Medger Evers

Medger Evers

Prejudice is an unfavorable opinion or feeling, formed beforehand (e.g., before even meeting a person) based on non-personal characteristics (e.g., skin color, religious, gender). One form of prejudice is racism. Racism is negative attitudes and values held by people about other people based on their race. It is this attitude which causes one to discriminate against another. Discrimination is treating people unfavorably on the basis of race, color or sex. Prejudice and discrimination were prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s. This era was a time of hatred, a time of violence, a time when black people were colonized by the white colonizer, and it was a time of white-on-black racial violence. Because of this hatred, the whites discriminated against the blacks.

The purpose of this paper is to show, how white-on-black racial violence, arising out of the 1950s and 1960s, caused Medgar Evers, a Civil Rights Leader, to lose his life while fighting for his equality for the blacks in his state, how his murderer was allowed to walk free, and how finally after thirty years a racial injustice, turns into justice. In order to accomplish this I will first explain the discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s, who Medgar Evers was, what he accomplished, about the person who assassinated him, and the long fight to right a racial injustice.

During this time in southern states, black people were not allowed to vote. They could not go into restaurants or other public places inhabited by whites. They had to use separate water fountains, separate bathrooms, separate churches, and even go to separate schools. Blacks had to sit in the back of buses and other forms of public transportation. If they had a seat and there were no empty ones left when a white person entered a bus or other seated area, the blacks had to stand or get off. This was evident when three black men were at the courthouse and there were no seats left in the front row and they had to stand so that the white children could be seated. There were also extensive literacy tests that had to be passed. Again, many of these "free" blacks had ancestors that were slaves. They were not taught to read. Therefore, they could not teach their children or grandchildren to read. It was thought...

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...p; Works Cited

Arlington National Cemetery Website “Medgar Wiley Evers: Sergeant, United States Army Civil Rights Leader .” 29 February 2004 . . 3 Feb 2005 .

Evers, Myrlie B., and William Peters. For Us, The Living . Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967.

“Medgar Evers: (1925-1963) Civil Rights Activist. Thomson Gale Website .” 5 Feb. 2005 .

Nossiter, Adam . Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers . Don Mills, Ontario: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994.

Adam Nossiter. Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers, 2002.

Peeples, Melanie . “The Legacy of Medgar Evers: 40 Years After Civil rights Leader’s Death, a changed Mississippi .” 10 June 2003. NPR News Website . 3 Feb. 2005 .

ThinkQuest Website. “Medgar Evers”. Retrieved 20 Feb 2005. < http://library.thinkquest.org/ J0112391/medgar_evars.htm>