It’s been 60 years since a white supremacist hid in the darkness of night and assassinated Evers outside the family’s Jackson home, shooting the Mississippi NAACP leader hours after then-President John F. Kennedy gave a televised speech advocating civil rights legislation.
Evers was a World War II veteran who fought in Europe and then faced the hostile realities of a deeply segregated society after returning home to Mississippi. As the first field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP beginning in 1954, he led voter registration drives and boycotts to push for racial equality. He also investigated lynchings, beatings and other violence that Black residents suffered at the hands of white segregationists. His wife worked alongside him as his secretary.
White supremacist Byron De La Beckwith stood trial twice in the 1960s in the killing of Evers, but all-white juries deadlocked. Prosecutors reopened the case in the early 1990s after new witnesses came forward. In 1994, an integrated jury convicted Beckwith of murder and sentenced him to life in prison, where he died in 2001.
Evers-Williams has been a civil rights activist in her own right. She served as national chairperson of the NAACP from 1995 to 1998, winning the position shortly after Williams died of cancer.
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