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Medgar Evers |
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|---|---|
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| Born |
Medgar Wiley Evers July 2, 1925Decatur, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Died |
June 12, 1963 (aged 37) Jackson, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Occupation | Civil rights activist |
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Spouse(s) |
Myrlie Evers-Williams 1951–1963 (his assassination) |
| Children | Three |
| Parents | James Evers (father) Jesse Evers (Mother)[1] |
Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an African-American civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at theUniversity of Mississippi. After returning from overseas military service in World War II and completing his secondary education, he became active in the civil rights movement. He became a field secretary for the NAACP.
Evers was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council. As a veteran, Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.[2][3] His murder and the resulting trials inspired civil rights protests, as well as numerous works of art, music, and film.
Early life
Evers was born July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, third of the five children (including older brother Charlie Evers) of James and Jesse Evers; the family also included Jesse's two children from a previous marriage.[4] The Everses owned a small farm and James worked at a sawmill.[5] Evers walked twelve miles to go to school, and earned his high school diploma.[6] From 1943 to 1945 he fought in the European Theater and the Battle of Normandy with the United States Army during World War II, and was discharged honorably as a sergeant.[7]
Medgar Evers survived
Survived a Molotov cocktail
Survived getting run down by a car
Survived World War II
But he could not survive
Getting out of his car
One bullet fired
One great man killed
The trigger man
Not the only one to blame
The hospital refused to do their job
Out of racism and hate
38 years old and dead in his driveway
Byron de la Beckwith
Free after the injustice to humanity
Almost as long as the great man was alive
One bullet
Ripping and tearing
Through his heart
Through the back
Out the front
Hundreds of bullets fired at him
At the battle of Normandy
This was one he could not survive
In 1948 Evers enrolled at Alcorn College (a historically black college, now Alcorn State University) majoring in business administration.[8] He also competed on the debate, football, and track teams, sang in the choir, and was junior class president.[9] He earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1952.[8]
On December 24, 1951, he married classmate Myrlie Beasley.[10] Together they had three children: Darrell Kenyatta, Reena Denise, and James Van Dyke.[11] Darrell died in February 2001 of colon cancer.[12]
Activism
The couple moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where Evers became a salesman for T. R. M. Howard's Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company.[13] Howard was also president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL);[14] Evers helped organize the RCNL's boycott of filling stations which denied blacks use of the stations' restrooms.[15] Evers and his brother Charles also attended the RCNL's annual conferences in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1954, which drew crowds of ten thousand or more.[16]
Evers applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi Law School in 1954 but his application was rejected.[17] He submitted his application in concert with the NAACP as a test case.[18]
In late 1954 Evers' was named the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi.[5] 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.[18] Evers' also helped Dr. Gilbert Mason, Sr., organize the Biloxi Wade-Ins, protests against segregation efforts on the Mississippi Gulf Coast beaches.[19]
Evers’ civil rights leadership and investigative work made him a target of white supremacists. In the weeks leading up to his death, the hostility directed towards him grew. His public investigations into the murder of Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard had made him a prominent black leader. On May 28, 1963, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home.[20] On June 7, 1963, Evers was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the Jackson NAACP office.[13]
Assassination
In the early morning of June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. 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 Enfield 1917 rifle; the bullet ripped through his heart. He staggered 9 meters (30 feet) before collapsing. He was taken to the local hospital in Jackson where he was initially refused entry because of his color, until it was explained who he was; he died in the hospital 50 minutes later.[21]
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.[14]
On June 21, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan), was arrested for Evers' murder.[23]
District Attorney and future governor Bill Waller prosecuted De La Beckwith.[24] Juries composed solely of white men twice that year deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt.
In 1994, 30 years after the two previous trials had failed to reach a verdict, De La Beckwith was brought to trial based on new evidence. Bobby DeLaughter was the prosecutor. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for an autopsy.[3] 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 was imprisoned from 1977 to 1980 for conspiring to murder A. I. Botnick). De La Beckwith appealed unsuccessfully, and died at age 80 in prison in January 2001.
Legacy
Evers's legacy has been kept alive in a variety of ways. Evers was memorialized by leading Mississippi and national authors, both black and white: Eudora Welty, James Baldwin,Margaret Walker and Anne Moody.[25] In 1963, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.[26] 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 book For Us, the Living with William Peters in 1967. In 1983, a 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.[27] 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' honor. In December 2004, the Jackson City Council changed the name of the city's airport to "Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport" (Jackson-Evers International Airport) in honor of him.[28]
His widow Myrlie Evers became a noted activist in her own right later in life, eventually serving as chair of the NAACP.[29] Medgar's brotherCharles Evers returned to Jackson in July 1963 and served briefly in his slain brother's place. He remained involved in Mississippi civil rights activities for many years and resides in Jackson.[30]
On the 40-year anniversary of Evers' assassination, 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.[31] Evers was the subject of the students' research project.[32]
In October 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced that USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE-13), a Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship, would be named in the activist's honor.[33] The ship was christened by Myrlie Evers-Williams on November 12, 2011.[34]
In June 2013, a statue of Evers was erected at his alma mater, Alcorn State University, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his death.[35] Alumni and guests from around the world gathered to recognize his contributions to American society.
