Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument ⓘ

“Medgar and Myrlie Evers are heroes whose contributions to the advancement of civil rights in Mississippi and our nation cannot be overstated.”

Medgar and Myrlie’s children, Darrell, Reena, and James, lived remarkable childhoods. They met famous activists, entertainers, and presidents; found themselves on magazine covers and in the news; were subjects of court cases challenging school segregation; and lost their beloved father to violence.

Medgar Evers was a civil rights leader on a local, state, and national scale, and he was also a family man. His death, and photographs of his grieving widow and children, sent a shockwave through the nation. His children continue to honor his memory and share their family’s story. His daughter Reena Evers-Everette played a particularly active role in getting the family home designated as a national monument.

Medgar’s first job after graduating from college was as salesman for Magnolia Mutual Insurance Company. The company was owned by Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard, a prosperous African American planter and civil rights advocate as well as a physician. He became a mentor to his young employee. Evers was inspired at mass meetings organized by Howard that drew thousands of people to hear national figures such as Thurgood Marshall, head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who had successfully argued the Brown case. Evers became program director for the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, which Howard had founded in 1951 to encourage black voter registration and business ownership.

Byron De La Beckwith, was a veteran, salesman, white supremacist, and convicted assassin. As a member of the racist and segregationist White Citizens’ Council, De La Beckwith was symbolic of the greater hatred that permeated much of the American South throughout the 1960s. Though he was arrested for killing Medgar Evers almost immediately after the murder, with his rifle and fingerprints found at the scene, he was set free after two deadlocked trials with all-male, all-white juries.

Following his release, he became a hero within the Ku Klux Klan, speaking openly about his crime and even running (unsuccessfully) for public office in Mississippi. But singer-songwriter Bob Dylan disparaged him as “only a pawn in their game” rather than any criminal mastermind.

It would be 31 years before new evidence finally convicted Beckwith and sent him to prison. He died in 2001.

Medgar Wiley Evers was the first Mississippi field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He devoted, and ultimately sacrificed, his life to the cause of human rights. He witnessed atrocities, both large and small, against black people in the segregrated South. These slights to human dignity inspired his mission to lead the struggle for equality within his home state.

Evers was born in Decatur, Mississippi on July 2, 1925, the third of four children. James and Jesse Evers wanted their children to have an education, and Medgar attended a one-room segregated school in Decatur and later attended the black high school in Newton. He left school and joined the United States Army in 1943, serving in segregated units in England, Belgium and France. According to Myrlie Evers-Williams , his wife:

The opportunity to leave the South and see new parts of the world provided an adventure he could not forget. In France, he found 'a whole people—all of them white—who apparently saw no difference in a man because of the color of his skin, and this was perhaps the greatest revelation of all.

After his discharge, he completed high school at the Alcorn College laboratory school and later enrolled at historically black Alcorn A&M University (now Alcorn State University). Evers excelled at sports and debate, was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper and annual, served as president of his junior class, and was named to Who's Who Among American Colleges and Universities. He gained interest in activism around voter disenfranchisement. Medgar met classmate Myrlie Beasley, a Vicksburg native, and they married on Christmas Eve 1951.

After graduating from Alcorn A&M, Evers took a job as a salesman for the Magnolia Mutual Insurance Company in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Evers travelled extensively throughout the Mississippi Delta where poverty and illiteracy were endemic. Evers was distressed by the widespread poverty and attended mass meetings organized by Magnolia Mutual's founder, Dr. T. R. M. Howard. He also began organizing chapters of the NAACP to address conditions suffered by African Americans in the Delta.

After the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka (1954), Evers applied to the law school at the University of Mississippi. He was denied, but his effort to integrate the state’s oldest public university impressed the NAACP. (Evers later proved instrumental in assisting James Meredith with enrollment in 1962, officially desegregating Ole Miss.)

In January 1955, Evers moved to Jackson and became the Mississippi Field Secretary for the NAACP, the first salaried staff position in the state. He travelled throughout the state encouraging people to register to vote. He investigated and documented cases of discrimination and violence against blacks. Evers worked with other civil rights organizations, and encouraged younger activists’ involvement in local youth councils across the state.

