 49) in Jackson was renamed in Evers's honor. In December 2004, the Jackson City Council changed the name of the city's airport to Jackson–Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport in his honor.

A statue of Evers at the Medgar Evers Boulevard Library in Jackson, Mississippi

His widow Myrlie Evers became a noted activist in her own right, eventually serving as national chairperson of the NAACP. Myrlie also founded the Medgar Evers Ins*ute in 1998, with the initial goal of preserving and advancing the legacy of Medgar Evers' life's work. Anticipating the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the **ination of Medgar Evers and recognizing the international leadership role of Myrlie Evers, the Ins*ute's board of directors changed the organization's name to the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Ins*ute.

Medgar's brother Charles Evers returned to Jackson in July 1963, and served briefly with the NAACP in his slain brother's place. He remained involved in Mississippi civil rights activities for many years, and in 1969, was the first African-American mayor elected in the state. He died on July 22, 2020, aged 97.

On the 40th anniversary of Evers's **ination, hundreds of civil rights veterans, government officials, and students from across the country gathered around his grave site at Arlington National Cemetery to celebrate his life and legacy. Barry Bradford and three students—Sharmistha Dev, Jajah Wu, and Debra Siegel, formerly of Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois—planned and hosted the commemoration in his honor. Evers was the subject of the students' research project.

In October 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced that USNS:Medgar Evers:(T-AKE-13), a Lewis and Clark-cl* dry cargo ship, would be named in the activist's honor. The ship was christened by Myrlie Evers-Williams on November 12, 2011.

In June 2013, a statue of Evers was erected at his alma mater, Alcorn State University, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death. Alumni and guests from around the world gathered to recognize his contributions to American society.

Evers was honored in a tribute at Arlington National Cemetery on the 50th anniversary of his death. Former President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, Senator Roger Wicker, and NAACP President Benjamin Jealous all spoke commemorating Evers. Evers's widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, spoke of his contributions to the advancement of civil rights:

Medgar was a man who never wanted adoration, who never wanted to be in the limelight. He was a man who saw a job that needed to be done and he answered the call and the fight for freedom, dignity and justice not just for his people but all people.

He was identified as a Freedom hero by The My Hero Project.

In 2017, the Medgar and Myrlie Evers House was named as a National Historic Landmark. In 2019, the site was designated a National Monument.

In popular culture

Music

Musician Bob Dylan wrote his song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" about the **ination on July 2, 1963, on what would have been Evers' 38th birthday. Nina Simone wrote and sang "Mississippi Goddam" about the Evers case. Phil Ochs referred to Evers in the song "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" and wrote the songs "Another Country" and "Too Many Martyrs" (also *led "The Ballad of Medgar Evers") in response to the killing. Malvina Reynolds referenced Evers' murder in her song, "It Isn't Nice". Matthew Jones and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers recorded a version of the latter song. Wadada Leo Smith's album Ten Freedom Summers contains a track called "Medgar Evers: A Love-Voice of a Thousand Years' Journey for Liberty and Justice". Jackson C. Frank's self-*led debut album, released in 1965, also includes a reference to Medgar Evers in the song "Don't Look Back".

Essays and books

Eudora Welty's short story, "Where Is the Voice Coming From?", in which the speaker is the imagined **in of Medgar Evers, was published in The New Yorker in July 1963.

Attorney Robert DeLaughter wrote a first-person narrative article en*led "Mississippi Justice" published in Reader's Digest about his experiences as state prosecutor in the murder trial. He added to this account in a book, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case (2001).

Film

Evers was portrayed by Howard Rollins in the 1983 television film For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story.

The film Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), directed by Rob Reiner, explores the 1994 trial of De La Beckwith in which prosecutor DeLaughter of the Hinds County District Attorney's office secured a conviction in state court. Beckwith and DeLaughter were played by James Woods and Alec Baldwin, respectively; Whoopi Goldberg played Myrlie Evers. Evers was portrayed by James Pickens Jr. The film was based on a book of the same name.

In the do*entary film I Am Not Your Negro (2016), Evers is one of three black activists (the other two are Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X) who are the focus of reminiscences by author James Baldwin. Baldwin recounts the cir*stances of and his reaction to Evers's **ination.

In the 2011 film The Help, a clip of Medgar Evers speaking for civil rights is shown on TV, quickly followed by news of his **ination, and a glimpse of an article by his widow published in Life magazine.

A 2021 episode of Extra History from Extra Credits talks about Evers, his activism, and **ination.

