The Murder Of Civil Rights Leader Medgar Evers And The 30 Year Wait To Convict His Killer
- U I Team
- Jun 12, 2023
- 9 min read
Updated: Jun 12
Shortly after midnight on June 12, 1963, civil rights organizer Medgar Evers pulled into his driveway in Jackson, Mississipi.
He stepped out of his Oldsmobile carrying shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go."
Then, from about 40 yards away, a sniper fired a single shot from a high-powered rifle at Evers' silhouette.
His wife and children, who had been waiting up for him, found him bleeding to death on the doorstep. “I opened the door, and there was Medgar at the steps, face down in blood,” Myrlie Evers remembered in People magazine. “The children ran out and were shouting, ‘Daddy, get up!”‘
Evers passed away at the hospital fifty minutes later at the age of 37. Initially denied entry due to his race, Evers' family provided identification, leading to his admission. This made him the first black man to be admitted to an all-white hospital in Mississippi.
Bob Dylan would write the song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" in response to the murder.
The bullet struck Evers from the rear with significant impact, causing a sizable cavity in his back before traversing his chest and penetrating the outer wall of the residence. Subsequently, the bullet traversed a kitchen partition, ricocheted off a refrigerator, and came to rest within a cabinet.
Evers, who used to be escorted home by FBI and police cars, arrived at his house on the morning of his death without any protection. The absence of his usual security detail was not explained by the FBI or local police. It has been suggested that many officers at the time were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan.
Just hours before, President John F. Kennedy had spoken about the Civil Rights Movement on television. Now, one of its key figures had been killed - murdered by a Klan member who would not face justice for over three decades.
During his funeral in Jackson, even violent police actions could not suppress the anger felt by the numerous black mourners.
Medgar's Youth
Medgar and his brother would walk several miles to their segregated school, as they were not allowed to attend school with white children. In The Martyrs: Sixteen Who Gave Their Lives for Racial Justice, Jack Mendelsohn quoted Evers on his childhood. "I was born in Decatur here in Mississippi, and when we were walking to school in the first grade white kids in their school buses would throw things at us and yell filthy things," Evers stated. "This was a mild start. If you're a kid in Mississippi this is the elementary course."
"I graduated pretty quickly," Evers continued. "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. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never [said] a word in public."
Medgar was drafted into the Army in 1943, which would make him a ripe young 18-year-old at the time. He was inducted at Camp Shelby, in Mississippi, and fought in World War II. Medgar was placed in a segregated portion of the Quartermaster Corps, which further exasperated him.
After returning from World War II, Medgar found that he would not be treated with the same respect as white veterans back home either. Medgar registered to vote, but found resistance when he and his brother tried to exercise their right. Medgar, his brother, and a handful of their friends were threatened at gunpoint when attempting to vote in a local election by over 200 white men. Often, racist whites would try to intimidate Blacks who went to vote, and it would get violent quite frequently.
"All we wanted to be was ordinary citizens," he stated in Martyrs. "We fought during the war for America and Mississippi was included. Now after the Germans and the Japanese hadn't killed us, it looked as though the white Mississippians would."
Evers decided to enroll at the historically black Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1948, majoring in business administration. He also competed on the debate, football, and track teams, sang in the choir, and was elected as junior class president. Evers earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1952 and on December 24, 1951, Evers married his classmate Myrlie Beasley.
The activist
The couple moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, a town founded by African Americans after the Civil War. Medgar Evers worked as a salesman for T. R. M. Howard’s Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company and became active in the civil rights movement. As president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), he helped organise a boycott of petrol stations that barred Black patrons from using their restrooms. He and his brother Charles regularly attended RCNL conferences in Mound Bayou, which drew thousands.
In 1954, after the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional, Evers applied to the segregated University of Mississippi Law School as part of an NAACP test case; he was rejected due to his race. That same year, he became the NAACP’s first Mississippi field secretary, organising boycotts and founding local chapters. He supported James Meredith’s campaign to integrate the university in the 1960s.
Evers also backed Dr. Gilbert Mason’s Biloxi wade-ins (1959–1963) to desegregate public beaches, and led efforts to integrate Jackson’s buses and parks. He spearheaded voter registration drives and boycotts to desegregate Leake County schools and the Mississippi State Fair.
Evers incited the anger of individuals advocating white supremacy through his meticulous scrutiny of the racially-motivated lynchings of African American men in Mississippi. Additionally, Evers assumed a covert identity, donning overalls to delve into the circumstances surrounding the tragic demise of Emmett Till. Till, a 14-year-old, met a tragic end on August 28, 1955, in Money, Mississippi, following allegations that he had whistled at a white woman in a local store. Subsequently, Till fell victim to abduction and brutal murder at the hands of a white mob, who callously bound barbed wire and a heavy gin fan around his neck before disposing of his lifeless body in the Tallahatchie River.
Evers knew that his civil rights work could get him killed in Mississippi.
