Roy Wilkins and Medgar Evers being arrested on Jin Jackson, Miss. Though typical at the time, racial segregation in the military only served to anger Evers.
During his tour of duty in World War II, Evers was assigned to and served with a segregated port battalion, first in Great Britain and later in France. A World War II SoldierĪt the end of his sophomore year of high school and several months before his eighteenth birthday, Evers volunteered and was inducted into the United States Army in 1942. Each day on his way to school Evers had to pass this tableau of violence. A friend of Evers’ father, Tingle was accused of insulting a white woman.Įvers later recalled that Tingle’s bloody clothes remained in the field for months near the tree where he was hanged. At about age 14, Evers observed to his horror the dragging of a black man, Willie Tingle, behind a wagon through the streets of Decatur. On these occasions, Evers’s parents and older brother could not shield him from the realities of a society built on racial discrimination.
Photo: Library of Congress.īesides his under-funded public education, Evers on occasion saw and witnessed acts of raw violence against blacks. This is one of many murder cases Evers investigated. Melton died (likely killed) before she could testify. Medgar Evers is interviewing Beulah Melton about the murder of her husband, Clinton Melton, in 1955. The schools had few resources and operated with outdated textbooks, few teachers, large classes, and small classrooms without laboratories and supplies for the study of biology, chemistry, and physics. Segregated public education meant long walks to school for the Evers children. He attended all-black schools in the dual and segregated public educational system of Newton County. As Evers’s older brother, Charles protected him, taught him to fish, swim, hunt, box, wrestle, and generally served as a sounding board for many of Medgar’s early experiences. The Evers home emphasized education, religion, and hard work.Īmong his siblings, Evers spent the most time with Charles, whom he idolized. As a youth, Evers’s parents showered him with love and affection, taught him family values, and routinely disciplined him when needed. Evers’s childhood was typical in many ways of black youths who grew up in the Jim Crow South during the Great Depression of the 1930s and in the years preceding World War II.
His father worked in a sawmill and his mother was a laundress. He fought for equality and fought against brutality.īorn July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, Medgar was one of four children born to James and Jesse Evers. Reprinted from the Mississippi Historical Society, Mississippi History Now.īetween 19, Medgar Wiley Evers was one of Mississippi’s most impassioned activists, orators, and visionaries for change. He was instrumental in getting witnesses and evidence for the Emmett Till murder case and others, which brought national attention to the terrorism used against African Americans. On June 12, 1963, WWII veteran Medgar Evers was murdered in the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi.Īs a field worker for the NAACP, Evers had traveled through his home state encouraging African Americans to register to vote.
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