The Sixties: Early Stirrings - June 12, 1963 - Medgar Evers, Civil Rights Activist, Slain (14)

Medgar Wiley Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, and served in World War II before moving on to major in business at Alcorn State University.

Medgar Evers, in an undated photo, public domain

He participated in the debate team, choir, was on the football and track teams and was editor of the student newspaper. He also held positions in student government.

Evers met his wife, Myra Beastley, in college; they married December 24, 1951.

After college, Evers was the first field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Mississippi.

Evers encouraged African Americans to register to vote, and he organized boycotts against white-owned firms that discriminated against blacks

Evers was well known in the civil rights movement; he also helped James Meredith attend the University of Mississippi, in Meredith's attempt to gain entrance at the University, which had admitted him, then denied him entrance.

But Evers' hard work and good fortune was soon to run out. Fate in the form of hate and discrimination would soon rear its ugly head.

During the early morning hours of Wednesday, June 12, 1963, Evers pulled into his driveway of his home.

Darrell and Reena Evers, two of Evers' children, were in the car, still awake. The baby, Van Evers, was sleeping in the car.

Evers got out of his car; a shot pierced the darkness. Evers had been shot just as he began to walk up the driveway of his home.

He had been shot in the back.

The bullet exited his chest, went through the living room window, and ricocheted off items in the living room, before landing on a counter.

Evers's neighbor had also heard the shot. Evers' neighbor went outside and fired his own gun, in an attempt to frighten away the shooter.

Evers' neighbor pulled a mattress from his home and placed Evers on it.

Evers' neighbor put Evers into his station wagon and was driving him to the hospital.

Evers died on the way to the hospital.

It was just another footnote in the increasingly tragic history of racially motivated slayings in the South.

Even by 1963, the hard-earned rights that minorities would win with the passage of the Civil Rights Bill had not happened yet.

That day was still yet to come.

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The Sixties is a continuing series I posted originally in 2006 on Gather.

It discusses certain events that were in the news during the 1960s, in chronological order.

I will be publishing this series from January, 2008 until it finishes.

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Previously:

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - Governor Wallace Violates Federal Desegregation Law at University of Alabama - June 1963 (13)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - The Children's Crusade: The March in Birmingham, May 1963 (12)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - James Meredith: First African American at the University of Mississippi (11)

The Sixties: Cuba After Castro, A Sidebar (10)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - The Cuban Missile Crisis - 14 Days in October, 1962 (9)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - Sentencing of the Bay of Pigs Invaders (8)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - The Cuban Trade Embargo - No More Cuban Cigars (7)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings, November 14, 1961 - 16,000 Advisors Sent to Vietnam (6)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - 170 People Died Trying - The Berlin Wall, A City Divided, A Country Divided, A World Divided (5)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - The Bay of Pigs Invasion (4)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - JFK Elected President (3)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - Martin Luther King is Jailed (2)

The Sixties: Early Stirrings - Lunch Counters (1)

The Sixties: Rosa Parks and her effect on Ruby Bridges - (prequel)

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