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 New York (CUNY). There are other memorials to Evers, but the most important is the one we often overlook:
Voting.
As we watch millions of voters head to the polls in an election year—many of them African-American, other people of color, and female—too often we forget that those ballots cast were paid for in blood. By exercising the franchise, we actively pay tribute to those men and women who made it possible for us to do so. (Read more)
Medgar and Myrlie Evers Papers
The Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers were presented to MDAH in 2002 by Mrs. Myrlie Evers-Williams. The collection currently includes Evers and Beasley family papers dating from the early 1900s to around July 1964, when Myrlie Evers and her children moved to Claremont, California. (Read more)
The Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute
The mission of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute is to cultivate positive social change, intergenerational civic engagement, social and economic justice and research on equity, and justice worldwide. (Read more)
MMEI offers programs to promote education, leadership and opportunity:
Evers Youth Empowerment Scholars (E.Y.E.S.)
Medgar Wiley Evers Lecture Series (in partnership with Mississippi Department of Archives and History, W.K. Kellogg Foundation)
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum (in partnership with Mississippi Department of Archives and History, W.K. Kellogg Foundation)
Ambassadors of the Evers Academy for African American Males (A-TEAAM) (in partnership with Juanita Sims Doty Foundation)
Williams Winters Institute for Racial Reconciliation – Summer Youth Program (in partnership with William Winters Institute for Racial Reconciliation)
Equal Justice Initiative
The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. (Read more)
Newest Unit of City U. Named for Medgar Evers (1970)
The newest college or the City University of New York, which will open next fall in mid‐Brooklyn, was named yesterday for Medgar W. Evers, the civil rights leader killed by a sniper in Mississippi in 1963.
His wife and two of their three children, who were flown in from Claremont, Calif., were present for brief ceremonies at the Y.M.C.A., 139 Monroe Street in the Bedford‐Stuyvesant section. About 50 persons, including members of the Board of Higher Education and community representatives, loudly applauded Mrs. Evers as she was presented with a scroll by Frederick Burkhardt, chairman of the board.
The scroll cited Mr. Evers’s “effective contribution to the cause of human freedom and dignity.”
“In choosing the name of Medgar Evers,” the scroll said, “it is our hope that his ideals will inspire students and faculty of the college in their pursuit of truth as the surest path to human freedom and social justice.” (Read more)
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