Who was medgar evers parents

James Van Dyke Evers was only three when his father, Medgar, was assassinated in the driveway of the family's home in Jackson, Miss. in June 1963. A sniper shot Medgar Evers in the back as he returned from a meeting late at night. Tensions had been running high because Evers, the first field secretary for the NAACP, was making headway in pushing the state's black citizens to register to vote. White Mississippians who'd lived comfortably under segregation could feel the ground shifting beneath them--and they didn't like it.

Myrlie and Medgar Evers regularly received death threats tied to Medgar Evers' work. They'd created a drill for their two older children, Reena and Darrell: if you hear shots, drop to the floor and carefully crawl to the bathroom. Get in the tub. You'll be safe there. Watch out for your brother. The tub was a bulwark of porcelain-covered cast iron, strong enough to stop a bullet, or protect from a fire-bomb.

So the evening that Byron de la Beckwith fired a rifle at Medgar Evers as Evers was emerging from his car, Reena and Darrell Evers did what they'd been told. They took their little brother Van with them to the bathroom and placed him in the tub and ran outside when they heard their mothers' cries. They encircled their father while he bled in the driveway. He died in a local hospital an hour later.

That was 50 years ago. Van Evers, now a handsome man with his father's height and his mother's charm, has had plenty of time to think about what's been taken from him.

"I feel as if I gave up both of my parents to the movement," he says in a park near his Pasadena home. "After Dad died, Mom was gone a lot. She had to support us, she had to carry on my dad's work, so she frequently wasn't there. We were alone a lot," and family and friends looked after them in their mother's absence.

But he's not complaining. His mother, Myrlie Evers, is his hero. "If I can do nearly as much

NOTE: This material is copyrighted. Do not duplicate in any way, unless you have purchased the book. You may take notes on this material.

Strongly suggest all Mississippians purchase this book for reference.

For Us, the Living, by Mrs. Medgar Evers with William Peters.

University Press of Mississippi, 1996. 378 pages.

Title from Lincoln's Gettysburg address. Page before page 1.

Shows respect for white leaders who fought for black rights.

MEDGAR'S EARLY LIFE.

Medgar grew up in black section of Decatur. His father was a farmer, and blacks needed two jobs to survive so he also worked at a sawmill or railroad. He built two small houses to rent out, and they also rented out a room in their home to teachers. His mother was a homemaker with her large family, and also did housework for a white family and took in ironing. The children worked around the house and farm. As they got older, the girls worked out in white homes while the boys did odd jobs for white families. They were both religious, believed in hard work, and were proud that they didn't need charity or welfare. Pages 14-15.

"It was an unwritten law that Negroes leave the sidewalks of Decatur for approaching whites." His father "was one of the few Negroes that refused to do it... He behaved as though he had never heard of such a custom. He stood up and was a man," said Medgar. Medgar remembers one incident in which his father had a dispute over his account in a store, where his father was called "nigger" by two white men. "When they advanced on him with the obvious intent of beating him, James Evers picked up a bottle, smashed the end of it over the counter, and held it in front of him as a weapon." He ordered his sons to go home, and their last sight of him was of a "calm, grim man retreating slowly toward the door, holding the advancing white men at bay with the jagged glass of the broken bottle." He soon arrived home unhurt, "the bottle still in his hand." Page 16. It hurt Medg

When Medgar Wiley Evers was born on 2 July 1925, in Decatur, Newton, Mississippi, United States, his father, James "Jim" Evers, was 42 and his mother, Jessie M Wright, was 35. He married Myrlie Louise Beasley on 24 December 1951. They were the parents of at least 1 son. He lived in Beat 1, Claiborne, Mississippi, United States in 1950 and United States in 1963. He registered for military service in 1943. He died on 6 June 1963, in Jackson, Hinds, Mississippi, United States, at the age of 37, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, United States.

Medgar Wiley Evers is a civil rights campaigner and field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) whose murder in 1963 prompted President John F. Kennedy to ask Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill. Evers became the first martyr to the 1960s civil rights movement, and his death was a turning point for many in the struggle for equality, infusing other civil rights leaders with renewed determination to continue their struggle despite the violent threats being made against them. In the wake of Evers’s assassination, a new civil rights motto was born.
—”After Medgar, no more fear.”

Medgar Wiley Evers was born in 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi, to James and Jessie Evers. During his childhood in Decatur, Evers encountered overt racism on a daily basis. When he was twelve years old, a family friend was lynched, and the man’s bloody clothing hung on a fence for more than a year as a sign of intimidation. While in his teens, Evers watched from a safe distance as white gangs patrolled the streets of Decatur on Saturday nights looking for a black target to beat up or run down with their cars.

Evers was determined to make something of himself, despite the hatred of local white people. After dropping out of high school at seventeen, he joined the army and soon found himself fighting on Europe’s battlefields during World War II. (1)

After his sophomore year in high school, Medgar followed [his brother] Charles into the Army during World War II. He was assigned to a segregated field battalion in England and France.

Although some black soldiers refused to come back from France where they were treated as equals, some vowed to return fighting. As Medgar said to his brother after a racial incident, “When we get out of the Army, we’re going to straighten this thing out!” (2)

In 1946, after three years of distinguished military service, Evers received an honorable discharge, finished high school, and