A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
I’m looking to be shot any time I step out of my car.. If I die, it will be in a good cause. I’ve been fighting for Amrica just as much as the soldiers in Vietnam.
Byron De Le Beckwith assassinated civil-rights champion Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. He shot the 37-years-old Evers as the man got into his car in front of his house in Jackson, Mississippi. Evers, born in Decatur, Mississippi, on July 2, 1925, had been leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His efforts to desegregate Jackson, Mississippi restaurants and to get black men on the police force sparked anger among the racist establishment.
Beckwith, who was an official member of the racist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, was immediately arrested for his crime. Following two trials in 1964, however, he was set free by hung juries, ostensibly due to lack of evidence, though most believe that racism among the jurors was the true reason. Authorities brought Beckwith back to court in 1994, using the justification of newly discovered evidence, and finally won their conviction. Jurors sentenced Beckwith to life in prison, and he died in confinement on January 21, 2001, at the age of 80.