Civil Rights Leader Medgar Evers example essay topic

Medgar Evers Prejudice is an unfavorable opinion or feeling, formed beforehand (e. g., before even meeting a person) based on non-personal characteristics (e. g., skin color, religious, gender). One form of prejudice is racism. Racism is negative attitudes and values held by people about other people based on their race. It is this attitude which causes one to discriminate against another. Discrimination is treating people unfavorably on the basis of race, color or sex. Prejudice and discrimination were prevalent in the 1950's and 1960's.

This era was a time of hatred, a time of violence, a time when black people were colonized by the white colonizer, and it was a time of white-on-black racial violence. Because of this hatred, the whites discriminated against the blacks. The purpose of this paper is to show, how white-on-black racial violence, arising out of the 1950's and 1960's, caused Medgar Evers, a Civil Rights Leader, to lose his life while fighting for his equality for the blacks in his state, how his murderer was allowed to walk free, and how finally after thirty years a racial injustice, turns into justice. In order to accomplish this I will first explain the discrimination in the 1950's and 1960's, who Medgar Evers was, what he accomplished, about the person who assassinated him, and the long fight to right a racial injustice.

During this time in southern states, black people were not allowed to vote. They could not go into restaurants or other public places inhabited by whites. They had to use separate water fountains, separate bathrooms, separate churches, and even go to separate schools. Blacks had to sit in the back of buses and other forms of public transportation.

If they had a seat and there were no empty ones left when a white person entered a bus or other seated area, the blacks had to stand or get off. This was evident when three black men were at the courthouse and there were no seats left in the front row and they had to stand so that the white children could be seated. There were also extensive literacy tests that had to be passed. Again, many of these 'free' blacks had ancestors that were slaves.

They were not taught to read. Therefore, they could not teach their children or grandchildren to read. It was thought that blacks were automatically dumb because of their color, therefore, they were not allowed to do anything but menial tasks (such as chopping wood) and hard labor. Unfortunately, many Americans today have never heard the name of Medgar Evers, a man who willingly, and literally, put his life on the line of hate that divided the races in the South.

Ironically, many young Americans, including African Americans, who grew up after these turbulent years have forgotten leaders, such as Medgar Evers, who brought about the powerful tides of change. Medgar Evers was born in 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi. After serving in the U.S. Army, he began to establish local chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (better known as the NAACP), whose primary focus is the protection and enhancement of the civil rights of African Americans and other minorities, while attending Alcorn A&M College. (NPR). In 1952, after graduating college, he sold insurance in rural Mississippi.

It was during this time that he grew enraged at the oppression of the black people in his state and became more active in the NAACP where he became the first field secretary in Mississippi, where he struggled to bring equality to his home state of Mississippi. A state in which he loved with hope and rarely with despair, and it was his hope that sustained him, a state with such blatant discrimination that blacks dared not even speak of civil rights, much less actively campaign for them. Evers recalls a time in 1954, when he witnessed an attempted lynching. He states, My father was on his deathbed in the hospital in Union, Mississippi, Evers stated, 'The Negro ward was in the basement and it was terribly stuffy. My Daddy was dying slowly, in the basement of a hospital and at one point I just had to walk outside so I wouldn't burst. On that very night a Negro had fought with a white man in Union and a white mob had shot the Negro in the leg.

The police brought the Negro to the hospital but the mob was outside the hospital, armed with pistols and rifles, yelling for the Negro. I walked out into the middle of it. I just stood there and everything was too much for me... It seemed that this would never change.

It was that way for my Daddy, it was that way for me, and it looked as though it would be that way for my children. I was so mad I just stood there trembling and tears rolled down my cheeks. (Galegroup). Evers, a thoughtful and committed member of the NAACP, wanted to change his native state. He was determined to fight segregation in all its aspects. He traveled throughout the state recruiting members and organizing voter-registration drives and economic boycotts.

He used civil disobedience to highlight the injustice of the violent segregationist system. He was blunt, and his demands were radical. In his dealings with whites and blacks alike, Evers spoke constantly of the need to overcome hatred, to promote understanding and equality between the races. It was not a message that everyone in Mississippi wanted to hear. (galegroup).

According to the Galegroup website, Evers was featured on a nine-man death list in the deep South as early as 1955. He and his family endured numerous threats and other violent acts, making them well aware of the danger surrounding Evers because of his activism. Still, he persisted in his efforts to integrate public facilities, schools, and restaurants. He organized voter registration drives and demonstrations. He spoke eloquently about the plight of his people and pleaded with the all-white government of Mississippi for some sort of progress in race relations.

