Medgar Evers . Field Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he was one of the most important figures in the African Union in the civil rights movement. He paid for his beliefs with his life, becoming the first civil rights leader to be assassinated in the 1960s . His death prompted President John F. Kennedy ( 1917 – 1963 ) to petition Congress for a national civil rights bill, which President Lyndon Johnson ( 1908 – 1973 ) signed into law in 1964 .
Summary
[ hide ]
- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Childhood and youth
- 2 Important stages of your life
- 3 Job performance
- 4 Death
- 4.1 Events
- 2 Legacy
- 3 Sources
Biographical synthesis
He was born on 19 of July of 1925 in Decatur , Mississippi , the third of four children of the owner of a small farm who also worked at a nearby sawmill.
In the Mississippi of Evers’s childhood, African Americans were terrified by the usual violence of racist whites. Lynching (the killing of a person by a group of outlaws) was common, and discrimination (treating people differently based on their race) was a daily occurrence. However, Evers was fortunate to have an example of strong independence and pride in the figure of his own father, who on one occasion refused to step off the sidewalk to let a white man pass, as was the custom. Unlike many African-Americans in the South, he also owned his own land.
Childhood and youth
He was determined not to give in to difficulties. He walked twelve miles every morning just to be able to earn their high school diploma and then joined the Army of the US during World War II ( 1939 – 1945 ). He was discharged from the army in 1946 .
After the war he returned to Decatur, where he was reunited with his brother Charlie. The young people decided they wanted to vote in the next election. Since the objective of discrimination was to keep power in the hands of the white population of the South, preventing and discouraging the vote of African Americans was an important tactic of white racists.
Evers and his brother did not vote that day, he would then join the NAACP , it is the oldest organization in the nation, the largest and most widely recognized grassroots civil rights organization, and would become an active member in its ranks. .
Important stages of your life
Busy with NAACP projects while still a student at A & Alcorn M University in Lorman, Mississippi , where he enrolled in 1948 , he majored in business administration, graduating in 1952 . During his senior year he married Myrlie Beasley. After graduating, the young couple lived off their earnings as an insurance salesman.
Witnessing and victims of hatred and racism , he was shocked by the living conditions of rural blacks he visited on behalf of his insurance company. Then, in 1954, he witnessed an attempted lynching at a time of great sadness, as his father was dying in the hospital, and during his visit he had gone out to look for a breath of outside air, when he witnessed the incident.
Job performance
He soon went to work for the NAACP full time. Within two years, he was appointed to the important post of field secretary of state for the organization. Yet for more than thirty years, he was one of the best known members of the NAACP in his state. With his wife and children, he moved to Jackson , Mississippi , where he worked closely with black church leaders and other civil rights activists. He constantly spoke of the need to overcome hatred and promote understanding and equality between the races, but this was not a message that everyone in Mississippi wanted to hear.
As early as 1955 , he was featured on a nine-man blacklist in the South. He and his family suffered threats and other violent acts, so they were also aware of the danger around them due to their activities. Telephone threats were a constant source of anxiety in the home, Evers taught his children to fall on the floor whenever they heard a strange noise outside.
“We live with death as a constant companion 24 hours a day.”
Evers Myrlie remembered in Ebony magazine . Yet he persisted in his efforts to end segregation (separation of people based solely on career) in public facilities, schools, and restaurants. Organized voter registration-ROM and rallies. His days were filled with meetings, economic boycotts (to take a position against a person or a company for refusing to buy their goods, products or companies), marches, prayer meetings, pickets, and rescuing other protesters out of prison. .
Death
The December as June as 1963 , President Kennedy, who would be killed just a few months later, delivered a speech to the nation. Kennedy believed that whites standing in the way of black civil rights represented a “moral crisis” and pledged his support for federal action on integration, or ending segregation. That same day, at midnight, when Evers was returning home from a series of NAACP functions, as he was getting out of his car, he was shot in the back. His wife and children, who had been waiting for him, found him bleeding on the sidewalk.
He died 50 minutes later in the hospital. On the day of his funeral in Jackson, the police failed to quell the anger among the thousands of black mourners, even with the use of beatings and other heavy-handed tactics. The NAACP posthumously awarded the 1963 Spingarn Medal to Medgar Evers.
Events
When the Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) began investigations into Evers’s murder, a suspect was discovered, Byron de la Beckwith ( 1920 – 2001 ), who was an outspoken opponent of integration and a member of a group called the White Council. of Mississippi citizens, his weapon had been found 150 meters from the scene. However, after questioning Byron claimed that his gun had been stolen days before the incident, he also produced witnesses who swore that he was about 60 miles from Evers’ home on the night of the murder.
Beckwith was tried twice in Mississippi for the Evers murder, during the 1960s , once in 1964 and the following year. After the second trial, Evers Myrlie and her children moved to California . However, her strong belief that justice was never served in her husband’s case kept her searching for new evidence.
Evers Myrlie said of her husband in Esquire magazine :
“We both knew he was going to die”, “Medgar did not want to be a martyr. But if he had known that he had to die in order to go this far, he would be willing to”
In 1991 , Byron de la Beckwith was arrested for the third time, accused of murdering Medgar Evers. He was finally found guilty of the crime in 1994 .
Legacy
In some ways, Medgar Evers’ death was a milestone in the fought civil rights war that rocked the United States in the 1950s and 1960s . The assassination of such a prominent black figure heralded the violence to come and inspired civil rights leaders and their supporters to work for his cause with even greater dedication. Maryanne Vollers wrote:
“People who lived those days will tell you that something changed in their hearts after Medgar Evers died, something that puts them beyond fear …. At that moment a new motto was born: After Medgar, fear no more.