Evers was further honored in a tribute at Arlington National Cemetery on the 50th anniversary of his death.[36] Former President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, Senator Roger Wicker and NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous all spoke commemorating Evers.[37][38] Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, who also honored her late husband, spoke on his contributions to the advancement of civil rights:[39]
- "Medgar was a man who never wanted aberration, 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."
In popular culture
The murder and subsequent trials caused an uproar. Musician Bob Dylan wrote his 1963 song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" about the assassination.[40] Nina Simone wrote and sang "Mississippi Goddam" about the Evers case and Phil Ochs wrote the songs "Another Country" and "Too Many Martyrs" (also titled "The Ballad Of Medgar Evers") in response to the killing, with Matthew Jones and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers also recording the latter song.[40] Eudora Welty's short story "Where Is the Voice Coming From", in which the speaker is the imagined assassin of Medgar Evers, was published in The New Yorker in 1963.[41]
Evers' story inspired a 1991 episode of the NBC TV series In the Heat of the Night, entitled "Sweet, Sweet Blues", written by author William James Royce. The story tells of a murder of a young black man and the elderly white man, played by actor James Best, who seems to have gotten away with the 40-year-old murder. (The TV episode preceded by several years the trial that convicted Beckwith.) In the Heat of the Night won its firstNAACP Image Award for Best Dramatic Series that season.[42]
The 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi, directed by Rob Reiner, tells the story of the 1994 retrial of 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.[43][44]
Robert DeLaughter wrote a first-person narrative article entitled "Mississippi Justice" published in Reader's Digest, and a book, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case (2001), based on his experiences.[45]
See also
- International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics
- List of civil rights leaders
References
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per Charles Evers bio "Have no Fear" page 5
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Ellis, Kate; Smith, Stephen (2011). "State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement". American Public Media. Retrieved February 19,2011.
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Baden, M. M. (2006): Chapter III: Time of Death and Changes after Death. Part 4: Exhumation. In: Spitz, W. U. & Spitz, D. J. (eds): Spitz and Fisher’s Medicolegal Investigation of Death. Guideline for the Application of Pathology to Crime Investigations (Fourth edition), Charles C. Thomas, pp. 174-83; Springfield, Illinois.
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"Medgar W. Evers – Civil Rights Activist". mememorial.org.
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Williams, Reggie. (2005, July 2). Remembering Medgar. Afro King - American Red Star, p. A.1. Retrieved October 26, 2009, from Black Newspapers.
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Sina, “Freedom Hero: Medgar Wiley Evers.” The My Hero Project, 2005. Accessed: 25 October 2009.
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Evers-Williams, Myrlie; Marable, Manning (2005). The Autobiography Of Medgar Evers: A Hero's Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches. Basic Civitas Books. ISBN 0-465-02177-8.
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Harvard University W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. "EVERS, MEDGAR (2 JULY 1925 - 12 JUNE 1963), CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, WAS...". dubois.fas.harvard.edu.
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Padgett, John B. “Medgar Evers.” The Mississippi Writers Page, University of Mississippi. 2008. Accessed: 2 September 2010.
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THOMAS United States Library of Congress (June 9, 2003). "Commending Medgar Wiley Evers and his widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams for their lives and accomplishments, designating a Medgar Evers National Week of Remembrance, and for other purposes. (Introduced in Senate - IS)". thomas.loc.gov.
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Dustin Cardon; Jackson Free Press (January 21, 2013). "Myrlie Evers-Williams". jacksonfreepress.com.
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Associated Press (February 19, 2001). "Darrell Evers; Slain Civil Rights Leader's Son". latimes.com.
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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (June 24, 2013). "NAACP HISTORY: MEDGAR EVERS". naacp.org.
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Wesleyan University (June 24, 2013). "Medgar Evers: July 2, 1925-June 12, 1963". wesleyan.edu.
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Hayden Lee Hinton; AuthorHouse (2010). America Taken Hostage. books.google.com. p. 121. ISBN 978-1438985800.
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David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 75, 80-81.
