His murder received national attention and made him a martyr to the cause of the civil rights movement. Between 1952 and 1963, Medgar Wiley Evers was one of Mississippi’s most impassioned activists, orators, and visionaries for change. Medgar Evers was born July 2, 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi. The Evers worked at a small farm from which they made their living. His father worked in a sawmill and his mother was a laundress. Evers’s childhood was typical in many ways of Black youths who grew up in the Jim Crow South during the Great Depression of the 1930s and in the years preceding World War II. The Evers home emphasized education, religion, and hard work. Medgar attended a one-room segregated school in Decatur and later attended the Black high school in Newton.
Growing up in the deep south, Medgar Evers experienced racism at a young age. "I was born in Decatur here in Mississippi, and when we were walking to school in the first grade White kids in their school buses would throw things at us and yell filthy things," the civil rights leader recollected. "This was a mild start. If you're a kid in Mississippi this is the elementary course". Evers had to walk twelve miles each day to get to school. The schools had few resources and operated with outdated textbooks, few teachers, large classes, and small classrooms without laboratories and supplies for the study of biology, chemistry, and physics. Evers on occasion saw and witnessed acts of raw violence against African Americans. Eventually he received a high school diploma.
Evers volunteered and was inducted into the United States Army in 1942. The decision to volunteer was prompted by a desire to see the world and to follow his brother Charles, who had enlisted a year earlier. Evers volunteered and was inducted into the United States Army in 1942. The decision to volunteer was prompted by a desire to see the world and to follow Charles, who had enlisted a year earlier. During his tour of duty in World War II, Evers was assigned to and served with a segregated port battalion, led by White officers, most of whom were racists, first in Great Britain and later in France at the Battle of Normandy. In France, Evers' unit was part of the Red Ball Express, which delivered supplies to Allied troops fighting on the frontlines. Later, he was discharged honorably as a sergeant, having earned the Good Conduct Medal, European–African–Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal.
In 1946, Evers, along with his brother and four friends, returned to his hometown of Decatur Mississippi. Upon returning home, the initial “fight” for Evers was to register to vote. For Medgar Evers voting was an affirmation of citizenship. Accordingly, in the summer of 1946, along with his brother, Charles, and several other Black veterans, Evers registered to vote at the Decatur city hall. But on election day, the veterans were prevented by angry Whites from casting their ballots. The experience only deepened Evers’s conviction that the status quo in Mississippi had to change. In 1948, Evers enrolled at Alcorn A&M University (now Alcorn State University), majoring in business administration. An active and gifted student, Medgar Evers was on the debate team, played football and ran track, sang in the school choir and served as president of his junior class. His achievements led him to be listed in Who’s Who in American Colleges.
While in college Medgar Evers met classmate Myrlie Beasley, a Vicksburg native. They would eventually marry on December 24, 1951. Medgar graduated with a BA degree the following year. The decision to attend college afforded Evers critical exposure and experiences that contributed to his development as an emerging activist and eventual leader of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. A crucial experience occurred during his senior year when each month he drove to Jackson to participate in an interracial seminar jointly sponsored by then all-White Millsaps and all-Black Tougaloo colleges. It was at one of the interracial seminars that Evers became aware of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he subsequently joined.
Upon completion of his studies, the couple moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Evers travelled extensively throughout the Mississippi Delta where poverty and illiteracy were endemic. Evers took up a job of a salesman for Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. The head of the insurance company was president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. He was distressed by the widespread poverty and attended mass meetings and Evers helped them organize several campaigns. One of the campaigns was boycott of gasoline stations which denied Blacks use of the stations’ restrooms. On May 17th, 1954, in Brown vs Board of Education, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. Medgar Evers wanted to test the new ruling.
When he become the first African American applicant to seek admission to the University of Mississippi Law School in 1954, his application was rejected as the institute was still segregated. The NAACP organizing travels convinced Evers that Jim Crow rendered the state a virtual closed society. He began mobilizing at the grassroots level was essential for building a movement for social change. The law school application soon catapulted Evers from relative obscurity to broader name recognition and to serious leadership consideration within the emerging state Civil Rights Movement. He was appointed the NAACP’s first field secretary for Mississippi, in 1954. The new position required the family to move to Jackson, MS in January 1955. Once in Jackson, he helped organize boycotts and built new chapters of NAACP. He traveled throughout the state recruiting members and organizing voter-registration drives and economic boycotts.
When Evers assumed his position as state field secretary, he began an eight-year career in public life that was both demanding and frustrating. The 1950s proved frustrating and anxiety-laden as some White Mississippians responded with massive resistance to the civil rights activities of the NAACP. There was widespread racial violence against African Americans and from 1955 to 1960, Evers faced a range of daunting challenges. He investigated nine racial murders and countless numbers of alleged maltreatment cases involving Black victims during the period. Evers worked with other civil rights organizations, and encouraged younger activists’ involvement in local youth councils across the state. The inclusion of youth, Evers believed, was critical to a winning strategy in the crusade against Jim Crow. Statewide membership in NAACP chapters nearly doubled between 1956 and 1959 from 8,000 to 15,000 dues-paying activists.
