Medgar Evers

In 1951, when he was still in college, he married his classmate Myrlie Beasley. The couple had three children, Darrell Kenyatta, Reena Denise and James Van Dyke. His wife was also an activist.

Following Evers’ public campaigns against racism, he and his family were threatened many times by white supremacists. In 1963, the ‘Molotov Cocktail’, a kind of firebomb, was thrown inside his house but luckily his family escaped unhurt. Later that year, someone tried to run down Evers with a car.

He was assassinated by white supremacist ‘Byron De La Beckwith’, a member of the ‘White Citizens' Council’.

Medgar Evers was born to James and Jesse Evers in Decatur, Mississippi. His father worked at a saw mill and owned a small farm.

He studied in a school for black children and walked 12 miles to go to school.

He joined the US army in 1943 and served there for three years, fighting at the ‘battle of Normandy’ and at ‘European Theatre’ during World War II. He was honourably discharged with the rank of a ‘Sergeant’.

He joined ‘Alcorn College’, a black college, in 1948. He majored in business administration and was involved in a host of extra-curricular activities such as debate, football, track teams, choir, etc. He was also the ‘junior class president’.

Evers graduated from college with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1952 and moved to Mississippi, where he became a salesman for renowned civil rights activist T. R. M. Howard's firm, ‘Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company’. Howard mentored Evers in the following years regarding activism.

T.R.M Howard was the president of the ‘Regional Council of Negro Leadership’ or RCNL, a society that advocated civil rights among other things. Evers too got involved in RCNL and was among the organizers of boycott of service stations which forbade blacks from using the restrooms. He also attended RCNL’s yearly conferences.

In 1954, his application to the ‘University of Mississippi’ was rejected on racial grounds. Following this, the ‘National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’, or NAACP, started a campaign to stop segregation of the University. The same year, Evers became a field officer for NAACP in Mississippi.

In his capacity as the field secretary, Evers recruited more members for the NAACP and organized registration of voters. He headed protests against the companies with white owners that were discriminatory.

He opposed the legal system for being discriminatory towards crimes against the African Americans. He demanded a new investigation into the brutal murder of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year old African-American boy in Mississippi who was killed for flirting with a white woman.

In 1954, he sent admission applications to the ‘University of Mississippi’ Law School. After his application was rejected on the grounds of his race, the NAACP started a campaign to stop segregation by the University, with Evers being the focus of the campaign. They received a boost with the ‘Brown v. Board of Education’ case which ruled racial segregation as unconstitutional.