Laura Marti – October 08, 2024
This past summer, my husband and I had an opportunity to travel across the South and took the time to visit a few important places from the civil rights era. One stop was the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson, Mississippi, which had officially become a part of the National Park Service (NPS) as a National Monument in 2016.
Medgar Evers is a civil rights leader who may not be as familiar to people as someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. As for me, I didn’t know as much about him, and this was a chance to learn about his life and his vital role in fighting for the civil rights of Black Americans in Mississippi.
We parked at a garden at the entrance to the street where the Evers house is located, which in itself was an experience. The garden held an interactive walkthrough with details about their lives and work. We then walked down the street to the Evers’ home.
Their home still stands in the same location as it did over 70 years ago, in a neighborhood subdivision built for Black families who were not allowed to live in white neighborhoods. The Evers moved into the vibrant turquoise house as civil rights activists. We later learned that many of the families who knew the Evers still live on Guynes Street and remain active in the community.
The life of Medgar Evers (if you don’t know the story)
Medgar Evers attended an all-Black school in Newton, MS. In 1943, he left school and joined the United States Army, serving in segregated units in England, Belgium, and France. After his discharge, he completed high school, then enrolled in Historically Black Alcorn A&M University – now Alcorn State University – where he gained an interest in activism around voter disenfranchisement. Medgar met classmate Myrlie Beasley and they married on Christmas Eve 1951.
After graduating from Alcorn A&M, Evers took a well-paying job as a salesman for an insurance company and traveled throughout the Mississippi Delta where poverty and illiteracy were endemic. Walking door to door, meeting families and seeing their day to day lives, he was distressed by the widespread poverty he saw and began organizing chapters of the NAACP to address conditions suffered by African Americans in the Delta. In 1951, Medgar Evers also joined the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. He led boycotts, conferences, and workshops, and also focused on school integration.
Then, in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka. Evers desire to enroll in law school motivated him to challenge desegregation directly and he applied for admittance to the University of Mississippi. He was denied on a “technicality,” but his effort to integrate the state’s oldest public university impressed the NAACP when he asked them for help.
The NAACP Mississippi State Conference leader was so taken with Evers’ poise and determination that he offered him a position as the organization’s first Field Secretary in the state. Evers accepted, moved his family to Jackson, and by December 1954 opened an office in Jackson. One of Evers’ first assignments was investigating the murder of Emmet Till in Money, Miss. Within three years he had nearly doubled NAACP membership in Mississippi to more than 15,000.
Although Evers would not be enrolled, he proved instrumental in eventually integrating Ole Miss. Seven years after he was refused admission to the University of Mississippi, he assisted James Meredith in 1962 to officially desegregate the school. Meredith, who like Evers had approached the NAACP for help after being denied admission, had taken his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor.
Evers efforts to achieve racial inequality angered many white people, placing himself and his family in danger. He received many death threats at his office and, also at his home.
Inside the Evers’ home
As we approached the Evers’ house, it was very quiet – we were the only ones there. We waited outside until a Park Ranger welcomed us in. We met a young summer intern from Charlotte, NC, named Jayden, who gave us the tour of the house (and did a fabulous job by the way). It is a modest one-story home that has been preserved as it was. Some of the decor reminded me of the house I grew up in in Ohio in the 60s and 70s, so I felt like I had been taken back in time.
Between this home and his office, both Evers and his wife worked tirelessly. Through press releases, interviews, and speeches, they brought news of the struggle in Mississippi to the nation. But Evers growing stature and his very public leadership made him a target of harassment.
It didn’t take long to walk through the home, and we had a sense of reverence knowing how the stark realities of segregation and racial inequality in the American South had changed this family forever.