Through press releases, interviews, and speeches, he brought news of the struggle in Mississippi to people nationwide. His very public leadership made him a target of threats and harassment. Upon returning home from a meeting, Evers was shot and killed by a white supremacist.

The assassination of Medgar Evers in the driveway of his carport in June 1963 was the first such murder of a national civil rights leader. The killing shook the nation, and helped push forward legislation like the Civil Rights Bill of 1964.

Text adapted from Medgar Evers Historic District National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Mississippi became a state in 1817. Jackson, the Mississippi state capitol and the largest city in the state, was founded in 1821. The city grew slowly.

The city population in 1860 was 3,191. The Civil War had a devastating effect on the city, with US troops occupying Jackson on three occasions and physical destruction accompanying multiple battles. Although the Reconstruction period saw greater political freedom for the city's newly emancipated residents, by 1875, white control of the state's electoral process was re-established and would continue for another one hundred years.

Even with the short-term political gains for blacks during Reconstruction, life in Jackson was based on strict racial segregation, whether it involved schools, churches, or residential neighborhoods.

The black population of Jackson grew steadily in the decades following the Civil War. Many settled in the Farish Street neighborhood, which by the turn of the century, boasted numerous successful businesses. The surrounding area was home to the many of the city's African Americans, including businessmen, ministers, educators, physicians, craftsmen and tradespeople, and citizens engaged in a host of occupations.

During World War II and in the immediate post-war years, Jackson's population grew rapidly.

The Elraine subdivision was the first modern subdivision designed for middle-class blacks after World War II in Mississippi. The subdivision was developed by Winston J. Thompson, a black entrepreneur, and a majority of the houses were built by Leroy Burnett, a black builder. Many of the early residents were teachers or others engaged in professional and clerical employment that placed them in the middle class.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education , that separate schools were inherently unequal, white supremacists in the state policed racial lines with even greater vigilance. White Citizens’ Councils, with their origins in the Mississippi Delta and their membership drawn from among middle-class professionals, spread a strategy of massive resistance to school desegregation throughout the state and beyond and endorsed violence as a way to deter voting and to enforce all aspects of white supremacy. In addition, the state legislature created the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission to spy on and undermine its citizens who challenged white supremacy, and it questioned the authority of the federal government to determine who could vote and other civil rights matters.

Throughout her life and 70-year career, Myrlie Evers-Williams has woven together business, government, and community leadership to further human rights. Whether in the corporate world, foundation boardroom, college campus, or her own living room, she works tirelessly to end racial and economic injustices.

Myrlie Beasley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1933. She was raised by her grandmother and aunt, both college-educated school teachers, who stressed the importance of education. She was an honor student at Alcorn A&M College, majoring in education, when she met older classmate Medgar Evers . They married in 1951 and moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi where they both took employment at the Magnolia Mutual Insurance Company. The couple not only worked together at the insurance office, they were partners in political activism. While starting their family, they also organized and managed the first NAACP office in Mississippi. Organizing boycotts and voter registrations, the Everses attracted attention. In 1954, they moved their growing family to Jackson, the state capital, to establish an NAACP field office there. Their days were filled with speeches, demonstrations, sit-ins, meetings, investigations, registration drives, and danger. On June 12, 1963, a gunman shot and killed Medgar Evers outside the family home. The tragedy thrust Myrlie into the national spotlight as the grieving widow. Though her husband’s life was over, her work had just begun.

She immediately began speaking and writing about Medgar’s murder, to generate awareness and strengthen his legacy. Following the murder mistrials, she moved her family to California, finished her bachelors degree, and pursued a corporate career.

Ever-Williams emerged as a national catalyst for justice and equality by becoming active in politics, becoming a founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus, running for Congress in California’s 24th congressional district, serving as Commissioner of Public Works for Los Angeles, using her writing skills to serve as a correspondent for Ladies Home Journal and to cover the Paris Peace Talks, and rising to prominence as Director of Consumer Affairs for the Atlantic Richfield Company.

