July 2 was the 100th anniversary of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers’ birth. He's remembered each year during the NAACP’s national convention, which opened in Charlotte last week. As the first NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, Evers investigated racial crimes and organized voter registration drives, boycotts and demonstrations around the state.
At a rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, Evers told the crowd, “We’re ready for freedom and we’re ready to march for it. ... All over Mississippi as you are fighting for it here in Greenwood. All we want you to do is keep going for this fight for freedom. ... And when we get this unity, ladies and gentlemen, nothing can stop us. We’re going to win this fight for freedom.”
In 1963, Evers was shot and killed in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. He was 37.
Retired UNC-Chapel Hill English professor Minrose Gwin wrote a book about Evers, titled "Remembering Medgar Evers: Writing the Long Civil Rights Movement." She grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, and tells WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn she was about 13 years old the day Evers was assassinated.
Minrose Gwin: I remember the headlines, and I also remember I was walking down the street and I heard two men talking. They were white men and one said, ‘One down, one to go,’ meaning that Medgar Evers had been killed and now it was time to go after Charles Evers, his brother, who became NAACP field secretary for Mississippi after Medgar was shot.
Gwendolyn Glenn: Now, Medgar Evers was the first NAACP field secretary for Mississippi. And when he took that position, there were those who tried to dissuade him from taking it because they knew what a risk to his life he would be facing.
Gwin: Several of his close cohorts said this is a suicide mission. And unlike Dr. (Martin Luther) King, for example, Medgar Evers did not have any guards. He did not have anybody to look out for him. The police were after him just as much as a whole bunch of bigots were.
And the work he did was extremely dangerous. He would costume himself in the dress of a field worker. He would put on overalls and he would go down into the countryside driving those back-country roads at night. He would listen to people’s stories of murder, rape, houses burning, people getting run off their land. And then he would go back to Jackson to his office and he would write reports to the national NAACP office, and then the national office would publicize all this in the northern newspapers. For example, he investigated the murder of Emmett Till in 1955.
Glenn: Emmett Till was a young boy at the time and he had come from Chicago to spend time with relatives in Mississippi, and he was brutally killed for allegedly saying something to a white woman — who later said that it wasn't true, what she said that led to his death.
Gwin: Yes, and his death was torturous. It’s said that his investigation started the whole process whereby Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till, opened the casket because she wanted people to see what they had done to her son. That is an example of the kind of work he did.
Glenn: And, again, on those roads, sometimes he was harassed by the police as well.
Gwin: Yes, absolutely. The police and those who would did racial crimes were like hand in glove.
Glenn: You write about that the NAACP — the national — wanted him to leave Mississippi because of that danger and go to California. But he stayed.
Gwin: He was born and raised in Mississippi, as was his wife, Myrlie. And the night that he was killed, he gave a speech. He spoke about how Mississippi was his home. He liked to fish, loved the smells of the vegetation. He loved his home, and he was not going to be forced out of it despite all the threats to his family. He did not back down.
Glenn: Well, let's talk about that night, June 12, 1963, when he was shot in the back by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith. What led up to that?
Gwin: Well, that night (Evers) had talked to a group of activists, and he came home. and they had constructed their house so that there was a door coming off the carport. There was not a front door. The rule in the family was that you slid through the car to the other side, where the door was, and you went straight in (the house).
Glenn: Everybody got out on that right side.
Gwin: Yes, but that night he did not do that. He needed to get out a stack of T-shirts out of his trunk. And those T-shirts, said ‘Jim Crow, must go.’ And so he was bending over the trunk of his car when he was shot. He was taken to a hospital, where he could not be treated by a white doctor. So, finally, they found the Black doctor to treat him, but he died.
Glenn: Was there ever any evidence that that delay caused him to lose his life?
Gwin: I never really resolved that question. It's possible.
Glenn: And when he died, how did the country respond?
Gwin: There were demonstrations in Jackson. I think it instigated a lot of the awareness in the country of the extent of racist violence in the South, of what African Americans in the South were experiencing, and what kinds of heroic work that they were doing.
Glenn: So why do you think he is not better known today?
Gwin: He preferred to work under the surface to create change. He was much more circumspect and much more strategic in the work that he did. However, he was given the (Presidential) Medal of Freedom (in 2024). His name was listed on the website of Arlington National Cemetery as one of the notable Black Americans who served in World War II. There was the christening of a Navy vessel in his name. All of these things brought his name into consciousness.
Glenn: And he's buried at Arlington, correct?
Gwin: Yes, he is.
Glenn: But now, you also have an attack on African American history and figures such as Medgar Evers being taught in schools.
Gwin: He's been erased under (the Trump) administration from the Arlington website. The administration has also indicated that it is going to take his name off of the Navy vessel. The whole thing is quite disturbing and scary, to try to erase a major part of the history of the United States.
