History:
Medgar Evers is one of the most heroic figures in the struggle for civil rights and human rights in the United States. His epic heroism was highlighted through his devotion to honor and search for justice through non-violent ways.
Born July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, a place of blatant discrimination and rampant racism. Evers knew first hand about the challenges he would be facing if he stood up for his rights and for the people of Mississippi.
Evers tells of his childhood in the deep south and how it marked him,
“When I was eleven or twelve a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about forty years old, married, and we used to play with his kids… They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never [said] a word in public.” (The Martyrs: Sixteen Who Gave Their Lives for Racial Justice)
Evers was determined from that young age to become an agent of change in his world. He knew education was an opportunity to make a change and walked twelve miles each way to earn his high school diploma.
Shortly after high school, World War II began and Evers decided to enlist and fought in France and Germany. When he returned home, he realized the freedoms he was fighting for were still denied to non-whites. His application to the University of Mississippi was denied so he tried to fight it with a lawsuit which he lost. Despite this setback, he continued his education and his push for justice.
His Heroic Deeds:
Though many times Medgar Evers could have ignored the troubled people around him, he instead used his education and charisma to unite his community for the better. After witnessing the intense social and psychological deprivation of many rural sharecroppers he came across as an insurance salesman, he decided to quit his job and became the NAACP’s first field secretary and a leader in the hard-fought integration war that rocked the 50’s and 60’s. Despite multiple threats and acts of violence against himself and his family, Evers remained true to his personal motto that “violence is not the way.”
Evers fought for civil rights, of low-income whites and the many blacks in the south. Among Evers’ many efforts were, voter registration, creating a biracial committee to address social concerns, public school integration and equitable hiring processes, his public investigations into Emmit Till’s lynching, and his successful efforts to get James Meredith admitted as the first non-white to the University of Mississippi (the same university that had denied him).
Of particular note is his leadership in the integration movement and boycott of Jackson Mississippi’s segregated public areas and downtown merchants (The Christmas Boycotts). Evers and the protesters demanded that the stores (many which had a majority of black patrons) hire blacks and that the city end segregation of restrooms, libraries, water fountains, and lunch counters, and service patrons on a first come-first served basis. Without financial support for bail, he leads the local students and community in pickets and mass sit-ins. Despite threats and violence from the Governor, the White Citizens Council and the KKK, as well as sweeping injunctions against assembly and activity, the protests continued for months until Evers was assassinated.
Medgar’s wife and fellow leading activist Myrlie Evers remembered,
“We lived with death as a constant companion 24 hours a day. Medgar knew what he was doing, and he knew what the risks were. He just decided that he had to do what he had to do. But I knew at some point in time that he would be taken from me.” (Ebony Magazine)
One day after JFK’s Speech in support of civil rights, Medgar Evers was shot in the back at the age of 37 as he walked towards the door of his house to meet his family inside. His killer, Byron De La Beckwith was a member of the White Citizen’s Council and the Ku Klux Klan was arrested and tried twice that year, but the juries of all white men were deadlocked on his guilt. It wasn’t until three decades later, February 5th, 1994 that De La Beckwith was convicted of murder and sentenced to prison.
After Evers’ death, support for Civil Rights grew rapidly and his dedicated passion was fanned into flame around the nation. Maryanne Vollers recounts of the change in the hearts and minds of those fighting for
Civil Rights:
“People who lived through those days will tell you that something shifted in their hearts after Medgar Evers died, something that put them beyond fear…. At that point a new motto was born: After Medgar, no more fear.” (Esquire)
Even to this day, Medgar Evers’ legacy lives on. Once a leader in the number of lynchings, Mississippi now leads in the number of elected African American officials.