“His public investigations into the murder of Emmett Till and his vocal support of [civil rights pioneer] Clyde Kennard left him vulnerable to attack,” according to the NAACP.
One of Evers' notable acts of activism occurred when he submitted an application to attend the law school at the racially segregated University of Mississippi. Following the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional, Evers collaborated with the NAACP to monitor the implementation of the new legislation.
Regrettably, Evers faced rejection solely based on his race. However, he persistently led a protracted effort to desegregate the university, thus laying the groundwork for forthcoming generations of African American students.
Always in danger
Evers' growing stature as a Black leader continued to attract hostility from white supremacists.
"Medgar became No. 1 on the Mississippi to-kill list," his widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, told NPR in 2013.
"And we never knew from one day to the next what would happen. I lived in fear of losing him. He lived being constantly aware that he could be killed at any time."
Despite receiving violent threats, Evers often spoke of his affection for home. In 1958, he wrote a magazine article titled "Why I Live in Mississippi."
"It may sound funny, but I love the South," Evers wrote. "I don't choose to live anywhere else. ... There is room here for my children to play and grow and become good citizens if the white man will let them."
After organising a sit-in at the F.W. Woolworth lunch counter in Jackson, Evers's house was firebombed on May 28, 1963. Protesters were attacked and covered in catsup and mustard, as reported by the Holland Evening Sentinel newspaper.
Just five days prior to Evers's death, a car attempted to strike him as he departed the NAACP office in Jackson. Evers reassured fellow activists who were worried about the safety of civil rights leaders.
“You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.”
In a speech televised on NBC News, Evers urged black people demanding equal rights in Jackson to boycott white merchants.
“Don’t shop for anything on Capitol Street. Let the merchants on Capitol Street feel the economic pinch. Let me say this to you. I had one merchant to call me,” Evers said. “He said, ‘I want you to know I talked to my national office today, and they told me to tell you, “We don’t need nigger business.” ’ The stores that support the White Citizens Council, the council that is dedicated to keeping you and I second-class citizens — let us not trade at these stores. Let’s urge our friends, our relatives, our neighbours not to trade at these stores. Finally, ladies and gentlemen, we will be demonstrating until freedom comes to Jackson, Mississippi.”
The NAACP honoured Medgar Evers posthumously with the 1963 Spingarn medal, a fitting recognition for his significant contributions to the organization and the ultimate sacrifice he made for its cause.
The governor of Mississippi and various all-white newspapers provided incentives for details on Evers's killer, but only a small number of individuals provided information. Nonetheless, an FBI inquiry identified Byron de la Beckwith as a suspect. Beckwith was known for his strong opposition to integration and for being a founding member of Mississippi's White Citizens Council.
A firearm with Beckwith's fingerprint was discovered 150 feet away from where the shooting occurred. Multiple witnesses testified to seeing Beckwith in Evers's neighborhood on that evening. Beckwith refuted the accusation of shooting Evers, stating that his gun had been stolen days prior to the incident. He also presented witnesses, including a police officer, who testified in court that Beckwith was approximately 60 miles away from Evers's residence on the night of the murder.
Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman, was arrested 10 days later. According to an FBI report, he “had been asking around to find out the location of Evers’s home for some time prior to the shooting.”
Twice in 1964, an all-white jury deadlocked on the charges.
“In two separate trials, local prosecutors presented a strong case,” according to an FBI report. “A number of police, FBI experts, and others testified on different parts of the evidence against Beckwith. But this was the 1960s, and in both trials, all-white juries did not reach a verdict. Beckwith went free.”
Myrlie was determined to get justice for her husband though. She moved the family to Claremont, California, and earned a degree from Pomona College. All the while, she continued to dig for evidence.
Myrlie soon found the evidence she needed. In 1989, The Clarion-Ledger, a newspaper in Jackson, documented how in 1964 a legal state agency that supported segregation assisted Byron's defense team in screening jurors for both trials against him.
However, the investigation was able to uncover new witnesses that claimed Byron bragged to them about the murder. He was indicted for the murder for the third time in December of 1990.
Additionally, during the trial, Evers' body was exhumed for an autopsy. Despite being embalmed, his body was remarkably well-preserved, allowing his son to see his father's remains for the first time in three decades.
More than three decades after Evers' assassination, Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, and received a life sentence. He passed away in prison in 2002 at the age of 80.
In his closing argument, Assistant District Attorney Bobby DeLaughter stated of Medgar,″What he did was have the gall, the 'uppityness,' to want for his people - what? To be called by a name instead of ‘Boy?’ ... To go into a restaurant? To go into a department store, to vote, and for your children to get a decent education in a decent school?″
The gun he used in the killing of a civil rights icon was exhibited at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. In 1997, De La Beckwith challenged his conviction for the Evers case, but the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld it, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review it. He died in prison at the age of 80 on January 21, 2001.