In the 1990s, Evers-Williams convinced Mississippi prosecutors to reopen Medgar Evers’ murder case, and the reopening of the case led to the conviction and life imprisonment of the killer.

After almost a decade on the NAACP National Board of Directors, Evers-Williams became its Chairperson in 1995. During her three year term, the NAACP credits her with restoring the troubled organization to its original status as the premier civil rights organization. Immediately following her success there, she established the non-profit Medgar Evers Institute in Jackson, Mississippi (later renamed the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute ) to promote education and community engagement. She currently serves as chair of the Institute.

Evers-Williams has published two autobiographies, to enlighten the world about the struggles that plagued her life as the wife of an activist and empowered her to become a community leader.

In 2013, Evers-Williams became the first woman and first non-clergy member to deliver the invocation at a presidential inauguration. Watch her speak at President Obama’s second inauguration.

As her work continues, her list of accomplishments and accolades grows too. In a 2020 interview, Ever-Williams said, “I’m pushing 90 years of age now, but I’ll be darned if I’m not as strong as I have ever been in my conviction about what is right and wrong… I can’t do what I used to do, but I’m blessed that I can still think and I can still speak.”

Pomona College Magazine article: Myrlie in the Mirror | Pomona College in Claremont, California

In many ways, the development of African American residential neighborhoods in Jackson parallels the experiences of African Americans in other southern states. Following the Civil War, freed blacks moved to the cities seeking economic opportunities. They were relegated to certain areas of the city, often less desirable than developing white neighborhoods. After World War II, when white Jacksonians were moving into newly constructed suburban subdivisions, both inside and outside the city limits, the African American home buyer was excluded. With their economic status improving, many African Americans also sought new homes with the modem amenities found in the post-war housing market. Winston J. Thompson and Leroy Burnett recognized this desire and mobilized to provide a development that would meet it. The Elraine subdivision was the result.

Author and educator Margaret Walker Alexander purchased the first home in the subdivision in 1955. She recalled purchasing the home for $9,500.

Previous landowners had parceled the Elraine land, but never cleared and developed it. African American developer Winston J. Thompson purchased the land in 1955. Thompson and fellow Mississippi native Leroy Burnett became partners in the development and construction of the Elraine subdivision. Both men were veterans and secured financing from the Veteran's Administration.

They completed thirty-six similarly scaled homes with similar floorplans between 1955 and 1957. The Ranch style was the predominate design. Thompson and Burnett advertised their businesses in the Jackson Advocate , the African American newspaper in Jackson.

Thompson's firm was recognized as the largest African American real estate business in the state. Between 1952 and 1956, Thompson was credited with building over 250 homes for African Americans in Jackson, Meridian, Greenwood and Forest. The firm was the first black-owned business authorized to originate and service FHA and GI loans.

The Elraine subdivision was directly adjacent to white neighborhoods. Although original resident Mrs. Grace Sweet recalled that "the idea of a predominantly black neighborhood was not welcomed," there are no contemporary reports of violence or legal efforts to prevent the construction of the subdivision. Mrs. Sweet stated further:

These homes were welcomed by the Afro-American community because this was the first complete street of homes of this caliber built in Jackson for Afro-Americans. Three bedrooms, nice large bath, central heat, attached storage room and beautiful landscaped lawn were the features advertised, and the homes sold like hotcakes.

As a black neighborhood adjacent to white residences, the Elraine subdivision was on the front line of the Jackson strictly segregated society. Myrlie Evers-Williams, in her autobiography, described how that affected the daily life of the community:

A block away from our house was a section of white homes. The unwritten law of the neighborhood was that our children never played with theirs. It was not that we didn't want them to know white children, we did. It was just that in Jackson, Mississippi, it was too dangerous. An altercation, a childish fight could be magnified into race war. We all knew who would win such a contest.