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Myra Ribeiro (1 October 2001). The Assassination of Medgar Evers. The Rosen Publishing Group. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-8239-3544-4. Retrieved27 September 2012.
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Nikki L. M. Brown; Barry M. Stentiford (30 September 2008). The Jim Crow Encyclopedia: Greenwood Milestones in African American History. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 277–8. ISBN 978-0-313-34181-6. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
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Dorian Randall (17 June 2013). Medgar Evers: Direct Action. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
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Hank Johnson (January 21, 2013). "H.Res.1022 - Honoring the life and sacrifice of Medgar Evers and congratulating the United States Navy for naming a supply ship after Medgar Evers.". beta.congress.gov.
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Birnbaum, p. 490.
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Medgar Evers home tour Retrieved 2013-12-25
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Dufresne, Marcel (October 1991). "Exposing the Secrets of Mississippi Racism". American Journalism Review.
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Jerry Mitchell; The Clarion-Ledger (June 2, 2013). "Medgar Evers: Assassin's gun forever changed a family". usatoday.com.
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Minrose Gwin"Mourning Medgar: Justice, Aesthetics, and the Local", Southern Spaces, 2008.
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"NAACP Spingarn Medal". Naacp.org. Retrieved2013-06-13.
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"For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story". www.allrovi.com. Retrieved 2011-09-12.
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"Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport". Jackson Municipal Airport Authority. 2013. Retrieved 22 January 2013.
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NAACP Chairwoman Myrlie Evers-Williams Will Not Seek Re-Election. Books.google.com. 1998-03-02. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
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"Charles Evers's biography, PBS". Pbs.org. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
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"Medgar Evers", Arlingon Cemetery. Note: Bradford later was notable for his work in helping reopen the Mississippi Burning and Clyde Kennard cases.
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Lottie L. Joiner (July 2003), "The nation remembers Medgar Evers", The Crisis, 110(4), 8. Retrieved October 26, 2009, from Research Library Core.
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Mabus, Ray, "The Navy Honors a Civil Rights Pioneer." The White House Blog. 9 October 2009. Accessed: 2 September 2010.
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"A Memorial for Medgar", San Diego Union-Tribune, November 13, 2011.
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Therese Apel (June 12, 2013). "Mississippi marks 50th anniversary of Medgar Evers' death". reuters.com.
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Krissah Thompson (June 5, 2013). "Memorial service for Medgar Evers held at Arlington National Cemetery". washingtonpost.com.
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Ashley Southall (June 5, 2013). "Paying Tribute to a Seeker of Justice, 50 Years After His Assassination". nytimes.com.
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Valerie Bonk; Associated Press (June 5, 2013). "HOLDER PRAISES SLAIN BLACK ACTIVIST MEDGAR EVERS". bigstory.ap.org.
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Associated Press; The Clarion-Ledger (June 5, 2013). "Medgar Evers honored at Arlington National Cemetery". clarionledger.com.
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"NAACP Evers biography". Naacp.org. Retrieved2013-06-13.
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"Where Is The Voice Coming From?" , The New YorkerJuly 6, 1963 by Eudora Welty
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"Image Awards". imdb.com. 1992. Retrieved 12 September 2011.
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Vollers, Maryanne (April 1995). Ghosts of Mississippi: the murder of Medgar Evers, the trials of Byron de la Beckwith, and the haunting of the new South. Little, Brown.ISBN 978-0-316-91485-7. Retrieved 2011-09-12.
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"Biography of Bobby B. DeLaughter". 2002. Retrieved 2011-09-29.
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"''Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case'', New York: Simon and Schuster". Books.simonandschuster.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Medgar Evers. |
- JFK First Draft Condolence Letter to Medgar Evers’ Widow, June 12, 1963 Shapell Manuscript Foundation
- Audio recording of T.R.M. Howard's eulogy at the memorial service for Medgar Evers, June 15, 1963, Jackson, Mississippi.
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Myrlie Evers (28 June 1963). 'He said he wouldn't mind dying - if...'. LIFE. pp. 34–47.
- Gwin, Minrose. "Mourning Medgar: Justice, Aesthetics, and the Local" March 11, 2008. Southern Spaceshttp://southernspaces.org/2008/mourning-medgar-justice-aesthetics-and-local
- Medgar Evers in the U.S. Federal Census American Civil Rights Pioneers
- Medgar Evers biography at africawithin.com
- Medgar Evers at the Internet Movie Database
- imbd.com
- FBI article: Civil Rights in the ‘60s: Justice for Medgar Evers
- Medgar Evers's FBI file hosted at the Internet Archive
- Medgar Evers at Find a Grave Retrieved on February 22, 2010
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