Background
He was born in Decatur, Mississippi, the son of James Evers, a businessman, and Jessie Wright. When he was fourteen, he witnessed the lynching of one of his father's friends, who had been accused of insulting a white woman.
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He was born in Decatur, Mississippi, the son of James Evers, a businessman, and Jessie Wright. When he was fourteen, he witnessed the lynching of one of his father's friends, who had been accused of insulting a white woman.
He attended Decatur Consolidated School and Newton High School, and in 1943 entered the army, seeing service in the Normandy invasion and the French campaign.
After the war Evers attended Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in Lorman, Mississippi, and received a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1952.
Not long after his graduation from Alcorn, Evers failed in an attempt to register at the University of Mississippi; in 1962 he aided James Meredith in his successful accomplishment of the same act.
In 1952, Evers joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Two years later he became its field secretary in Mississippi, the organization's only paid position in the state. He worked vigorously establishing local chapters. Evers' life was molded and subsequently destroyed by the bigotry and injustice that Mississippi society then routinely meted out to blacks.
In 1957, Evers vainly protested to the Federal Communications Commission regarding the refusal of a Jackson, Mississippi, television station to allow him equal time to answer racial statements broadcast by white politicians. The following year he was arrested for sitting in a "white" bus seat in Meridian, Mississippi, and in 1960 was sentenced to thirty days in jail and fined $100 for criticizing an earlier conviction of another black. This sentence was eventually overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
In 1961, Evers applauded a defendant in a trial involving sit-down demonstrations, and was beaten by a court policeman.
Despite this attitude he was consistently the target of white hostility, which increased significantly by 1963 as a result of his work in Jackson. He received many threatening phone calls and death threats.
He soon taught his children to duck and cover whenever they heard any strange noise outside, and he often commented on the possibility of violence to him and his family. The fulfillment of this prophecy came shortly.
On June 2, 1963, a firebomb was thrown into the carport of his Jackson home. Then, in the early hours of June 12, when Evers returned home from an NAACP function, he was shot and killed by an assassin while stepping out of his car.
A major riot in Jackson was narrowly averted after Evers' funeral. Racial tension throughout the South intensified. Most white Americans were also shocked by Evers' murder. The crime speeded the passage of civil rights legislation in Congress, and generally confirmed the involvement of the federal government in the cause of racial equality. It energized black political activism in Mississippi.
Evers' brother, Charles, assumed the role of NAACP field secretary in Mississippi and organized boycotts, demonstrations, and voter registration drives. Evers was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
In death he had focused the attention of the nation on the problems that he had fought to solve during his life. The man who was later accused of Evers' murder, Byron de la Beckwith, was freed after two mistrials in which all-white juries could not decide on his guilt or innocence.
Evers instantly became both a national figure and a martyr of the civil rights movement. The murder came at a time of increasing confrontation over the issue of black rights, a day after two black students were finally admitted to the University of Alabama over the obstruction of Governor George Wallace, and only hours after President John F. Kennedy's "moral crisis" speech defending the blacks' right to full citizenship. His death was a vivid example of white extremist reaction to black demands, and it gave support to those blacks who were beginning to claim that nonviolence was a dangerous folly.
He became heavily involved in the civil rights movement in Jackson in 1962 and 1963, advocating the appointment of black policemen and the establishment of a biracial committee to study black-white relations in the city.
During his tenure as NAACP field secretary, Evers gained a reputation as a quiet, reasonable, and effective organizer who believed that blacks should rid themselves of their sense of inferiority and seek equality through voting and economic boycotts.
On December 24, 1951, Evers married Myrlie Beasley, whom he had met in college. They had three children.
