2-832-182 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Pamphlet consisting of black print on off-white paper. At top, a small bust-length image of Medgar Wiley Evers (1925-1963). At center, an edited photograph depicting protesters massed against a police line. Evers was an American civil rights activist in Mississippi, the state's field secretary for the NAACP, and a World War II veteran who had served in the United States Army. He was shot in the back by Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan). Evers was taken to the local hospital in Jackson, where he was initially refused entry because of his race. After his family explained who he was, he was admitted but died within an hour. Evers was the first African American to be admitted to an all-white hospital in Mississippi. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors before a crowd of more than 3,000 people. De La Beckwith was finally convicted of murder in 1994, having lived as a free man for much of the three decades following the killing.