On the night of June 12, 1963, Medgar Wiley Evers, a 37-year-old male civil rights activist, returned to his home in Jackson, Mississippi. An African American World War II veteran and the first NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, he had spent the evening at a community meeting. As he got out of his car, carrying T-shirts that read 'Jim Crow Must Go,' a single shot from a high-powered rifle struck him in the back.
The bullet passed through his body, and he staggered to his front door before collapsing. His wife and children, who had been awake waiting for him, rushed outside to find him bleeding on the steps. Evers was taken to a local hospital where he was initially denied entry because of his race. After his family identified him, he was admitted but died about 50 minutes later.
The investigation into the ambush quickly led to a suspect. An Enfield rifle was discovered in a nearby thicket, and a fingerprint on the scope was traced to Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist and member of the White Citizens' Council and Ku Klux Klan. Beckwith was arrested and charged with the murder. In 1964, he faced two trials for the assassination of Medgar Evers. Despite the evidence against him, including the rifle and witnesses who placed him in Evers's neighborhood, both trials ended with deadlocked, all-white juries. Beckwith was set free, and for nearly three decades, the murder remained officially unresolved.
Myrlie Evers, Medgar's widow, refused to let the case grow cold. Her persistent efforts, along with new evidence uncovered by journalists, led to the reopening of the case. Witnesses came forward stating they had heard Beckwith brag about killing Evers in the years following the mistrials. In 1994, thirty-one years after the murder, the state of Mississippi put Byron De La Beckwith on trial for a third time. This time, a jury of eight Black and four white jurors was selected. On February 5, 1994, the jury found the 73-year-old Beckwith guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison, finally bringing a measure of justice to the family of Medgar Evers. Beckwith died in prison in 2001.