Following the Supreme Courts' decision, local Whites founded the White Citizens' Council in Mississippi, and numerous local chapters were started, to resist the integration of schools and facilities. During the early 1960s the increased tempo of civil-rights activities in the South created high and constant tensions, and in Mississippi conditions were often at the breaking point. Evers's civil rights leadership, along with his investigative work, made him a target of White supremacists. The White Citizens’ Councils and local police across the South terrorized Blacks fighting for power–especially those as well known as Medgar Evers. Evers had only limited knowledge of these protest strategies but willingly embraced them to advance the struggle.
In the 1960’s Medgar Evers set up boycotts against certain merchants and this attracted national attention. He also tried to have his friend James Meredith admitted to the University of Mississippi. Meredith was denied admission just as Evers had been. But with the publicity that Medgar Evers created, the Federal government could no longer turn a blind eye. With the support of the NAACP legal counsel and the government, James Meredith was finally admitted to the university. This was a major event for civil rights and Evers was thrilled. He and his family endured numerous threats and other violent acts, making them well aware of the danger surrounding Evers because of his activism. On May 20, 1963, Evers made a speech refuting anti-NAACP remarks made by Jackson’s mayor and demanding an end to segregation. A week later, on the 28th of May, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home.
On the morning of June 12, 1963, around 12:20 a.m, Medgar Evers arrived home from a long meeting at the New Jerusalem Baptist Church on Kelley Street. He had watched President John F. Kennedy’s speech on national television outlining the civil rights legislation that he would introduce to Congress. Medgar got out of his car, arms filled with “Jim Crow Must Go” T-shirts, and walked toward the kitchen door when a shot was fired from a high-powered rifle, striking Evers in the back. When he was taken to the hospital the staff prohibited his admission on account of his color but when explained his position, he was admitted. However, it was too late for medical treatment and after fifty minutes he lost his battle for life. Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers was just 37 years old.
The day after Evers’s death, several demonstrations broke out in the local Black community in reaction to the murder. Black ministers and businessmen joined other angry Black people as they surged out into the streets. Jackson police used force to stop the demonstrations. On June 15, 1963, Evers’s funeral was held at the Masonic Temple, with Charles Jones, Campbell College chaplain, officiating the service. After the service about 5,000 mourners joined the procession from the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street, east to Pascagoula, then north on North Farish Street in Jackson. Allen Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights leaders led the procession. The Mississippi police came to the non-violent protest armed with riot gear and rifles.
Evers death was mourned all across America and he received full military honors at his burial at Arlington National Cemetery, on June 19th. A tide of anger surged through the African American community in response to Evers’s death. Later that year was awarded the NAACP Spingarn Medal posthumously. The loss of Medgar Evers was a serious blow to the civil rights struggle across the state. Gone were his imposing presence, compelling oratory, and committed leadership. In a mere eight years, Evers had advanced the civil rights struggle in Mississippi from a fledgling organization to a formidable agent for change. His death was the first of a civil rights martyr, and it led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. The remaining years of the 1960s saw the emergence of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1964), Freedom Summer (1964), James Meredith’s March Against Fear (1966), and other protests for racial equality.
The accused killer, a White supremacist named Byron De La Beckwith, stood trial twice in the 1960s. Both cases ended in mistrials because the all-White juries could not reach a verdict. At the time, most Black people were still disenfranchised by Mississippi's constitution and voter registration practices. This meant they were also excluded from juries, which were drawn from the pool of registered voters. Beckwith was convicted in a third trial in 1994, and sentenced to life in prison. Beckwith served only seven years of his life sentence at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County before dying of a heart attack January 21, 2001. It took 31 years for Evers' killer to be brought to justice but in that time, the state of Mississippi changed a great deal.
Once the leader in the number of lynchings in America, today Mississippi leads in the number of elected Black officials. When Evers died in 1963, only 28,000 African Americans were registered voters. Ten years after Medgar’s death the national office of the NAACP reported that Mississippi had 145 black elected officials and that African Americans were enrolled in each of the state’s public and private institutions of higher learning. By 1971, there were 250,000 and by 1982, there were over 500,000. Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers, became a noted activist in her own right, eventually serving as national chairperson of the NAACP. Between 1995 and 1998, Myrlie Evers served as chair of the National Board of Directors of the NAACP. Medgar’s brother, Charles Evers, replaced him as NAACP field secretary and eventually became mayor of Fayette, Mississippi. Evers was a leading figure in the Civil Rights movement who left a legacy of courage, determination, and hope. He never sought fame or glory, only equal rights and justice for African Americans