During the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't the only one who was leading the peaceful protests. As one of the many leaders in charge of the movement, Medgar Evers assisted in the Sit-ins, a couple of the marches, and many more. Every time he helped, he risked his neck just to get African Americans the right to vote, although he would be assassinated later on. Since he was one of the members of the NAACP, it was his right to do all of this for the African Americans, and in the end, it payed off for quite a long time. Even to this day, people can still see the effects of his work.
During and before the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans were beaten, just because they wanted either equal rights, or just did something that a white American would normally do. One of the most famous of them was Emmett Till, who was brutally mangled when he talked to a white woman. After his body was found, he was treated to open-casket funeral, and two suspects were caught. Unfortunately, the were let go, free of charge, when the court decided that they were innocent at the time. Over the past few decades, many people, including Medgar Evers, investigated his murder, and even though it may never be solved, this one murder was a bit more than enough to start the movement in a way that people didn't quite expect.
Medgar Evers was known for many things, and one of them is the fact that he is the NAACP's first field secretary. He decided to become a part of the NAACP when he was denied voting rights in the south. Being denied of his rights made him a major supporter for equal voting rights for blacks. His job let him assist in the many protests happening at the time, where he insisted on stopping segregation. Doing all of this work made him a well known supporter of equal rights, and made him a person to eventually be killed by white supremacists.
On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers was shot in the back outside his home, and died less than an hour later. A little more than a week later, authorities caught the prime suspect, Byron De La Beckwith, who had shot Medgar with a rifle. He was tried in March and April of 1964 by all white juries, and was let go, free of charge since they couldn't determine his guilt. Beckwith was a free man for a bit more than three decades when new evidence was revealed. He was then tried by a mixed jury, and was sentenced to life in prison in 1994, where he died in 2001.
On the day of his funeral, he received full military honors for not only his work for civil rights, but also for his time fighting for America during WWII. His family was left devastated for a time, and were partially relieved when Beckwith was sentenced in 1994. Although he wasn’t alive to see it happen, he would be grateful that what he did was enough for African Americans to eventually get their rights a while later. He was given the 1963 Spingarn Medal by the NAACP in honor of his dedication to the cause he was fighting for. His legacy was kept alive through many ways, including anniversaries, memorial services, different types of media, and various projects, just to name a few.
On the 50th anniversary of Evers’ death in 2013 people did many things to commemorate him. His daughter gave a speech a moving speech about her father, and how she and her siblings saw their father dying in their driveway. The day was not completely sad, and to commemorate him there was an unveiling of a statue in his honor. This year on June 12th people will be celebrating what would have been Medgar Evers’ 90th birthday.