Medgar evers family
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Life of Medgar Evers
Medgar Wiley Evers is a civil rights campaigner and field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) whose murder in 1963 prompted President John F. Kennedy to ask Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill. Evers became the first martyr to the 1960s civil rights movement, and his death was a turning point for many in the struggle for equality, infusing other civil rights leaders with renewed determination to continue their struggle despite the violent threats being made against them. In the wake of Evers’s assassination, a new civil rights motto was born.
—”After Medgar, no more fear.”
Medgar Wiley Evers was born in 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi, to James and Jessie Evers. During his childhood in Decatur, Evers encountered overt racism on a daily basis. When he was twelve years old, a family friend was lynched, and the man’s bloody clothing hung on a fence for more than a year as a sign of intimidation. While in his teens, Evers watched from a safe distance as white gangs patrolled the streets of Decatur on Sa
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Medgar Evers
American civil rights activist and soldier (1925–1963)
Medgar Wiley Evers (; July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist and soldier who was the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi. Evers, a United States Army veteran who served in World War II, was engaged in efforts to overturn racial segregation at the University of Mississippi, end the segregation of public facilities, and expand opportunities for African Americans, including the enforcement of voting rights when he was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith.
After college, Evers became active in the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Following the 1954 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, Evers challenged the segregation of the state-supported public University of Mississippi. He applied to law school there, as the state had no public law school for African Americans. He also worked for voting rights, economic opportunity, access to public facilities, and other changes
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Medgar Evers
(1925-1963)
Who Was Medgar Evers?
Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As such, he organized voter-registration efforts and economic boycotts, and investigated crimes perpetrated against Black people. Evers was assassinated outside of his Mississippi home in 1963, and after years of on-again, off-again legal proceedings, his killer was sent to prison in 1994. In 2017, President Barack Obama designated Evers' home a national historic landmark.
Early Life and Education
Medgar Wiley Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. Growing up in a Mississippi farming family, Evers was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He fought in both France and Germany during World War II and received an honorable discharge in 1946.
Evers went on to enroll at Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University) in Lorman, Mississippi, in 1948. He married fellow student Myrlie Beasley during his senior year, before graduating in 1952.
Early Civil Rights Work
After initially finding work as an insurance salesman
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