Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers Medgar Evers was a civil rights activist whose life was cut short due to the racism and discriminations towards blacks in his time. Medgar Wiley Evers was born on July 2, 1925, near Decatur, Mississippi. He grew up on a small farm that his father owned along with 5 other siblings. Evers strived to get his diploma by walking 12 miles to and from school every day, until 1943, when Evers was inducted into the army along with his brother Charles Evers. He fought during WWII he was honorably discharged as a sergeant in 1946.

He returned home and two years later he started to attend Alcorn College majoring in business administration. He was very active people in college a member of the debate team, the school choir, football team, track team, and was also the president of his junior class. He was listed in the “Who’s Who in American Colleges. " He received his BA degree a year after he married Myrlie Beasley and they would later have 3 children. They moved after Evers found a job as an insurance salesman in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

He and his brother Charles Evers were apart on the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) where he helped organize a boycott of public restrooms that blacks couldn’t use. Medgar tried to enroll into the University of Mississippi Law School in which he was rejected. He filed a law suit against the University as an attempt to defy segregation in the school. The NAACP later chose Evers to be their first field secretary to represent them. Evers attempted to desegregate the University of Mississippi by trying to enroll James Meredith an African American.

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Meredith was later accepted in the University of Mississippi which lead to a riot on campus leaving two white men dead. Evers also investigated the murder of Emmett Till and supported Clyde Kennard, all of these event lead to more hatred towards him from the whites. He was becoming a target to many white supremacists he came across many problem and altercations and still remained non-violent. On May 28, 1963, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into his house and he was almost run over by a car after he was leaving from the NAACP office.

But a day after president JFK’s speech to support civil rights Evers was shot in the back. He was shot by a member of the KKK and also white supremacists named Byron De La Beckwith. Beckwith was tried for Evers murder two times and both trials ended with no verdict so he wasn’t sentenced. But, the third times he was tried he was found guilty and sentenced life in prison in 1994. It took 31 year for Evers murderer to be convicted of a murder due to racism and discrimination. In addition, Evers was later honor when they named a college after him in Brooklyn, New York in 1969.

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