See also

• List of civil rights leaders

References

Further reading

• Gwin, Minrose (2013). Remembering Medgar Evers: Writing the Long Civil Rights Movement. University of Georgia Press. ISBN:9780820335636.
• Bruce, Catherine Fleming (2016). The Sustainers: Being, Building and Doing Good through Activism in the Sacred Spaces of Civil Rights, Human Rights and Social Movements. Tnovsa LLC. ISBN 9780996219020.

External links

• SNCC Digital Gateway: Medgar Evers, Do*entary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & gr*roots organizing from the inside-out
• JFK First Draft Condolence Letter to Medgar Evers’ Widow, June 12, 1963 Shapell M*cript Foundation
• Audio recording of T. R. M. Howard's eulogy at the memorial service for Medgar Evers, June 15, 1963, Jackson, Mississippi.
• Myrlie Evers (June 28, 1963). 'He said he wouldn't mind dying – if ... '. LIFE. pp.:34–47.
• Medgar Evers in the U.S. Federal Census American Civil Rights Pioneers
• "Medgar Evers biography". Africa Within. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012.
• FBI article: Civil Rights in the ‘60s: Justice for Medgar Evers
• Medgar Evers's FBI file hosted at the Internet Archive
• Medgar Evers Fund Collected Records held at Swarthmore College Peace Collection

Activist
groups

• Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
• Atlanta Student Movement
• Black Panther Party
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
• Committee for Freedom Now
• Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
• Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
• Council of Federated Organizations
• Dallas County Voters League
• Deacons for Defense and Justice
• Georgia Council on Human Relations
• Highlander Folk School
• Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
• Lowndes County Freedom Organization
• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
• Montgomery Improvement *ociation
• NAACP
  • Youth Council
• Nashville Student Movement
• Nation of Islam
• Northern Student Movement
• National Council of Negro Women
• National Urban League
• Operation Breadbasket
• Regional Council of Negro Leadership
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
• Southern Regional Council
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
• The Freedom Singers
• United Auto Workers (UAW)
• Wednesdays in Mississippi
• Women's Political Council

