Medgar Wiley Evers' Biography

My historic person is Medgar Wiley Evers born July 2, 1925 died June 12, 1963, who was an American civil activist from Mississippi who worked to end segregation in public facilities, expand opportunities for African Americans, including enforcement of voting rights Medgar was also known for being the state’s first field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Mississippi also known as NAACP .A civil rights organization founded in 1909 to fight prejudice, and to work for the betterment of “”people of color”. After trying to segregate the University of Mississippi Law School in 1954.

Evers’s duties as field secretary were originally collecting and publicizing information about civil rights abuses in Mississippi. Because of his anger, and because of the refusal of southern authorities to enforce the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision against segregation of public places , Evers took more forms of action, sometimes to the dismay of the more conservative NAACP leadership. Evers did not hide from participating in high-profile cases wich included he investigation of the death a young teenager Emmett till, who was murdered allegedly for having whistled at a white woman, Evers also served as an adviser to James Meredith and his eventually successful quest to enroll as the first black student at the University of Mississippi. Because of all this work evers had also been receiving constant death threats prompted by his civil rights work in the Deep South. His house had been firebombed. And Someone had tried to run him over.

Evers and his wife, Myrlie Evers, had bought a single-story home in a new subdivision of Jakson mississippi, thinking it would provide safety for their family. The front door of the house did not face the street. the main entrance was under the carport, providing cover, They thought, It would protect him from any possible snipers. But on one night on June 12, 1963 Evers pulled into the driveway and parked behind his wife’s vehicle As he came out from his car, a white supremacist hiding in a bush raised his rifle and fired, Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery and received full military honors in front of a crowd the largest funeral at Arlington since John Foster Dulles. The chairman of the American Veterans Committee, Mickey Levine, said, “No soldier in this field has fought more courageously, more heroically than Medgar Evers. On June 23, Byron De La Beckwith, a salesman and member of the White Citizens’ Council and Ku Klux Klan, was arrested for Evers’ murder.

Works Cited

1. Branch, T. (1989). Parting the waters: America in the King years, 1954-63. Simon & Schuster.
2. Carter, D. (1995). Medgar Evers: Mississippi martyr. University Press of Mississippi.
3. Evers-Williams, M. (1995). For us, the living. Kodansha America.
4. Gwin, M. L. (2011). Hallowed ground: A walk at Gettysburg. National Geographic Books.
5. Huie, W. B. (1989). Three lives for Mississippi. University Press of Mississippi.
6. Levingston, S. (2013). Kennedy and King: The president, the pastor, and the battle over civil rights. Hachette Books.
7. McGuire, D. (2010). At the dark end of the street: Black women, rape, and resistance—A new history of the civil rights movement from Rosa Parks to the rise of black power. Vintage Books.
8. Payne, C. M. (2011). I've got the light of freedom: The organizing tradition and the Mississippi freedom struggle. University of California Press.
9. Pittman, H. (2003). Turning points in the civil rights movement. Wiley.
10. Williams, J. W. (2018). Medgar Evers: Mississippi's civil rights warrior. LSU Press.