In the early morning, just hours after President John F. Kennedy’s speech on national television in support of civil rights, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers.
On June 21, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens’ Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan), was arrested for Evers’ murder.
Juries composed solely of white men deadlocked on De La Beckwith’s guilt twice that year.
In 1994, 30 years after the two previous trials had failed to reach a verdict, De La Beckwith was brought to trial based on new evidence.
Medgar Wiley Evers was an African American civil rights activist involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi.