A drive down the surrounding streets bolsters the impression that Elraine residents not only occupied a higher economic class than nearby African American neighbors but also had more substantial houses than nearby white neighborhoods, where smaller tract houses predominate. The fact that Elraine homes lay adjacent to predominately working-class white neighborhoods is significant and probably explains how this middle-class black neighborhood was able to gain a foothold in northwest Jackson. Meanwhile, middle- and upper-class white neighborhoods were coalescing in northeast and south Jackson, leaving the northwest section of the city open for African Americans and working-class whites.

Many of the families that purchased houses in the Elraine subdivision were teachers and other white-collar workers. Margaret Walker Alexander remembered that buyers had to have an income of $5,000 to qualify.

Most of the recollections of life in the Elraine subdivision recall a close-knit community with neighborhood and family celebrations, garden club, and a Christmas pageant.

Before they moved in, Mr. and Mrs. Evers heard rumors that some residents of the Elraine subdivision were concerned about having them move onto the street, concerned that violence would follow. These concerns lessened over time. Alexander later said, "Our children played together. We carpooled together. We visited each other…Medgar was a wonderful person, a congenial neighbor who would lean over the fence and talk to people." Mrs. Grace Sweet, another neighbor, also noted Evers "kindness and humanity." She recalled that Evers "would get up at twelve midnight to light heating systems in the cold weather when the only access to the heating unit was under the crawl space. He would crawl under the house to light the pilot light."

When a sniper gunned down Medgar Evers in his driveway, it was neighbors that came to his aid and transported him to a hospital. Understandably, the assassination’s effect on the neighborhood was profound.

In 1994, the State of Mississippi designated the Elraine subdivision as the Medgar Evers Neighborhood Historic District , the first neighborhood historic district in the city of Jackson. The District contains 44 buildings, primarily of residences in the Ranch style typical of a 1950's suburban development. The majority of the houses in the district retain their architectural integrity, with modern windows and enclosed carports being the most common alterations over time.

Though the neighborhood is considered historic, it is very much alive. It has changed since the Everses lived there, but still remains a predominantly black community.

If you visit the Evers home and historic district, please respect the residents’ privacy. Do not park in driveways or yards. Leave no trace.

Medgar and Myrlie Evers exemplify civil rights organizing that combined grassroots strategies with efforts of national organizations to change laws and policies. The Evers established the NAACP office in Jackson, Mississippi in the mid-1950s. Medgar took part in both legal challenges and direct action campaigns. He tirelessly led marches, prayer vigils, voter registration drives and boycotts, and persistently appealed to blacks and whites to work together for a peaceful solution to social problems. Here are some examples of his leadership and hard work.

While working as an insurance salesman, Evers became involved in the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) under the mentorship of his employer, Dr. T. R. M. Howard. In his first experience as an organizer, Evers spearheaded a boycott of gas stations that refused to let black people use their restrooms. He distributed some 20,000 bumper stickers sporting the slogan “Don’t buy gas where you can’t use the restroom.” This campaign reached middle-class African Americans—those who could afford to own a car and buy gas—a key constituency in the struggle for civil rights. The economic pressure proved successful, as the national chains responded and put pressure on local franchises.

The RCNL provided an incredible training ground for budding civil rights leaders like the Evers. The organization’s annual conference brought nationally-recognized speakers, offered workshops, and inspired its thousands of attendees.

In 1890, Mississippi adopted a new constitution that disenfranchised blacks, using a poll tax and arbitrary constitutional tests, which were assigned subjectively and almost exclusively used against black citizens.

Medgar knew first hand, the bullying and intimidation applied to black Mississippians that dared to exercise their right to vote. He also knew the right to vote and participate in the political process is fundamental to citizenship. He began organizing and advocating for black voter registration in his hometown, then while a student in college. The cause was the bedrock of his career.

In speeches at churches and civic organizations, Evers encouraged people to overcome their fears, to pay their poll taxes as long as they were still required, and to register to vote. To promote voter registration, he distributed bumper stickers and used the black press and radio to spread the word. Evers documented in meticulous detail the many ways that white officials invented to block African American voting in Mississippi, and he shared the information in numerous letters to sympathetic congressmen and lawyers in the US Justice Department, even President Eisenhower. After Congress in 1957 established a Commission on Civil Rights, Evers convinced black Mississippians to testify about the intimidation that whites directed at them when they tried to vote.

