Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers

Birth date:

July 2, 1925

Death date:

May 12, 1963

Age at Death:



Medgar Evers was an America Civil Rights Activist in Mississippi, and he was the state's field secretary for the NAACP, and he had served in the US Army during World War 2. He worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, ending the segregation of public facilities, and enforcing the voting rights for Black Americans. Evers' Civil Rights leadership made him a target for many different White Supremasist groups and there were multiple attempts on his life, like a Molotov cocktail being thrown into his house and an attempt to run him over with a car when he left the NACCP office.

In the early morning of June 12, 1963, just a couple of hours after President John F. Kennedy's nationally televised Civil Rights Address, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Immediately after exiting his car, Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from a rifle, and that bullet went straight through his heart. His wife, Myrlie, was the first one to find him on the driveway, and she rushed him to a hospital. He was initially not allowed to be treated there, until Myrlie said he was the secretary of NAACP, upon which he was admitted. He died only 50 minutes after being admitted. He was also the first Black American to be admitted to an all-white hospital in Missouri.

Was justice served?

The man who shot Evers was a member of the White Citizens Council (he later joined the Ku Klux Klan), and was sent to a trial with an all-white jury. They couldn't decide on a verdict, so he was not incarcerated. Ever's wife did not give up though, and when a new judge was assigned, she forced a new case based on newly gained evidence. This time, she won the case and the person who shot her husband was put in prison after 3 decades of being free from conviction.