Battle at North Foreland
June 12th 0028 Gaius Carrinas' triumphant procession through Rome
June 12th 1442 King Alfonso V of Arag¢n occupies Naples
June 12th 1523 Frisian rebel leader Jancko Douwama arrested
June 12th 1534 Turkish adm Chaireddin "Barbarossa" allows Giulia Gonzaga to kidnap & plunder Naples
June 12th 1552 Land guardians of Netherlands attacks Verdun
June 12th 1553 King Edward VI accept archbishop Cranmers "42 Articles"
June 12th 1575 William of Orange marries Charlotte de Bourbon
June 12th 1653 -13] Battle at North Foreland: English fleet beats Dutch
June 12th 1665 English rename New Amsterdam, NY, after Dutch pull out
June 12th 1667 -13] Michiel de Ruyter destroys English fleet
In Births:
June 12th 1468 Juan del Encina, composer
June 12th 1519 Cosmos de Medici, art patron (Accademia del Disegno)
June 12th 1526 Marc-Antoine de Muret, composer
June 12th 1599 Jan W van Brederode, governor (Hertogenbosch)/fieldmarshal
June 12th 1771 Patrick Gass, Falling Springs PA, sgt of Lewis & Clark Expedition.
In Deaths:
June 12th 0816 Leo III, Italian Pope (795-816), dies
June 12th 1231 Antonius van Padua, [Fernando M de Bulhom], Port minister, dies at 35
June 12th 1490 Adriaan Vilain II of Rassegem, peace of Tours, murdered at about 39June 12th 1616 Cornelis F Schuyt, Dutch organist/composer (Madrigalen), dies
June 12th 1675 Charles Emanuel II, Duke of Savoy (1638-75), dies at 40
June 12th 1963 Medgar Evers, NAACP official, shot in Jackson Miss at 37
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Medger Evers dies 45 years ago today
Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi. He became active in the civil rights movement after returning from overseas service in World War II and completing secondary education; he became a field secretary for the NAACP.
Evers was assassinated by White Citizens' Council member Byron De La Beckwith and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.[2][3] His murder and the resulting trials inspired protests, as well as numerous works of music, film and other art.
Life
Medgar Wiley Evers was born July 2, 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi, the son of Jesse and her husband, James Evers, who was the owner of a small farm and a sawmill worker. Evers was the third of five children, after Charles and Elizabeth. His sister Ruth was the youngest.[4] The family also included Eva Lee and Gene, Jesse’s children from a prior marriage. After the lynchings of family friends, Evers became determined to get the education he deserved, so he walked 12 miles to and from school to earn his high school diploma.[5] In 1943 he was inducted into the army along with his older brother, Charlie.[6] Evers fought in the European Theatre of WWII, including in France. He was honorably discharged in 1945 as a Sergeant. In 1946, he, along with his brother and four friends, returned to his hometown.
In 1948 he enrolled at Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University), a historically black college, majoring in business administration. In college, he was on the debate team, played football and ran track, sang in the school choir, and served as president of his junior class. He was listed in Who’s Who in American Colleges based on his many accomplishments.[7]
He married classmate Myrlie Beasley on December 24, 1951, and received his BA degree the following year. Myrlie Beasley and Medgar Evers had three children, two boys and a girl. In 2001, their oldest son, Darrell Kenyatta Evers, died of colon cancer[1]. Their two surviving children are Reena Denise and James Van.
Activism
The couple moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where T. R. M. Howard had hired him to sell insurance for his Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. Howard was also the president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a civil rights and pro self-help organization. Involvement in the RCNL gave Evers crucial training in activism. He helped to organize the RCNL's boycott of service stations that denied blacks use of their restrooms. The boycotters distributed bumper stickers with the slogan "Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom." Along with his brother, Charles Evers, Medgar also attended the RCNL's annual conferences in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1954 which drew crowds of ten thousand or more.[8]
Evers applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi Law School in February 1954. When his application was rejected, Evers filed a lawsuit against the university, and became the focus of an NAACP campaign to desegregate the school, a case aided by the United States Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 that segregation was unconstitutional. That same year, due to his involvement, the NAACP's National Office suggested he become Mississippi’s first field secretary for the NAACP.
NAACP field secretary
On November 24, 1954, Evers was appointed Mississippi’s first field secretary. President of the NAACP Mississippi State Conference and civil rights activist, E.J. Stringer, helped him gain this position.[4]
Evers was involved in a boycott campaign against white merchants and was instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of Mississippi when that institution was finally forced to enroll James Meredith in 1962.
The admission of Meredith led to a riot on campus that left two people dead. Evers’ involvement and investigative work made him a target of white supremacists. In the weeks leading up to his death, the hostility directed towards him grew. His public investigations into the murder of Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard made him a prominent black leader and therefore vulnerable to attack. On May 28, 1963, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home. On June 7 1963, Evers was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the Jackson NAACP office.
Assassination
In the early morning of June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights, Evers pulled into his driveway just after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go," Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917 rifle that ricocheted into his Jackson, Mississippi home. He staggered 9 meters (30 feet) before collapsing. He died at a local hospital 50 minutes later.[9]
Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors in front of a crowd of more than 3000 people.
On June 23, 1964, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan, though the Klan was not yet operating in Mississippi during Evers' life), was arrested for Evers' murder. During the course of his first trial in 1964, De La Beckwith was visited by former Mississippi governor Ross Barnett and one time Army Major General Edwin A. Walker.
Juries composed solely of white men twice that year deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt.
In 1994, 30 years after the two previous trials had failed to reach a verdict, De La Beckwith was again brought to trial based on new evidence, and Bobby DeLaughter took on the job as the prosecutor. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for autopsy and found to be in a surprisingly good state of preservation as a result of embalming.[3] De La Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, after having lived as a free man for much of the three decades following the killing (though he was imprisoned on an unrelated charge from 1977 to 1980). De La Beckwith appealed unsuccessfully, and died at age 80 in prison in January 2001.
BY: TODAY IN HISTORY AND WIKIPEDIA
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