When US Assistant Attorney General John Doar came to Mississippi in April 1961 to investigate the denial of voter registration efforts, Medgar quietly directed Doar’s movements.

Voting Rights | Articles and Essays | Civil Rights History Project | Digital Collections | Library of Congress (loc.gov)

Acting upon a long-time interest in the law and his awareness of NAACP challenges to segregation in higher education, Evers decided in January 1954 to apply to the University of Mississippi Law School. When the whites-only school challenged his application, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP stepped up to represent him. Evers was denied admission on a technicality, not on merit. The case launched his career with the NAACP and led to further action, and finally success.

Eight years after his own rejection, Evers helped desegregate “Ole Miss” through the admission of James H. Meredith, an Air Force veteran and Mississippi native. Evers brought the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Thurgood Marshall on board, and helped Meredith navigate multiple appeals leading all the way to the US Supreme Court. Meredith had to enter a volatile school setting under protection of federal marshals, but enter he did.

In 1963, Medgar and Myrlie served as lead plaintiffs themselves (on behalf of their children) in a school desegregation suit: Darrell Evers v. Jackson Municipal Separate School District. This was the first such lawsuit filed by parents in Mississippi. The US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi not only ruled against young Evers, it also “respectfully urge[d] a complete reconsideration of the decision in the Brown case.”

School desegregation cases, even when unsuccessful, showed that many states were ignoring national laws and forced the federal government to act.

Between 1877 and 1950, some 600 people were lynched in Mississippi. The state’s history was infamous, but more often than not racially motivated crimes were swept under the rug.

Investigating cases of racially motivated beatings, rough treatment by police, and murder was among the most dangerous work that Medgar Evers undertook. He filed complaints, took witness statements, talked with victims’ family members, and most importantly, made sure the stories were told. He distributed press releases, dragged reporters and photographers to crime scenes, and sought to involve the federal government and national media whenever possible. Crimes against black citizens were an unkept secret in Mississippi and Evers needed help from the outside.

In 1955 alone, Evers investigated the murders of Emmett Till , Rev. George Lee, and Lamar Smith. Lee and Smith were both leaders in their communities, active in voter registration. Till was a 14-year-old youth from Chicago, who was kidnapped and lynched while in Mississippi visiting family. Till’s death, which never resulted in any convictions of the two white men accused, became a turning point in civil rights activism, in part because of the gruesome images that caught the nation’s attention. In the last four months of 1956, Evers talked about the case in cities nationwide.

Because of Mississippi’s long history of racial violence, it was difficult to get people to talk, even to the NAACP. Evers used whatever tactics he could, including disguises, to coax out information. Though emotionally exhausting work, revealing a system of bigotry and a lack of criminal justice for black citizens, was essential to change the status quo.

Evers maintained an active speaking schedule, sharing insights from his civil rights work in Mississippi with NAACP branches and other organizations all over the United States.

Naturally, his tireless efforts garnered the attention of the African American press and he was featured in many articles. But he also brought black stories—especially lynchings and violence against black citizens—into the mainstream white media. He wrote press releases and gave quotes to national outlets, channeled through the NAACP headquarters. His efforts cut a hole through the media’s “Cotton Curtain” that hid the harsh realities of life in the South from the rest of the nation. Mississippi’s dominant news station (WLBT) told a one-sided, segregationist perspective. Often, it even refused to air black entertainers. For over five years, Medgar’s repeated petitions to WLBT for air time went denied. Following major protest demonstrations, WLBT finally granted Evers a chance to speak. On May 20, 1963, Evers appeared in homes across the state. He spoke for 17 minutes, appealing for equality and democracy. The broadcast raised his status and notoriety, along with his cause.

Evers’ national celebrity carried well beyond his murder the following month. Even using the word “assassination” rather than “lynching” showed a change in public perception. His funeral and the actions of Myrlie and his family continued to lift the cotton curtain.

Library of Congress: Watch an excerpt from a 1963 NBC feature that includes a speech from Evers.

