Medgar Evers Assassination, 1963...
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June 13, 1963
THE DETROIT NEWS, Michigan, June 13, 1963.
* Medgar Evers Killed
This 50+ page newspaper has a three line, two column headline on the front page: "Negroes Vow New Fight After Plea by Slain Leader's Wife" with a small photo of Mrs. Medgar W. Evers. More on page 18. Other news of the day throughout. Little margin wear, otherwise in good condition.
Background Information: On June 12, 1963, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from an integration meeting where he had conferred with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that stated, "Jim Crow Must Go", Evers was struck in the back with a bullet that ricocheted into his home. He staggered 30 feet before collapsing, dying at the local hospital 50 minutes later. Evers was murdered just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights.
Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery and received full military honors in front of a crowd of more than 3,000 people, the largest funeral at Arlington since John Foster Dulles. The past chairman of the American Veterans' Committee, Mickey Levine, said at the services, "No soldier in this field has fought more courageously, more heroically than Medgar Evers."
On June 23, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens' Council and Ku Klux Klan, was arrested for Evers' murder. During the course of his first 1964 trial, De La Beckwith was visited by former Mississippi governor Ross Barnett and one time Army Major General Edwin A. Walker.
All-white juries twice that year deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt, thus allowing him to escape justice.
The murder and subsequent miscarriage of justice caused a social uproar, and musician Bob Dylan wrote the song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" about Evers and his assassin. Eudora Welty's "Where is the Voice Coming From" is a short story in which the speaker is the imagined assassin of Medgar Evers. Phil Ochs wrote the songs "Too Many Martyrs" and "Another Country" in response to the killing. Matthew Jones and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers paid tribute to Evers in the haunting "Ballad of Medgar Evers." Malvina Reynolds mentioned "the shot in Evers' back" in her song "It Isn't Nice". More recently, rapper Immortal Technique asks if a diamond is "worth the blood of Malcolm and Medgar Evers?" in the song "Crossing the Boundary" and Bury The Living, a left-leaning hardcore punk band from Memphis, Tennessee mentioned Evers along with Emmett Till in the song "In the State of Mississippi" on their 2003 album. The Rza sang on I Can't Go to Sleep by Wu-Tang Clan, "Medgar took one to the skull for integrating college."
In 1994, thirty years after the two previous trials had failed to reach a verdict, Beckwith was again brought to trial based on new evidence concerning statements he made to others. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for autopsy, and found to be in a surprisingly good state of preservation as a result of embalming. Beckwith was finally convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, after living as a free man for three decades after the killing. Beckwith appealed unsuccessfully, and died in prison in January 2001.
Before Medgar Evers' body was reburied, a new funeral was staged for Evers. This permitted his children, who were toddlers when he was assassinated and had very little memory of him, to have a chance to see him. The new funeral was covered on HBO's Autopsy series. source: wikipedia
* Medgar Evers Killed
This 50+ page newspaper has a three line, two column headline on the front page: "Negroes Vow New Fight After Plea by Slain Leader's Wife" with a small photo of Mrs. Medgar W. Evers. More on page 18. Other news of the day throughout. Little margin wear, otherwise in good condition.
Background Information: On June 12, 1963, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from an integration meeting where he had conferred with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that stated, "Jim Crow Must Go", Evers was struck in the back with a bullet that ricocheted into his home. He staggered 30 feet before collapsing, dying at the local hospital 50 minutes later. Evers was murdered just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights.
Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery and received full military honors in front of a crowd of more than 3,000 people, the largest funeral at Arlington since John Foster Dulles. The past chairman of the American Veterans' Committee, Mickey Levine, said at the services, "No soldier in this field has fought more courageously, more heroically than Medgar Evers."
On June 23, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens' Council and Ku Klux Klan, was arrested for Evers' murder. During the course of his first 1964 trial, De La Beckwith was visited by former Mississippi governor Ross Barnett and one time Army Major General Edwin A. Walker.
All-white juries twice that year deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt, thus allowing him to escape justice.
The murder and subsequent miscarriage of justice caused a social uproar, and musician Bob Dylan wrote the song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" about Evers and his assassin. Eudora Welty's "Where is the Voice Coming From" is a short story in which the speaker is the imagined assassin of Medgar Evers. Phil Ochs wrote the songs "Too Many Martyrs" and "Another Country" in response to the killing. Matthew Jones and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers paid tribute to Evers in the haunting "Ballad of Medgar Evers." Malvina Reynolds mentioned "the shot in Evers' back" in her song "It Isn't Nice". More recently, rapper Immortal Technique asks if a diamond is "worth the blood of Malcolm and Medgar Evers?" in the song "Crossing the Boundary" and Bury The Living, a left-leaning hardcore punk band from Memphis, Tennessee mentioned Evers along with Emmett Till in the song "In the State of Mississippi" on their 2003 album. The Rza sang on I Can't Go to Sleep by Wu-Tang Clan, "Medgar took one to the skull for integrating college."
In 1994, thirty years after the two previous trials had failed to reach a verdict, Beckwith was again brought to trial based on new evidence concerning statements he made to others. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for autopsy, and found to be in a surprisingly good state of preservation as a result of embalming. Beckwith was finally convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, after living as a free man for three decades after the killing. Beckwith appealed unsuccessfully, and died in prison in January 2001.
Before Medgar Evers' body was reburied, a new funeral was staged for Evers. This permitted his children, who were toddlers when he was assassinated and had very little memory of him, to have a chance to see him. The new funeral was covered on HBO's Autopsy series. source: wikipedia
Category: The 20th Century
