Residence of Civil Rights Icon Evers Named as a Nationwide Monument | Jackson Free Press

By Last updated Dec 28, 2020

The historic home of the murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers is now a national monument, announced the US Secretary of the Interior and members of the Mississippi congressional delegation on Thursday. File photo of Trip Burns

JACKSON, miss. (AP) – The historic home of the murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers is now a national monument, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and members of the Mississippi congressional delegation said Thursday.

The name for the house of Medgar and Myrlie Evers was requested by a President Donald Trump who signed in March 2019.

The Home Office said in a press release Thursday that Tougaloo College transferred ownership of the house to the National Park Service in June. The humble ranch-style home in Jackson is currently closed to the public, but valet parking plans to open it to visitors in the coming months.

Medgar Evers was the Mississippi NAACP leader when he was murdered outside the house in June 1963 while his wife Myrlie and their three children were inside.

US Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, the only black member of the current Mississippi Congressional delegation, worked for 16 years to make the Evers home a national monument.

“The name of his home is an eternal tribute to his legacy,” Thompson said in a statement. “Mr. Evers was an inspiration to all Americans by devoting his life to others and fighting against racism and discrimination.”

Medgar Evers was a World War II veteran who fought in Europe and returned to his home in Mississippi, where he was again subjected to severe segregation. As the first Secretary of State for the NAACP in Mississippi from 1954, he led voter registration campaigns and boycotts to promote racial equality. He also investigated lynchings, beatings, and other acts of violence suffered by black residents by white segregationists.

Myrlie Evers was national chairwoman of the NAACP from 1995 to 1998. After living in Mississippi for the past few years, she moved back to California, where she raised three children after the death of her father.

“Medgar Evers was a true American hero who fought the Nazis in Normandy and fought racism with his wife Myrlie on the home front,” said Home Secretary David L. Bernhardt The United States is a more perfect union, and for that we should all be grateful be. “

In 1993, the Evers family donated House Tougaloo, a historically black college that was a center of civil rights activism. The three bedroom house stood empty for years after the family moved away in the 1960s, and it was restored in the mid-1990s. It’s now filled with mid-century furniture and one of the bedrooms shows the family history. A bullet hole has remained visible in a kitchen wall.

White supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was tried twice for the Evers murder in the 1960s, but all-white juries were bogged down. The case was reopened in the early 1990s after new witnesses were produced. In 1994, an integrated jury convicted Beckwith of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Beckwith died in 2001.

The National Park Service named the Evers House a National Historic Landmark in 2016. In a joint statement with Thompson on Thursday, Republican American Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith also praised the house’s national monument status.

“The home of Medgar and Myrlie Evers is a permanent reminder of the legacy of the Evers family, whose contributions advanced the cause of justice in our nation,” said Wicker.

Hyde-Smith said, “This new national website will also recognize the common pursuit of equality and justice in Mississippi and our nation.”