Life
NAACP to honor Medgar Evers’ memory to mark 50 years after his assasination
NAACP leaders from around the United States are honoring the memory of the group’s former Mississippi leader, Medgar Evers, nearly 50 years after he was assassinated outside his Jackson home.
NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous and board chairwoman Roslyn Brock helped Evers’ widow lay a wreath of yellow and white flowers Thursday at the modest one-story house, now a museum.
Myrlie Evers-Williams told nearly 200 people that she and her husband knew his civil rights work put his life in danger in a deeply segregated state, and he had endured threats. She said the night before he was slain, they sat in their home and he made her promise she’d take care of their three young children if anything should happen to him.
Evers-Williams said she vividly remembers hearing the shot that cut down her 37-year-old husband in their carport on June 12, 1963, blowing a hole in his chest. He died a short time later at a Jackson hospital. She and the children were up past midnight, waiting for him, and she said all she could do was scream.
“Fifty years later, it is almost as fresh to me as it was that night,” Evers-Williams said.
The NAACP board is meeting in Jackson for the first time in 30 years. It chose the city because of the 50th anniversary of the Evers assassination.
The NAACP meeting started Wednesday and goes through Saturday. Several other events are planned in Mississippi and Washington, D.C., to mark the Evers anniversary in the next few weeks.
