Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers (1925-1963), American civil rights leader, born in Decatur, Mississippi. Evers served in the United States Army during World War II (1939-1945). After graduating from Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1950, Evers became a recruiter for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The next year he married Myrlie Beasley (now Myrlie Evers-Williams). In 1954 he was named NAACP field secretary for Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Evers was a leader in the struggle to gain equal rights for blacks in his home state. He conducted campaigns to register black voters and organized boycotts of firms that practiced racial discrimination.

Evers was killed by a gunman in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 12, 1963. Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was tried several times for the murder but was not convicted until February 1994. Beckwith, then 73 years old, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Evers's brother, Charles, who succeeded him as Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, served as mayor of Fayette, Mississippi from 1969 to 1981.