Activists

• Ralph Abernathy
• Victoria Gray Adams
• Zev Aelony
• Mathew Ahmann
• Muhammad Ali
• William G. Anderson
• Gwendolyn Armstrong
• Arnold Aronson
• Ella Baker
• James Baldwin
• Marion Barry
• Daisy Bates
• Harry Belafonte
• James Bevel
• Claude Black
• Gloria Blackwell
• Randolph Blackwell
• Unita Blackwell
• Ezell Blair Jr.
• Joanne Bland
• Julian Bond
• Joseph E. Boone
• William Holmes Borders
• Amelia Boynton
• Bruce Boynton
• Raylawni Branch
• Stanley Branche
• Ruby Bridges
• Aurelia Browder
• H. Rap Brown
• Ralph Bunche
• Guy Carawan
• Stokely Carmichael
• Johnnie Carr
• James Chaney
• J. L. Chestnut
• Shirley Chisholm
• Colia Lafayette Clark
• Ramsey Clark
• Septima Clark
• Xernona Clayton
• Eldridge Cleaver
• Kathleen Cleaver
• Charles E. Cobb Jr.
• Annie Lee Cooper
• Dorothy Cotton
• Claudette Colvin
• Vernon Dahmer
• Jonathan Daniels
• Angela Davis
• Joseph DeLaine
• Dave Dennis
• Annie Devine
• Patricia Stephens Due
• Joseph Ellwanger
• Charles Evers
• Medgar Evers
• Myrlie Evers-Williams
• Chuck *er
• James Farmer
• Walter Fauntroy
• James Forman
• Marie Foster
• Golden Frinks
• Andrew Goodman
• Robert Graetz
• Fred Gray
• Jack Greenberg
• Dick Gregory
• Lawrence Guyot
• Prathia Hall
• Fannie Lou Hamer
• Fred Hampton
• William E. Harbour
• Vincent Harding
• Dorothy Height
• Lola Hendricks
• Aaron Henry
• Oliver Hill
• Donald L. Hollowell
• James Hood
• Myles Horton
• Zilphia Horton
• T. R. M. Howard
• Ruby Hurley
• Jesse Jackson
• Jimmie Lee Jackson
• Richie Jean Jackson
• T. J. Jemison
• Esau Jenkins
• Barbara Rose Johns
• Vernon Johns
• Frank Minis Johnson
• Clarence Jones
• J. Charles Jones
• Matthew Jones
• Vernon Jordan
• Tom Kahn
• Clyde Kennard
• A. D. King
• C.B. King
• Coretta Scott King
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Martin Luther King Sr.
• Bernard Lafayette
• James Lawson
• Bernard Lee
• Sanford R. Leigh
• Jim Letherer
• Stanley Levison
• John Lewis
• Viola Liuzzo
• Z. Alexander Looby
• Joseph Lowery
• Clara Luper
• Danny Lyon
• Malcolm X
• Mae Mallory
• Vivian Malone
• Bob Mants
• Thurgood Marshall
• Benjamin Mays
• Franklin McCain
• Charles McDew
• Ralph McGill
• Floyd McKissick
• Joseph McNeil
• James Meredith
• William Ming
• Jack Minnis
• Amzie Moore
• Cecil B. Moore
• Douglas E. Moore
• Harriette Moore
• Harry T. Moore
• Queen Mother Moore
• William Lewis Moore
• Irene Morgan
• Bob Moses
• William Moyer
• Elijah Muhammad
• Diane Nash
• Charles Neblett
• Huey P. Newton
• Edgar Nixon
• Jack O'Dell
• James Orange
• Rosa Parks
• James Peck
• Charles Person
• Homer Plessy
• Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
• Fay Bellamy Powell
• Rodney N. Powell
• Al Raby
• Lincoln Ragsdale
• A. Philip Randolph
• George Raymond
• George Raymond Jr.
• Bernice Johnson Reagon
• Cordell Reagon
• James Reeb
• Frederick D. Reese
• Walter Reuther
• Gloria Richardson
• David Richmond
• Bernice Robinson
• Jo Ann Robinson
• Angela Russell
• Bayard Rustin
• Bernie Sanders
• Michael Schwerner
• Bobby Seale
• Cleveland Sellers
• Charles Sherrod
• Alexander D. Shimkin
• Fred Shuttlesworth
• Modjeska Monteith Simkins
• Glenn E. Smiley
• A. Maceo Smith
• Kelly Miller Smith
• Mary Louise Smith
• Maxine Smith
• Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
• Charles Kenzie Steele
• Hank Thomas
• Dorothy Tillman
• A. P. Tureaud
• Hartman Turnbow
• Albert Turner
• C. T. Vivian
• Wyatt Tee Walker
• Hollis Watkins
• Walter Francis White
• Roy Wilkins
• Hosea Williams
• Kale Williams
• Robert F. Williams
• Andrew Young
• Whitney Young
• Sammy Younge Jr.
• Bob Zellner
• James Zwerg

Influences

• Nonviolence
  • Padayatra
• Sermon on the Mount
• Mahatma Gandhi
  • Ahimsa
  • Satyagraha
• The Kingdom of God Is Within You
• Frederick Dougl*
• W. E. B. Du Bois
• Mary McLeod Bethune

Related

• Jim Crow laws
• Lynching in the United States
• Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Separate but equal
• Buchanan v. Warley
• Hocutt v. Wilson
• Sweatt v. Painter
• Hernandez v. Texas
• Loving v. Virginia
• African-American women in the movement
• Fifth Circuit Four
• 16th Street Baptist Church
• Kelly Ingram Park
• A.G. Gaston Motel
• Brown Chapel
• Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
• Holt Street Baptist Church
• Edmund Pettus Bridge
• March on Washington Movement
• African-American churches attacked
• List of lynching victims in the United States
• Freedom songs
  • "*baya"
  • "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
  • "Oh, Freedom"
  • "This Little Light of Mine"
  • "We Shall Not Be Moved"
  • "We Shall Overcome"
• Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
  • "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
• Watts riots
• Voter Education Project
• 1960s counterculture
• Eyes on the Prize

Honoring

• In popular culture
• Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
  • other King memorials
• Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
• Freedom Rides Museum
• Freedom Riders National Monument
• Civil Rights Memorial
• National Civil Rights Museum
• National Voting Rights Museum
• St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
• Civil Rights Movement Archive
• King Center for Nonviolent Social Change

Noted
historians

• Taylor Branch
• Clayborne Carson
• John Dittmer
• Michael Eric Dyson
• Chuck *er
• Adam Fairclough
• David Garrow
• David Halberstam
• Vincent Harding
• Steven F. Lawson
• Doug McAdam
• Diane McWhorter
• Charles M. Payne
• Timothy Tyson
• Akinyele Umoja
• Movement photographers

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