The LuLac Edition #5, 374, July 2nd, 2025

 

MEDGAR EVERS @ 100

His assignation in 1963 changed the trajectory of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Gunned down by a white supremist thug, shot in the back, the black Army veteran’s violent death seemed to awaken the Kennedy administration that heretofore was slow walking progress of the movement.

He was the 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.

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, he challenged the segregation of the state-supported public University of Mississippi. Evers 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 in the segregated society. In 1963, Evers was awarded the NAACP Spingarn Medal.

The death of Evers began a cycle of political violence in this country that continues today. More than 60 years after a white supremacist assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers, his daughter still sees the same strain of political violence at work in American society.

“It’s painful,” said Reena Evers-Everette. “It’s very painful.”

Evers-Everette was 8 years old when her father, a field secretary for the NAACP, was shot to death in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.

A few months after Evers’ killing in 1963, President John F. Kennedy was gunned down. The deaths of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy followed later that decade.

Now, experts say the level of political violence in America over the past few years is likely the highest it’s been since the 1960s and 1970s. The past year alone has seen the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers, and two assassination attempts on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

At a four-day conference celebrating Evers’ life just before what would have been his 100th birthday on July 2, his daughter was joined by the daughters of slain civil rights leaders: Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, and Bettie Dahmer, the daughter of civil and voting rights activist Vernon Dahmer. The 2025 Democracy in Action Convening, “Medgar Evers at 100: a Legacy of Justice, a Future of Change,” was held in Jackson. Evers was targeted by white, ignorant southern racists who didn’t want the movement to succeed. Now that singular focus has accelerated at an alarming rate due to the complete lack of respect, regard and decorum for civil and political discourse. (AP, LuLac)