On this day, 12 June 1963, Medgar Wiley Evers, a Black civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, was shot in the back and killed by Byron De La Beckwith as he pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting in the early morning.
Beckwith, a white supremacist and member of the White Citizens’ Council, was arrested, but when he was put on trial – twice – by all-white juries, they were all illegally screened and investigated by the state beforehand. The former governor of the state interrupted the second trial to shake his hand while Evers’ widow, Myrlie, was testifying. So Beckwith walked free, and for years boasted about the murder at KKK rallies. He also unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination as a gubernatorial candidate.
However, after years of campaigning by Myrlie, she succeeded in getting the case reopened, and in 1994 Beckwith was eventually convicted and put in prison where he died a few years later. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1737572516427891/?type=3
“No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (via philosophybits)
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