Medgar Wiley Evers is a civil rights campaigner and field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) whose murder in 1963 prompted President John F. Kennedy to ask Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill. Evers became the first martyr to the 1960s civil rights […]

In 1952, after Medgar’s graduation and  after Myrlie’s sophomore year, the couple settled in Mound Bayou, an all black town in the Mississippi Delta… Medgar became an insurance agent for Magnolia Mutual Insurance, one of the few black-owned businesses in Mississippi where a young black person could get a decent […]

On June 12, 1963, U.S. president John F. Kennedy—who would be assassinated only a few short months later—called the white resistance to civil rights for blacks “a moral crisis” and pledged his support to federal action on integration. That same night, [Medgar] Evers returned home just after midnight from a series […]

The murder shocked the African American community and resulted in near riots. President Kennedy issued a statement condemning the killing, and the FBI took control of the search to find Evers’s murderer. Within two weeks, a fertilizer salesman named Byron de la Beckwith (1920–2001) was arrested for the crime. The […]

Honor Medgar Evers by Fighting for Voting Rights A 13-foot tall bronze statue of Evers (pictured above)—the work of African-American sculptor Ed Dwight—was installed at Alcorn State University, Evers’ alma mater, in 2013. Medgar Evers College was founded in his name in 1970 as part of the City University of […]

Today [June 4, 2013], President Obama visited with Myrlie Evers-Williams, a civil rights heroine and widow of Medgar Evers, and other members of the Evers family, to commemorate Medgar Evers’ life and contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. President Obama said during the visit that Medgar Evers was a warrior for […]