To those people who opposed such things, he was thought to be a very dangerous man. 'We both knew he was going to die,' Myrlie Evers said of her husband in Esquire. 'Medgar didn't want to be a martyr. But if he had to die to get us that far, he was willing to do it.

' Although he lived in a place of such blatant discrimination, Medgar worked continuously despite the threats of violence that his speeches gave rise to. Through marches, prayer vigils, picket lines, sit-ins, signed petitions, and demonstrations, Medgar Evers fought for school segregation, the right to vote, and he advocated boycotting merchants who discriminated. (gale group). The white Mississippians' response to the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's, was one of intimidation, open defiance, verbal abuse, political deceit and, above all, violence. Evers was committed to his cause, to change his native state and gave much of himself to this struggle, and in 1963, he paid for his convictions with his life, becoming the first major civil rights leader to be assassinated in the 1960's. Shortly after midnight on June 12, 1963, after returning from a successful rally, he pulled into his driveway and as he stepped out of his car, he was shot in the back by a sniper hiding in the bushes and left to die bleeding to death in front of his wife and children.

Blacks and Whites from all over the nation attended Medgar's funeral. (think quest). Immediately after Evers death, the shotgun that was used to kill him was found in bushes near his house with the fingerprints (still fresh) of Byron de la Beckwith, a vocal member of a local white-supremacist group, who was charged with his murder. (gale group). He was arrested and convicted, but he was set free in 1964 after two trials resulted in hung juries despite the evidence against him, which included an earlier statement that he wanted to kill Evers. Twenty years later, in 1989, information surfaced that suggested the jury in both trials had been tampered with. Myrlie Evers-Williams, Evers widow, a civil rights activist who recently served as chairman of the NAACP has been fighting for justice since the murder of her husband. She stated, "Somewhere in Mississippi lives the man who murdered my husband.

For it is not just that he murdered a man, he murdered a very special man-special to him, special to many others, not just special to me as any man is to his wife. And he killed him in a special. He is not just a murderer. He is an assassin" (Evers).

She fought for 30 years to bring her husbands' assassin to justice. She hoped and prayed for Beckwith's conviction. People would say, Let it go, it's been a long time. Why bring up all the pain and anger again? She explained", but I can't let it go, it's not finished for me, my children or my grandchildren. I walked side by side with Medgar in everything he did this new trial is going the last mile of the way" (NPR) It did.

Beckwith continued to publicly deny killing Evers, but his explanations failed to sway a new generation of Mississippi prosecutors who reopened the case in 1989 at the prompting of Evers' widow. The assistant District Attorney, with the help of Myrlie began putting together a new case. (NPR). The impact of the assassination of Medgar Evers changed the course of the civil-rights struggle. The fear that the blacks had was now replaced with anger, and hundreds of demonstrators marched in protest. Medgar Evers death resulted in President Kennedy asking Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill, which President.

Lyndon Johnson signed into law the following year. Evers' death, as his life had, contributed much to the struggle for equality. (gale group). In America, Mississippi was once the leader in the number of lynchings. Today Mississippi leads in the number of elected black officials.

(NPR). According to the Arlington Website, e "Forty years after Medgar Evers' assassination, his widow would like him to be remembered not just as a leader in the early civil rights movement in Mississippi, but also as a champion of the basic rights of citizenship for all Americans. The right to vote, the right to send their children to good schools and the right to live without fear and intimidation shouldn't be taken for granted" (Arlington). After the assassination of Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers, it took 31 years for his killer to be brought to justice - but in that time, the state has changed a great deal. Once the leader in the number of lynchings in America, today Mississippi leads in the number of elected black officials (NPR). At the time of Medgar Evers death in 1963, only 28,000 blacks were registered voters, in 1971, there were 250,000, and in 1982, there were more than 500,000.

(NPR). Many tributes have been paid to Evers to include books, a Hollywood film, statues, a street named after him, and a college also named after him. From the conflict theorist point of view the system is working because of the conflict. Through the speeches, the sit-ins, the petitions, and the boycotting, Medgar Evers overthrew the Social Functionalist System in which they were living. He accomplished change through praxis, "the only way we are going to make a change is to change the system". Medgar Evers was a martyr to the cause of the Civil Rights Movement.

Bibliography

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Medgar Evers: (1925-1963) Civil Rights Activist.
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Nossiter, Adam. Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. Don Mills, Ontario: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994.
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Peoples, Melanie. "The Legacy of Medgar Evers: 40 Years After Civil rights Leader's Death, a changed Mississippi". 10 June 2003.
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Think Quest Website. "Medgar Evers". Retrieved 20 Feb 2005.