Medgar Evers - HISTORY

As an NAACP field secretary, Medgar Evers became a target for those who opposed racial equality and desegregation. On June 12, 1963 at 12:40 a.m., Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.

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In 1954, Medgar Evers became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As a civil rights leader, he fought to end the racial injustice he experienced growing up in the South.

On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church as church members prepared for Sunday services. The racially motivated attack killed four young girls and shocked the nation.

On September 29, 1962, as measures are taken to safely transport James Meredith to the University of Mississippi where he will enroll in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding desegregation of the institution, President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy make a series of phone calls to Gov. Ross Barnett who has openly defied the Court's ruling. In one secretly recorded call that day, Attorney General Kennedy gets exasperated when the governor shoots down his idea for crowd control.

Gov. George Wallace holds a press conference to argue against integration of the state's public schools. Almost 10 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to desegregate schools, Alabama had still not complied. On June 11, 1963, Wallace made national news when he stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama to block African-American students from entering.

Newsreel footage of former Alabama Governor George Wallace standing against desegregation while being confronted by federal authorities at the University of Alabama in 1963.

W.E.B. Dubois was integral to the advancement of racial equality.

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