Charles Evers

James Charles Evers was born on September 11, 1922, in Decatur, in Newton County, Mississippi. He was the son of James "Jim" Sylvester Evers, who worked at a sawmill and farmed a small plot, and Jessie Wright Evers, a devout domestic worker. Charles was the older brother of Medgar Wiley Evers, and from boyhood he watched over him, teaching him to fish, hunt, and stand unafraid in a segregated South.

After service in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, Charles studied at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College and, with Medgar, entered the freedom struggle. He joined the NAACP in 1948 and spoke on voting rights through the Regional Council of Negro Leadership before business ventures took him for a time to Chicago.

When Medgar was assassinated on June 12, 1963, Charles returned to Mississippi and took up his fallen brother's post as NAACP field secretary for the state. He led boycotts in Natchez and Fayette and turned Black-majority counties toward political power. On June 3, 1969, he was elected mayor of Fayette — the first African American mayor of a biracial Mississippi town since Reconstruction — and the NAACP named him Man of the Year.

He served Fayette for the better part of two decades, ran for governor and the U.S. Senate, wrote two memoirs, and remained a forceful, independent voice until his death on July 22, 2020, at the age of 97. May the courage he carried out of Decatur, and the mantle he lifted from his brother's grave, be honored for as long as the story is told.