Medgar Evers: Civil Rights Icon Assassinated in 1963

Medgar Evers, a WWII veteran and first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, was assassinated on June 12, 1963, at age 37. Born July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, he served in the segregated 657th Port Company and participated in D-Day. After the war, he graduated from Alcorn A&M in 1954 and applied to the University of Mississippi School of Law as an NAACP test case, but was rejected for being Black. As field secretary from November 24, 1954, until his death, he organized protests, boycotts, and voter registration drives. He investigated Emmett Till's 1955 murder, leading to charges against J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, who were acquitted. Evers was shot in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi, and initially denied treatment at a whites-only hospital. His murderer, Byron De La Beckwith, was not convicted until 1994 after new evidence emerged. Evers's home was donated to Tougaloo College in 1993, purchased by the National Park Service in 2020, and designated a National Monument on December 12, 2020.