Medgar Evers

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Medgar Wiley Evers (born July 2, 1925 in Decatur , Mississippi , † June 12, 1963 in Jackson , Mississippi) was an American civil rights activist of African American descent.

The Medgar Evers affair is one of the most prominent events during the end of US racial segregation in the 1960s: after the black civil rights activist was murdered in Mississippi in 1963, his killer remained unpunished through two partisan trials until he was finally over thirty in 1994 Years after the fact, was convicted and punished.

Life

House with the driveway where Evers was shot
Medgar Evers' grave in Arlington National Cemetery
Statue behind the Medgar Evers Boulevard Library in Jackson, Mississippi

He attended school in his birthplace until he was drafted into military service in 1943 . After he had fought for his country in the Battle of Normandy , Evers, when he returned home, realized that because of the color of his skin he could not live in freedom there, when he and five friends were violently prevented from voting in a local election.

Despite his aversion to such treatment, Evers enrolled at Alcorn State University in business administration . In addition, he was a member of the school football team, the track and field team, the debating team, sang in the school choir and was also the spokesman for the junior class.

He married his classmate Myrlie Beasley on December 24, 1951, and completed his thesis the following year. The couple moved to Mound Bayoun, Mississippi, where he was hired by T. R. M. Howard to serve as an insurance agent for his life insurance company. Howard also served as president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a civil rights and self-help organization. The involvement in the RCNL gave Evers the crucial training in activism. He helped organize the RCNL's boycott of gas stations that refused to allow blacks to use their toilets. The boycotters handed out bumper stickers that read “Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom”. Together with his brother, Charles Evers , he attended the annual RCNL conferences in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1954, which were attended by tens of thousands of people.

Evers applied to the now segregated law school of the University of Mississippi in February 1954. When his application was rejected, Evers became the leader of a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) anti-segregation campaign sponsored by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka had ruled that racial segregation was unconstitutional. In December of that year, Evers became the first chairman of the NAACP in Mississippi.

After moving to Jackson, he participated in a boycott of white traders and was instrumental in the desegregation of the University of Mississippi when it was forced to enroll James Meredith in 1962 .

In the weeks before his death, Evers was the victim of several threats. On May 28, 1963, a Molotov cocktail was thrown on his parking space and five days before his death he was nearly run over by a car as he emerged from the NAACP office in Jackson.

The murder

At about 12:40 a.m. on June 12, 1963, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from meeting with NAACP lawyers. Evers was shot in the back while getting out of his car wearing NAACP T-shirts. He stumbled another ten meters before collapsing and dying in the hospital 50 minutes later.

Evers was buried with military honors in front of more than 3,000 mourners on June 19 at Arlington National Cemetery , Virginia, with great interest from across the country . Former American Veterans Committee Chairman Mickey Levine said at the funeral:

"No soldier in this field has fought more courageously, more heroically than Medgar Evers."

"No soldier in this cemetery fought more courageously and heroically than Medgar Evers."

First trials and acquittals

On June 23, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith , a fertilizer agent and a member of the White Citizens Council , was arrested for the murder of Medgar Evers.

During his first trial in 1964 was De La Beckwith from the governor of Mississippi , Ross Barnett , and once by Major General of the Army, A. Walker Edwin , visited. All-white jurors prevented De La Beckwith from being convicted twice this year.

As a result of these events, Bob Dylan wrote the song Only a Pawn in their Game about Evers and his killer. Nina Simone wrote Mississippi Goddamn . Phil Ochs wrote the songs Too many Martyrs and Another country in response to the murder and mentioned Evers in the song Love me I am Liberal .

Evers' legacy was preserved in a number of ways. In 1970 Medgar Evers College was founded as part of the University of New York in Brooklyn , NY. In Jackson, Mississippi, the "Medgar Evers Boulevard" was named after him. In 1983 the television movie For us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story with Howard Rollings, Jr. was made. Finally, Evers was honored with the erection of a statue in Jackson on June 28, 1992.

Revision procedure

Three decades after the murder, De La Beckwith was retried on new evidence resulting from testimony he gave to others. During the trial, Evers' body was exhumed for an autopsy and found in astonishingly good condition as a result of mummification . De La Beckwith was finally convicted on February 5, 1994, more than 30 years after the murder. He unsuccessfully appealed and died in prison in 2001.

Follow-up time / mention in art

  • The film " Das Assentat (English original title: Ghosts of Mississippi )" from 1996 tells the story of the 1994 trial.
  • Evers' murder is mentioned in the film The Help , where it causes panic among the black housemaids, but also motivates some to fight for their rights even more.
  • Evers' wife, Myrlie, became a respected NAACP activist. In 2001, Myrlies and Medgar's oldest son, Darrell Kenyatta Evers, died of colon cancer. The two younger children are Reena Denise and James Van.
  • On October 9, 2009, the US Secretary of the Navy , Ray Mabus , named a US Navy supply ship, the USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE-13) , after him.
  • Documentary: I Am Not Your Negro , Raoul Peck (screenplay, director) USA 2017, based on the unfinished manuscript Baldwin's Remember This House {with many film recordings of Baldwin's speeches; Film about Medgar Evers (murdered 1963), Malcolm X (murdered 1965), Martin Luther King jr. (murdered 1968)}
  • The folk singer Malvina Reynolds recalls Evers and his murder in her song "It Isn't Nice" (1965), which is dedicated to freedom.

literature

  • Myrlie Evers-Williams, Manning Marable : The Autobiography of Medgar Evers (2005)

Web links

Commons : Medgar Evers  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Grave site on FindAGrave.com. Retrieved June 11, 2012
  2. ^ The Navy Honors a Civil Rights Pioneer
  3. ↑ Song lyrics to It Isn't Nice, by Malvina Reynolds. Retrieved May 12, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Evers, Medgar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Evers, Medgar Wiley (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION African American civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Decatur , Mississippi , USA
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1963
Place of death Jackson , Mississippi, USA