Medgar Evers

Medgar Wiley Evers was born on the second of July 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi, one of several children in a hardworking Black family who held their dignity against the daily cruelties of the Jim Crow South. As a young man he walked miles to school and learned early the price of being denied what was freely given to others.

In 1943 he entered the United States Army, and during the Second World War he served in France, taking part in the Normandy landings of June 1944. He returned home a soldier who had fought for his country abroad, only to be turned away from the ballot box by armed white men. That contradiction set the course of his life. He enrolled at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, earned his degree in 1952, and married Myrlie Beasley, his lifelong partner in the struggle.

On the twenty-fourth of November 1954, Evers became the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi. He organized new chapters, led boycotts of merchants who demeaned Black customers, pressed for the desegregation of schools, and investigated racial killings that others were too frightened to name. He worked knowing that every day carried mortal risk, and he did not turn back.

On the twelfth of June 1963, returning home in the dark, he was shot in the back in his own driveway and died soon after. His killer, Byron De La Beckwith, escaped two deadlocked juries before conviction finally came in 1994. Medgar Evers gave his life so that others might one day vote, learn, and live as free people. We honor him, and we remember his name.