As we were led into the children’s bedrooms, we noticed the beds seemed to be very low to the ground. Our Park Ranger intern guide asked what we thought might be the reason for their mattresses to be on the floor. It suddenly struck me that it was because of the constant death threats the Evers family received, both by mail and by phone. I was overwhelmed with the thought of Medgar and Myrlie trying to keep their littles safe from the violence of gunshots that might come in through the windows, all because they were actively fighting for civil rights.
He showed us the other bedrooms, bathroom, then back through the hallway and into the kitchen. That’s where we found a grim reminder of Medgar Evers having been killed by an assassin’s bullet.
That tragic night
On June 12, 1963, returning home just after midnight from another meeting, and after listening to John F. Kennedy’s speech on civil rights, Medgar Evers arrived home, got out of his car, and was shot with a high-powered rifle in his own driveway – a white supremacist had been hiding in the bushes. The bullet went through Medgar’s right shoulder, through the glass window pane in the front, through the wall and into the kitchen. Bullet holes from the gunshot are still visible in the wall and the tile. Neighbors laid him on a mattress to transport him to a local hospital, which initially refused to care for him. They finally decided to admit him but he died within the hour. He was 37. As it turns out, Evers was the first Black man admitted to an all-white hospital in Mississippi.
Remnants of the bullet were sobering to see, and I felt a tremendous sadness. As I think back on it, I believe the sadness I felt was grieving the loss of this incredible human being, grieving the life and impact he might have had, and grieving the family that was not able to live out their lives with their husband and father – the loss of future memories. I also grieve the baffling reality that people can harbor so much hatred that they believe violence is an acceptable way to resolve differences.
Because Medgar had served in the military, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The tragedy thrust Myrlie into the national spotlight, even while she was still grieving. 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, pursued a corporate career, and continued her civil rights work through the present day.
It took 31 years to bring Evers’ assassin to justice. After Medgar Evers’ assassination, protests erupted in Jackson, culminating in a riot during his funeral, where police clashed with over 5,000 mourners. Two weeks later, Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizen’s Council, was arrested. Despite two trials in 1964, all-white juries failed to convict him. In the 1990s, Myrlie Evers-Williams (who remarried in 1976) convinced Mississippi prosecutors to reopen Medgar Evers’ murder case. In 1994, De La Beckwith was finally convicted by a racially mixed jury. He was sentenced to life in prison and died in 2001.
Reflections
After walking through the house, we spent time talking with the Park Rangers stationed there and talked more about Medgar & Myrlie, about our own social justice efforts, and shared some connections. These are good people whom I am grateful to have met, and I’m grateful for the insights they shared with us.
Visiting the Medgar & Myrlie Evers’ home was a deeply moving experience. It was a powerful reminder of the sacrifices made by them and so many others during the Civil Rights Movement. It highlighted both the courage and the humanity of Medgar Evers in the face of extreme adversity and constant harassment as he and Myrlie fought to change the conditions of poverty, illiteracy, and inequity in the Black community. He paid the ultimate price, and I honor his life and the sacrifice he made. Our country is different because of him.
Myrlie made a sacrifice, too, one she didn’t choose to make. But after Medgar’s death, she took up the mantle and continued the work with unimaginable courage. Some of Myrlie’s words, visible on the board in the garden (see below), were especially meaningful and poignant:
“He died as Christ did – a victim of hatred, ignorance, and injustice. His sacrifice was the price of redemption for the Negro in America.” (1963)
“It took me years to learn what Medgar felt instinctively: that freedom has to be won, that it is worth fighting for. It was the lesson of his life. It was the lesson, if there was one, in his death.” (Myrlie Evers-Williams, For Us, The Living, 1967)
Visiting the Medgar & Myrlie Evers National Monument home provided me with a tangible connection to a pivotal moment in American history, and a profound sense of responsibility to continue the fight for equality and justice.
RESOURCES
Medgar Evers – Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)
7 Things You Should Know About Medgar Evers | HISTORY
How Medgar Evers’ Widow Fought 30 Years for His Killer’s Conviction | HISTORY
Recent Comments