As field secretary, Evers traveled from one end of Mississippi to the other, organizing local NAACP branches and NAACP youth chapters that bit by bit built the foundation for a civil rights movement in Mississippi. Local branches educated people about voting rights and encouraged voter registration, developed local leaders who fought for their rights, and documented economic intimidation of those who tried to vote.

Young people who had grown up in the NAACP youth branches that Evers established in the 1950s and early 1960s, later flowed into the ranks of the youth-oriented Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and fanned out across the state to mobilize a mass civil rights movement.

Evers’s diplomatic sense and tactical vision for keeping the movement united led him to form alliances with other civil rights organizations that pursued different tactics and appealed to different constituencies. In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), SNCC, and the NAACP met to create the Congress of Federated Organizations (COFO).

COFO acted as a forum for the various civil rights groups in Mississippi to work together under a single umbrella and to speak with a unified voice to political leaders. Freedom Summer in 1964 was organized under the auspices of COFO.

Inspired by protest strategies that college students engaged, Medgar led a subtle shift at his NAACP office from legal action in courtrooms by adding more public action campaigns.

He became involved in and organized direct-action campaigns such lunch counter sit-ins, beach wade-ins on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, library read-ins, and the economic boycott of white-owned businesses in downtown Jackson (which came to be known as the Jackson Movement). Evers also supported and sheltered activists. He tapped the resources of the NAACP to arrange bail funds and to broker loans for black farmers and business owners who had been denied local bank loans because of their activism.

He marched, he took punches, he was arrested. On the night he was shot, Medgar had been at a mass meeting focused on the direction of the Jackson Movement.

In 1956, Medgar and Myrlie Evers purchased the house at 2332 Guynes Street (now Margaret Walker Alexander Street), located in the Elraine subdivision, Mississippi’s first modern subdivision designed for middle-class blacks. Like most homes in the neighborhood, it is a classic post-war Ranch style home.

The Ranch style developed in California in the 1930s. In the post-WWII housing boom, the style spread across the country, becoming the ubiquitous suburban housing type into the 1970s. Characteristics include asymmetrical facade, low-pitched roofs with moderate or wide eaves, and an overall horizontal emphasis. Generally one-story, the Ranch house offered adaptability.

Houses of the post-war era were designed to accommodate modern conveniences. Attached garages and carports signified America’s growing dependence on automobiles. Utility rooms could house automatic washers and dryers. The houses also highlighted a new informality in homelife. In open floorplans, like at the Evers’, the living room and kitchen blend together with dining space thrown into the mix too, allowing for family interaction throughout.

“It may seem incredible to the average American homebuyer, but security from attack was a consideration we discussed at length.” Myrlie Evers-Williams

They rejected an available corner lot since Evers considered the location was too exposed. Unlike most of the other houses on the street, the Evers house lacked a front door. The couple chose to forego a front door in favor of a side entrance sheltered by a carport.

They placed furniture in front of windows to block gunfire in case of an attack. The entire Evers family was prepared for the possibility of violence, and Evers taught his children how to crawl infantry-style on the floor to the bathroom if they heard strange noises. The porcelain-covered cast iron tub was deemed the safest spot in case of gunfire or explosives.

On May 24, 1963, someone hurled a Molotov cocktail onto the Evers’ carport. Although the police dismissed the incident as a "prank," Evers increased security measures. The family slept with their mattresses on the floor—lower than windows and potential sniper bullets. Guard dogs occupied the backyard.

“[The] end of the working day, generally meant simply that we moved our headquarters from the office to home, where the same people gathered, the same telephone calls came in, and the same problems were pursued.” Myrlie Evers

The fight for equality was all-consuming work, and the Evers home was an extension of the NAACP office. While Medgar was the NAACP’s public face in Mississippi, Myrlie Evers worked behind the scenes running the NAACP’s Jackson field office, drafting speeches, and providing personal and logistical support for her husband and other civil rights workers. Even after demands of family life kept her physically home, she never ceased working.

