Medgar Evers

Medgar Wiley Evers (1925 – 1963) was an American civil rights activist whose heroic frontline struggle dismantled racial terror in the Jim Crow South. A decorated Army veteran who fought in the Normandy campaign during World War II, Evers returned home to find that Black Americans were systematically denied the vote and equal humanity.

As the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi from 1954 onward, Evers investigated white supremacist murders, including that of Emmett Till, registered Black voters against violent opposition, and organized boycotts against segregated merchants. On June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy delivered his landmark national television address endorsing civil rights legislation, Evers was shot in the back and killed in his driveway by a Ku Klux Klan sniper. His assassination shocked the world and accelerated the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.