Editing Medgar Evers (section)

==Death==
[[File:6.13, 1963. Rifle that killed Medgar Evers. Located latent fingerprints on telescopic site. Medgar was shot off Delta Drive, Jackson, Miss..png|thumb|200px|The rifle used by De La Beckwith to assassinate Evers]]
[[File:Medgar Evers house.jpg|thumb|right|The Evers house at 2332 Margaret Walker Alexander Drive, now the [[Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument]], where Medgar Evers was fatally shot after getting out of his car.<ref>[http://www.everstribute.org/house_tour.php Medgar Evers home tour] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131219014916/http://www.everstribute.org/house_tour.php |date=December 19, 2013 }} Retrieved December 25, 2013</ref>]]
Evers lived with the constant threat of death. A large white supremacist population and the [[Ku Klux Klan]] were present in [[Jackson, Mississippi|Jackson]] and its suburbs. The risk was so high that before his death, Evers and his wife, Myrlie, had trained their children on what to do in case of a shooting, bombing, or other kind of attack on their lives.<ref name=":0">Bates, Karen Grigsby. "Trials & Transformation: Myrlie Evers' 30-Year Fight to Convict Medgar's Accused Killer", ''Emerge'' 02 1994: 35. ''ProQuest. ''Web. May 27, 2017</ref> Evers, who was regularly followed home by at least two FBI cars and a police car, arrived at his home on the morning of his death without an escort. None of his usual protection was present, for reasons unspecified by the FBI or local police. There has been speculation that many members of the police force at the time were members of the Klan.<ref name=":1">{{cite book|first=Anne|last=Moody|title=Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South|publisher=[[Dell Publishing]]|location=New York City|date=1976|isbn=978-0440314882}}</ref>

In the early morning of Wednesday, June 12, 1963, just hours after President [[John F. Kennedy]]'s nationally televised [[Report to the American People on Civil Rights|Civil Rights Address]], Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. His family had worried for his safety that day, and Evers himself had warned his wife that he felt in greater danger than usual.

Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "[[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]] Must Go", Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an [[M1917 Enfield|Eddystone Enfield 1917 rifle]]; the bullet passed through his heart. Initially thrown to the ground by the impact of the shot, Evers rose and staggered {{convert|30|ft|m|abbr=off|sp=us|-1}} before collapsing outside his front door. His wife, Myrlie, was the first to find him.<ref name=":0" />

Evers was taken to the local hospital in Jackson, where he was initially refused entry because of his race. Evers' family explained who he was, and he was admitted; Evers died in the hospital 50 minutes later, three weeks before his 38th birthday.<ref>Birnbaum, p. 490.</ref>{{full citation needed|date=May 2014}} Evers was the first black man to be admitted to an all-white hospital in Mississippi.<ref name=":0" /> Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in [[Arlington National Cemetery]], where he received [[Military funeral|full military honors]] before a crowd of more than 3,000 people.<ref name="Wesleyan University"/><ref>{{cite journal|first=Keith|last=Orejel|title=The Federal Government's Response to Medgar Evers's Funeral|journal=Southern Quarterly|publisher=[[University of Southern Mississippi]]|location=Hattiesburg, Mississippi|volume=49|issue=2/3|date=Winter–Spring 2012|pages=37–54}}.</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement |first1=Kate |last1=Ellis |first2=Stephen |last2=Smith |work=American Public Media |year=2011 |access-date=February 19, 2011 |url=http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/mississippi/ |archive-date=July 27, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727191304/http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/mississippi/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

