Source: Naacp.org

Medgar Evers

Activist and Educator

Throughout his short life, Medgar Evers heroically spoke out against racism in the deeply divided South. He fought against cruel Jim Crow laws, protested segregation in education, and launched an investigation into the Emmett Till lynching. In addition to playing a role in the civil rights movement, he served as the NAACP’s first field officer in Mississippi. Evers established new local chapters, organized voter registration drives, and helped lead protests to desegregate public primary schools, parks, and Mississippi Gold Coast beaches.

White supremacists made several attempts on Evers’s life before succeeding on June 12, 1963. After pulling into his driveway and getting out of his car, Evers was shot in the back and died at the local hospital less than an hour later. He was murdered just hours after President John F. Kennedy’s speech on national television in support of civil rights.

“You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.”

—Medgar Evers