On this date, 50 years ago, was the assassination of one of the most important figures of the 1960s Civil Rights movement – but he is someone often obscured by other people from that era. Today, we remember Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers.
It was June 12, 1963, and Medgar Evers was just 37-years-old when someone shot him in the back and killed him in front of his Mississippi home. The first Mississippi field secretary of the National Association for the advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Evers is a noteworthy historical figure of the Civil Rights era, yet his murder, often overshadowed by other events from that time, went unsolved for 31 years. As the Civil Rights movement kicked into high gear in the 1960s, people recognized names like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, much more than Medgar Evers.
Evers served in the U.S. Army during World War II and then became a star football player at Alcorn College in southwest Mississippi. After his admission rejection by the all-white University of Mississippi Law School, he approached the NAACP for assistance in filing a lawsuit. The group wound up hiring Evers to coordinate its efforts in Mississippi, which remained obstinately segregationist.
Evers investigated violence against blacks, including the 1955 killing of 14-year-old Emmett Till, and helping James Meredith gain admission as the first black student at the University of Mississippi. He also attracted young people to the Civil Rights movement.
On the night of his murder, Evers arrived home shortly after midnight following his attendance at a community meeting. His wife and children were still awake.
“And as soon as the children said ‘There’s daddy,’ the shot rang out – one of the loudest and most powerful I had, and still have, ever heard,” recalls his widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams. “And I knew exactly what had happened.”
In 1994, 31 years after Evers’ death, the courts convicted Byron De La Beckwith, a white segregationist, of his murder. He died in prison in 2001.
To honor Evers, whose work helped Mississippi to become a more open state, a black-tie gala and other events are on the schedule for today.
“…It is my belief, as it was Medgar’s, that there is something good and decent in each and every one of us…” Evers-Williams said.
What would Medgar Evers think about American society today?
"I believe he would look at the landscape of this country and realize what so many of us have said: We have made progress but there's still so much to be done, and if we don't guard the progress we've made, that too will slip away," Evers-Williams said in an interview with the Associated Press.