=== Aftermath ===
After Evers was assassinated, an estimated 5,000 people marched from the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street to the Collins Funeral Home on North Farish Street in Jackson. [[Allen Johnson (activist)|Allen Johnson]], [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], and other civil rights leaders led the procession.<ref name="shall">{{cite book|last1=O'Brien|first1=M. J.|title=We Shall Not Be Moved: The Jackson Woolworth's Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired|year=2013|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|page=118|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3yuLj3OySpYC&q=%22reverend+allen+johnson%22&pg=PA118-IA14|access-date=September 7, 2015|isbn=978-1617037436|archive-date=June 20, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210620023530/https://books.google.com/books?id=3yuLj3OySpYC&q=%22reverend+allen+johnson%22&pg=PA118-IA14|url-status=live}}</ref> The Mississippi police came to the non-violent protest armed with riot gear and rifles. While tensions were initially high in the stand-off between police and marchers, both in Jackson and in many similar marches around the state, leaders of the movement maintained non-violence among their followers.<ref name=":1" />

===Trials===
On June 21, 1963, [[Byron De La Beckwith]], a fertilizer salesman and member of the Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan), was arrested for Evers' murder.<ref name="ajr">{{cite journal|first=Marcel|last=Dufresne|url=http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=1311|title=Exposing the Secrets of Mississippi Racism|journal=[[American Journalism Review]]|publisher=[[Philip Merrill College of Journalism]]|location=College Park, Maryland|date=October 1991|access-date=January 22, 2019|archive-date=October 26, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131026160919/http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=1311|url-status=live}}</ref> District Attorney and future governor [[Bill Waller]] prosecuted De La Beckwith.<ref>{{cite news|first=Jerry|last=Mitchell|url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/06/02/medgar-evers-family-legacy/2378631/|title=Medgar Evers: Assassin's gun forever changed a family|newspaper=[[USA Today]]|location=Mclean, Virginia|date=June 2, 2013|access-date=January 22, 2019|archive-date=September 20, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170920190605/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/06/02/medgar-evers-family-legacy/2378631/|url-status=live}}</ref> [[All-white juries]] in February and April 1964<ref>{{cite news |title=White Supremacist Indicted for Third Time in Shooting Death of Medgar Evers |magazine=[[Jet (magazine)|Jet]] |volume=79|issue=12 |date=January 7, 1991 }}</ref> [[hung jury|deadlocked]] on De La Beckwith's guilt and failed to reach a verdict. At the time, most black people were still [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchised]] by Mississippi's constitution and voter registration practices; this meant they were also excluded from juries, which were drawn from the pool of registered voters.

Myrlie Evers did not give up the fight for the conviction of her husband's killer. She waited until a new judge had been assigned in the county to take her case against De La Beckwith back into the courtroom.<ref name=":0" /> In 1994, De La Beckwith was prosecuted by the state based on new evidence. [[Bobby DeLaughter]] was the prosecutor. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed for an autopsy.<ref name="Baden, 2006">{{cite book|first=M. M.|last=Baden|chapter=Time of Death and Changes after Death. Part 4: Exhumation|title=Spitz and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death. Guideline for the Application of Pathology to Crime Investigations|editor1-first=W.U.|editor1-last=Spitz|editor2-first=D.J.|editor2-last=Spitz|edition=4th|publisher=Charles C. Thomas|location=Springfield, Illinois|date=2006|isbn=978-0398075446|pages=174–83}}</ref> His body was embalmed, and was in such good condition that his son was allowed to view his father's remains for the first time in 30 years.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.livescience.com/how-long-bodies-take-to-decompose|title=How long does it take for a body to decompose?|first=David|last=Volkpublished|date=January 2, 2023|website=livescience.com}}</ref>

De La Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994 and sentenced to life in prison, having lived as a free man for much of the three decades following the killing. He had been imprisoned from 1977 to 1980 for conspiring to murder [[Adolph Botnick|A. I. Botnick]]. In 1997, De La Beckwith appealed his conviction in the Evers case but the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld it and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear it.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Batten|first1=Donna|title=Gale Encyclopedia of American Law|date=2010|page=266|edition=3rd}}</ref> He died at the age of 80 in prison on January 21, 2001.<ref>"Deliverance." ''People Weekly'' February 21, 1994: 60. ''ProQuest''. Web. May 27, 2017</ref><ref>"Unfinished Business". ''U.S. News & World Report'' January 24, 1994: 14. ''ProQuest'' Web. May 27, 2017</ref>