EVERS, Medgar Wylie

(b. 2 July 1925 near Decatur, Mississippi; d. 12 June 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi), civil rights leader and field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who organized African Americans to resist segregation and supported James Meredith's effort to enroll at the University of Mississippi; his assassination focused attention on Mississippi's resistance to the civil rights movement.

Evers was the third of four children born to James Evers, a farmer and sawmill worker, and Jessie (Wright) Evers, a homemaker. After serving in France with the U.S. Army during World War II, he attended Newton High School and used the GI Bill to enroll at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, where he participated on the football, track, and debate teams in addition to singing in the choir and editing the college newspaper and yearbook. During his senior year he married fellow student Myrlie Beasley. After graduating in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in business administration, Evers moved with his wife to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where he became a salesman for the Magnolia Mutual Insurance Company. In December 1954 he became the first full-time Mississippi field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Described as "tall, low-key, intelligent, and dignified," Evers was an excellent choice for this demanding job. For the rest of the decade he traveled the state, building local branches of the organization and supporting school desegregation efforts, encouraging voter registration activities, and investigating racially motivated homicides.

The civil rights movement came later to Mississippi than to other southern states because of the frequent violence directed against civil rights advocates and because of the powerful opposition of well-organized segregationists. Evers was the most prominent leader of the movement in the state. He organized an unsuccessful boycott of white merchants in Jackson during the 1960 Christmas season and supported the first public demonstration against segregation by nine Tougaloo College students at the Jackson Public Library on 27 March 1961. When the students arrived at the courthouse for their trial on 1 April 1961, a group of African-American supporters began cheering. This provoked the Jackson police, who attacked the crowd. Evers was among those injured in the melee.

School desegregation absorbed much of Evers's energy. He was a key adviser to James Meredith in 1962 as he attempted to become the first African-American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Evers himself had been rebuffed when he applied to the law school in 1954. He was instrumental in bringing Meredith to the attention of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and convincing the fund's lawyers to take his case. As soon as his oldest son was of school age, Evers attempted to enroll him in an all-white Jackson school. At the time of Evers's death, two of the Evers children were lead plaintiffs in an NAACP lawsuit to desegregate Jackson schools. Evers advised representatives of other civil rights organizations, including Robert Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and David Dennis of the Congress of Racial Equality. He also worked with John Doar of the Justice Department in bringing voting rights suits against recalcitrant county registrars.

Although the NAACP traditionally favored courtroom confrontation over mass demonstrations, Evers kept pressing his national office to adopt more militant tactics in the fight for civil rights. In December 1962 the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council, with the guidance of Evers and the Tougaloo College sociologist John Salter, launched another boycott of downtown businesses. They demanded an end to segregated lunch counters, restrooms, and drinking fountains; the hiring and promotion of black employees; and the use of courtesy titles for black customers. The boycott continued into the spring of 1963. When city officials refused to negotiate, the protest leaders increased their demands: the city should hire black police officers, desegregate parks and recreational facilities, and stop discriminating against black employees. When Mayor Allen Thompson went on television to condemn the boycott, Evers demanded and received equal time from station WLBT. On 20 May 1963 Evers delivered his rebuttal, articulating the grievances of Mississippi blacks, denouncing the denial of human rights, and calling for an end to segregation. This broadcast made Evers a marked man, transforming him from a faceless leader into the state's most visible advocate of racial equality. On 28 May 1963 Tougaloo College students escalated their protest by sitting in at Woolworth's lunch counter. The protesters were arrested after they were harassed and beaten by a crowd of angry whites. Two days later six hundred high school students were jailed as they paraded in support of the boycott. On 1 June Roy Wilkins, national head of the NAACP, joined the protest and was arrested with Evers for picketing in front of Woolworth's. Rallies and meetings continued but not the mass demonstrations, as the national NAACP office called for a cooling-off period.

On 11 June 1963 Evers stayed late at his Jackson office to watch President John F. Kennedy deliver a television address to the nation. Earlier that day the federal government had forced Governor George Wallace to stand aside as two African-American students were enrolled at the University of Alabama. Kennedy described race relations as a "moral crisis" and outlined the landmark civil rights legislation he would soon introduce to Congress. Evers arrived at his home after midnight. As he left his Oldsmobile, carrying a bundle of NAACP T-shirts, a single bullet from a high-powered rifle tore into his back, just below the right shoulder blade. Myrlie Evers ran to the door to find her husband sprawled on the concrete carport, bleeding profusely from his wound. Neighbors rushed Evers to University Hospital, where he died a short time later. On 15 June a memorial service for the slain leader was held at Jackson's Masonic Temple. After the service a riot was narrowly averted when a crowd of several thousand angry young people confronted the police. Evers was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Ten days after the shooting Byron de la Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and rabid racist from Greenwood, Mississippi, was arrested and charged with Evers's murder. Key evidence against Beckwith included his Enfield .30–06 rifle found at the crime scene, his fingerprint on the rifle's telescopic sight, and two witnesses who identified his white, 1962 Valiant parked near Evers's home on the night of the murder. Beckwith twice was tried for murder, and both times the all-white, all-male juries could not be persuaded to return a conviction. In 1989 the state of Mississippi reopened its investigation of Evers's murder. After discovering new evidence, Beckwith was tried a third time, this time before a jury of eight blacks and four whites. On 5 February 1994 Beckwith was convicted of killing Evers and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died on 21 January 2001.

While relatively unknown among civil rights leaders during his life, the assassinated Evers became a worldwide symbol of the movement following his death. Within days the NAACP published a poster bearing a photo of his grieving widow with the inscription, "Keep the idea of freedom alive—Join NAACP." Evers's older brother, Charles, returned to Mississippi from Chicago to take over as head of the state NAACP. His widow moved to California with their three children, Darrell Kenyatta, Reena Denise, and James Van Dyke. In 1995 she continued the family tradition of civil rights leadership when she was elected national chair of the NAACP. On 28 June 1992 the city of Jackson placed a life-size bronze statue of Evers in front of the public library named in his honor. A city street is named Medgar Evers Boulevard.

For most of his adult life Evers labored in obscurity, against overwhelming odds, trying to win basic human rights for his fellow black Mississippians. In death he came to symbolize the courage, determination, and self-sacrifice that empowered the African-American freedom movement to demolish the legacy of discriminatory public policies.

For Us, the Living (1967), by Myrlie B. Evers with William Peters, is a personal account of Evers's work and their life together. Maryanne Vollers, Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron de la Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South (1995), tells the story of Evers's life, murder, and the three trials of his killer. Bobby DeLaughter, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case (2001), is a detailed description of the third trial of Byron de la Beckwith by the attorney who obtained his conviction. In 1983 the Public Broadcasting System's American Playhouse series produced a television drama based on Evers's story. The 1996 feature film Ghosts of Mississippi, starring Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, and James Woods, was based on the book by Vollers. Castle Rock Entertainment has produced an educational CD-ROM on Ghosts of Mississippi and on Evers. An obituary is in the New York Times (13 June 1963).

Paul T. Murray