The couple hosted civil rights workers, sheltered African Americans threatened by white supremacists, endured death threats that arrived by telephone and mail, and lived with constant danger even as they raised three children.

Though the family left Mississippi following Medgar’s death, Evers-Williams maintained ownership (and architectural integrity) of the family home, and in 1993 insured its preservation by donating it to Tougaloo College. It has been designated a state landmark of national importance. In cooperation with the Evers Family, Tougaloo donated the house and property to the NPS so it could be preserved as a national monument.

Find more details about the house in the National Register of Historic Places nomination form.

On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy spoke to the nation in a televised address from the Oval Office. “The Report to the American People on Civil Rights” called on all Americans to reject the idea of the inequality of races by asking Congress to enact legislation addressing the long-delayed implementation of the Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation decision. “It ought to be possible…for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or color,” Kennedy said.

Medgar had called from the office that day, encouraging Myrlie to watch the address. He would not be home to watch it with her and their children. It was another late night of organizing and attending meetings. His role as secretary for the Mississippi NAACP field office kept him endlessly busy.

Medgar returned home just after midnight. Myrlie and the children had waited up and were watching TV together. They heard Medgar’s car in the driveway. Then they heard a shot.

The children immediately responded as they had practiced—they fell to the ground and made their way to the bathroom. The older children helped 3-year-old James into the safety of the big tub, before joining the adults outside.

Meanwhile, Myrlie stepped into the carport to find her husband collapsed and bleeding, clutching t-shirts he had carried from the car. They said “Jim Crow Must Go” on them. He had been shot in the back.

In the ensuing chaos, Myrlie and neighbors came to Medgar’s aid. Others called the police, who arrived in minutes. The children called for their Daddy. Rather than waiting for an ambulance, Medgar was loaded into a station wagon raced to the hospital with police escort.

Given his public role in Mississippi civil rights, Medgar had anticipated, even expected an early death. But the nation was shocked. His murder galvanized the civil rights movement and heightened public awareness of civil rights issues. As a martyr, Medgar became a catalyst for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in private businesses.

Medgar’s murder investigation was brief but successful. Within hours, police had the murder weapon, fingerprints, and a suspect. Then why did it take three decades to put the killer behind bars?

A hidden gunman shot Medgar Evers at his home just after midnight on June 12, 1963. Neighbors, patrons of a nearby diner, and his own family all testified to hearing the shot. Jackson Police arrived within minutes. While some officers escorted Evers to the hospital, others began looking for information. There was plenty to find.

The bullet had passed through Medgar’s body, broke a window, passed through a wall, and ricocheted off the refrigerator before coming to rest on the kitchen counter. Investigators traced its path to determine where the shot originated. In a clump of bushes approximately 200 feet from the house, they found recent disturbance, a broken limb. In the light of morning, they found a recently-fired rifle, purposefully hidden in a tangle of vines. It matched the bullet and bore fingerprints.

The fingerprints matched those on a United States Marine Corp card for Byron De La Beckwith, who lived in Greenwood, Mississippi. Police arrested Beckwith on June 23.

All signs pointed to Beckwith. Ballistics confirmed the murder weapon, which held fingerprints; multiple eye witnesses placed Beckwith’s car in Jackson that fateful night; a Jackson cab driver had even spoken to Beckwith specifically about Medgar Evers. Plus, Beckwith’s segregationist views and commentary on President Kennedy and the NAACP were well known (and well documented). He was a member of the White Citizens’ Council, a segregationist group that produced racist propaganda with thinly-veiled calls for violence.

Despite the evidence, the trial proved difficult. The atmosphere in 1960s Mississippi was fraught. Racial prejudice ran deep. Beckwith produced three witnesses that provided him an alibi. With the all-white, all-male jury unable to reach a verdict (called a “hung jury”), the judge declared a mistrial. A second trial was held, but to the same end. Another hung jury. Beckwith posted bail and went free.

Myrlie Evers-Williams never gave up her search for justice. In 1990, new information came to light: Files of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission , an arm of the state government dissolved in the 1970s, had secretly aided Beckwith's defense attorneys during the earlier trials. With pressure from Myrlie and the local press, this new evidence meant a new trial.

