Civil Rights Assessment: Medgar Evers

Civil Rights Advocates Assessment: Medgar Evers

Medgar Wiley Evers was born in Decatur, Mississippi on July 2nd, 1925. Evers was born into a farming family, the third of four children to Jesse and James Evers. In 1943, Evers was drafted and became a soldier in the U.S. Army. He fought during World War II in Germany as well as in France. He was honorably discharged from the army in 1946. In the year of 1948, Evers enrolled and became a student at Alcorn State University, which was known back then as Alcorn College in Lorman, Mississippi, not all that far from his home. In his senior year of college, Evers married a classmate, Myrlie Beasley. After graduating from Alcorn, Evers was employed as an insurance salesman. Soon after, he was exposed

to the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and became involved with the council. This was Evers’s first involvement in civil rights.

He lead the organization’s boycott in opposition to gas stations that did not allow blacks to use their restrooms. Medgar Evers was not the only person in his family that was involved in the civil rights movement. Medgar and his older brother, Charles Evers, worked together, arranging local affiliates for the benefit of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In February of 1954, Medgar Evers applied to the law program at the University of Mississippi only to be rejected. The rejection motivated him to volunteer with the NAACP in an attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi by taking the problem to court. Evers’s attorney was none other than Thurgood Marshall, who was well-practiced in protecting those from racial injustice especially in court. The lawsuit failed, but Evers had now become more known in reference to the NAACP. Later in the year, Evers had become the very first field secretary for the NAACP represented in Mississippi. He became a recruiter for new members of the NAACP and an excellent organizer for voter-registration efforts. He kept up his reputation as a leader, starting demonstrations and boycotts against companies owned by

whites who had consistently practiced discrimination. In the state of Mississippi, Medgar Wiley Evers was one of the most eminent civil rights activists. Evers worked hard and persistently to fight against multiple forms of racial injustice. He put great effort into investigating how the local courts handled crimes against African Americans. Evers specifically focused on the case of Emmett Till. Till was an African American young man who was beaten and brutally killed in Mississippi when he was only 14 years old for just talking to a white woman.

The perpetrators of the crime were tried, but not found guilty, though they later admitted to committing the crime. Evers asked for a new investigation to be opened up on the case. Unfortunately, his high-profile position in the civil rights movement came at a price for Medgar Evers and his family. His whole family became a target for many people who were in opposition to racial justice and integration. In May of 1963, their house was firebombed. In June of the same year, Medgar Wiley Evers was shot in the back by Byron De La Beckwith, a white segregationist, in the driveway of his house in Jackson, Mississippi. He was taken to a nearby hospital where he passed away not even an hour later. National outrage broke out after his death, which ended up increasing support for legislation that would later turn into the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Evers’s whole life was dedicated to the civil rights movement and even after his passing, the effects he left were invaluable. Today, Medgar Evers’s contributions are still prevalent in the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute in Jackson for the continuation of social change. The City University of New

York has named one of the campuses in honor of Evers. In early 2017, President Barack Obama designated his home a national landmark in honor of paying respect to the courageous, Medgar Wiley Evers.