City of Oxford Other localities Medgar Wiley Evers (/ˈmɛdɡər/; July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist and soldier who was the NAACP's 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 by Byron De La Beckwith.

Evers served in the 657th Port Company, a segregated unit of the Army's Transportation Corps, participating in the Normandy landings on June 1944.

In France, Evers' unit was part of the Red Ball Express, which delivered supplies to Allied troops fighting on the frontlines.

Witnessing Black soldiers of the Free French Forces being treated as the equals of white troops, he once told Charles that "When we get out of the Army, we’re going to straighten this thing out!"

[7] After returning to Decatur, Evers enrolled at the historically black Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1948, majoring in business administration.

[18] Evers also encouraged Dr. Gilbert Mason Sr. in his organizing of the Biloxi wade-ins from 1959 to 1963, protests against segregation of the city's public beaches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Evers led voter registration drives and used boycotts to integrate Leake County schools and the Mississippi State Fair.

The risk was so high that before his death, Evers and his wife, Myrlie, had trained their children on what to do in case of a shooting, bombing, or other kind of attack on their lives.

[24] In the early morning of Wednesday, June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's nationally televised Civil Rights Address, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers.

Initially thrown to the ground by the impact of the shot, Evers rose and staggered 30 feet (10 meters) before collapsing outside his front door.

While tensions were initially high in the stand-off between police and marchers, both in Jackson and in many similar marches around the state, leaders of the movement maintained non-violence among their followers.

[24] On June 21, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan), was arrested for Evers' murder.

[30] All-white juries in February and April 1964[31] deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt and failed to reach a verdict.

[33] De La Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994 and sentenced to life in prison, after having lived as a free man for much of the three decades following the killing.

[35][36] Evers was memorialized by leading Mississippi and national authors James Baldwin, Margaret Walker, Eudora Welty, and Anne Moody.

[42] Myrlie also founded the Medgar Evers Institute in 1998, with the initial goal of preserving and advancing the legacy of her husband's life's work.

Charles remained involved in Mississippi civil rights activities for many years, and in 1969, was the first African-American mayor elected in the state.

[44] On the 40th anniversary of Evers' assassination, hundreds of civil rights veterans, government officials, and students from across the country gathered around his grave site at Arlington National Cemetery to celebrate his life and legacy.

Barry Bradford and three students—Sharmistha Dev, Jajah Wu, and Debra Siegel, formerly of Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois—planned and hosted the commemoration in his honor.

[46] In October 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced that USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE-13), a Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship, would be named in the activist's honor.

[56] Wadada Leo Smith's album Ten Freedom Summers contains a track called "Medgar Evers: A Love-Voice of a Thousand Years' Journey for Liberty and Justice".

[57] Jackson C. Frank's self-titled debut album, released in 1965, also includes a reference to Medgar Evers in the song "Don't Look Back".

[59] Attorney Bobby DeLaughter wrote a first-person narrative article entitled "Mississippi Justice" published in Reader's Digest about his experiences as state prosecutor in the murder trial.

[60] In Remembering Medgar Evers: Writing the Long Civil Rights Movement,[61] Minrose Gwin, then the Kenan Eminent Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and coeditor of The Literature of the American South and the Southern Literary Journal, looked at the body of artistic work inspired by Evers' life and death—fiction, poetry, memoir, drama, and songs from James Baldwin, Margaret Walker, Eudora Welty, Lucille Clifton, Bob Dylan, and Willie Morris, among others.

[62] The 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi, directed by Rob Reiner, explores the 1994 trial of De La Beckwith in which prosecutor DeLaughter of the Hinds County District Attorney's office secured a conviction in state court.

[65] In the 2011 film The Help, a clip of Evers speaking for civil rights is shown on TV, quickly followed by news of his assassination, and a glimpse of an article by his widow published in Life magazine.