In addition to the old evidence and testimony, new witnesses came forward. Some testified that Beckwith openly bragged about killing Evers.

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the family of Dr. Maurice Jackson and Laura Ginsburg

Less than 24 hours after her husband died, Myrlie Evers asked to address a mass meeting that had been called at the Pearl Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jackson. Five hundred attendees listened, some openly wept. The New York Times reported her words.

“I come to you tonight with a broken heart. I am left without my husband, and my children without a father, but I am left with the strong determination to try to take up where he left off. And I come to make a plea that all of you here and those who are not here will, by his death, be able to draw some of his strength, some of his courage, and some of his determination to finish this fight. Nothing can bring Medgar back, but the cause can live on… We cannot let his death be in vain.”

Not only was Myrlie Evers an effective orator, but she also represented a powerful image for the civil rights movement. At her husband’s funeral her private grief went on public display.

More than four thousand people attended Evers’s funeral at the Masonic Temple, including NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Meredith, and US Congressman Charles Diggs. Afterward, five thousand people marched almost two miles from the Masonic Temple to Collins Funeral Home where Evers’s body was prepared to be sent by train for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Later, several hundred mourners, mostly students, marched toward the white business district and encountered the armed force of the Jackson police.

Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on June 19, 1963. More than twenty-five thousand people viewed the procession and an estimated two thousand attended the graveside service, including Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Following the funeral, President John F. Kennedy invited Myrlie Evers and her children, along with Charles Evers, Medgar’s brother, to the White House.

Coast to coast, national press focused attention on Evers’s murder. Mourners held vigils and memorial services around the country. Perhaps the largest of these occurred at the Metropolitan Community Church in Chicago’s Bronzeville community—Emmett Till’s neighborhood—where one thousand people attended a service in Evers’s honor and Martin Luther King, Jr., and his mentor Dr. T. R. M. Howard spoke of his martyrdom.

Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA, George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Photographs

Arresting images of a mourning widow tending to tearful children, filled the cover and pages of Life magazine , a popular publication seen by more than half of the US adult population. The images brought home to readers the consequences of virulent racism taken to its violent conclusion. The widow and children of Medgar Evers, Myrlie Evers observed, “became a powerful public relations tool” for the NAACP, which had long used publicity as part of its fight for racial justice. The organization reprinted a photograph of her taken at the funeral, a tear running down her cheek, and posted it in train stations and bus terminals throughout the country. It also appeared on the cover of Myrlie’s 1967 memoir For Us, the Living . The images inspired even as they saddened, and they helped the NAACP recruit members and raise money to promote civil rights causes. Because she was in such demand as a speaker Myrlie Evers convinced the organization to put her back on its payroll.

No longer a behind-the-scenes participant, Myrlie established a career and record of activism, while also engaging in civic affairs. She delivered countless speeches that invoked Medgar’s memory. She stayed committed to the NAACP at the local and national levels, joining the NAACP National Board of Directors. Her work with the NAACP culminated in her term from 1995 to 1998 as the board’s chair.

President Kennedy sent his bill to Congress on June 19, as Medgar Evers was being laid to rest in Arlington. Kennedy signed a copy of the draft bill for Myrlie Evers when she visited the White House. A year of debate and legislative maneuvering awaited it. Kennedy’s own assassination in November 1963 moved it forward again. President Lyndon B. Johnson finally signed it into law on July 2, 1964.

Considered a landmark in the civil rights movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It barred unequal voter registration requirements, whereby county clerks could give different tests to different voters; outlawed discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels, restaurants, and theaters; prohibited state and local governments from denying access to public facilities on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; and authorized the U.S. Attorney General to file suits to enforce desegregation of public schools.

The Act gave federal backing to many of the central tenets of the civil rights movement for which Evers had died fighting. Strengthened by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, thousands of new African American voters joined the South’s political system, with far-reaching and long-lasting results, as Evers and the NAACP had predicted. It also brought about a split in the Democratic Party, as old segregationists found themselves suddenly forced to appeal to these new voters or lose elections.