NEW
Font size
WorksheetsThe Medgar Evers Story
Total questions: 10
Worksheet time: 10mins
Because Medgar Evers' killer, Byron de la Beckwith was never found "not guilty" after his first two trials, he was able to stand trail again in 1994, and was finally convicted of the murder. The legal term that describes the way that the killer was able to escape justice was the requirement that all 12 jurors must agree on a verdict. What is the term for when a trial is concluded because all 12 jurors cannot agree on a verdict?
Hung Jury
Double Jeopardy
Compromise Verdict
Illegal Judgement
What statement is something Medgar Evers would have said?
After my killer had gone unpunished for 31 years, he was finally tried and convicted for my murder in 1994. My wife, Myrlie, worked tirelessly to see that my attacker was brought to justice... at last!
The man I had thought was my murderer, Byron de la Beckwith had been dead for 31 years, before new evidence proved that he actually innocent of the crime. The DNA recovered at the scene did not match de la Beckwith's. Today, the case still remains unsolved.
After I helped Rosa Parks win the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, and attended Ernest Green's High School graduation in 1958, I led the famous March on Washington DC in August 28, 1963.
I helped stop the racists who attempted to murder 4 young children at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama. A year later I helped elect Alabama's first African American Governor in 1965.
Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963. Where did the murder take place?
On the evening of June 12, 1963, after coming home from work, he was shot in back by a sniper hiding behind a tree. He died on the driveway of his modest home in Jackson, Mississippi.
While leading a March on Montgomery on June 30, 1964, Alabama's capital city, he was shot by an unknown shooter on the front steps of the Capitol building. He died on the way to the hospital.
While driving to work on June 12, 1963, he was kidnapped by members of the Alabama Klu Klux Klan (KKK). His body was found in a shallow grave near Philadelphia Mississippi.
On the morning of June 12, 1963, Evers was assaulted by a mob of angry white racists. His injuries were so severe, he died three days later.
Who was the racist murderer arrested for the murder of Medgar Evers? It took 31 years before he was finally convicted of the crime.
Byron de la Beckwith
Orval Faubus
James Earl Ray
Lee Harvey Oswald
Due to his high-profile position with the NAACP, Medgar Evers became a target for those who opposed racial equality and desegregation. He and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. At 12:40 a.m. on June 12, 1963, Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home. He died less than a hour later at a nearby hospital. Where did this tragedy take place?
Jackson, Mississippi
Median, Mississippi
Philadelphia, Mississippi
Birmingham, Alabama
While a virtual unknown elsewhere, Evers was one of Mississippi's most prominent civil rights activists. What were some of his accomplishments?
He fought racial injustices in many forms, including how the state and local legal system handled crimes against African Americans. Evers called for a new investigation to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who had allegedly been killed for talking to a white woman. He also protested the conviction of his fellow Mississippi civil rights activist Clyde Kennard on theft charges in 1960.
He earned a small fortune running a popular R&B radio station in Biloxi, Mississippi. He used his fortune to stock local food banks for the homeless, started a legal defense fund for African Americans unfairly charged with crimes, and led the fight to get several Jim Crow laws repealed by the Mississippi state legislature.
Along with three of his old college friends, he led a boycott of the de la Beckwith Department stores, that refused to treat African Americans customers fairly. After about 6 weeks, the stores hired more African American workers and gave African Americans customers who had purchased defective merchandise full refunds.
He helped free a young African man in Meridian Mississippi, Harold Jameson, who had been arrested and fined for asking a white woman on a date. Evers got the conviction reversed and forced the Meridian Police Department to pay $4000 in damages.
Which of these items was not evidence against Byron de la Beckwith's first trial in 1963?
A rifle found near the crime scene was registered to Beckwith and had his fingerprints on the scope,
Several witnesses placed de la Beckwith in the area
Byron De La Beckwith was a white segregationist and founding member of Mississippi's White Citizens Council. He bragged to his friends about shooting Evers
Evers wife, Merli Evers, identified de la Beckwith a the person she saw running away from the scene when she ran outside to find her husband's body on their driveway.
In 1989, the question of de la Beckwith's guilt was again raised when a Jackson newspaper published accounts of the files of the old Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, an organization that helped raise support keep segregation the law in Mississippi. What was the evidence they found that allowed authorities to once again charge de la Beckwith with Evers' murder?
The new investigation located several new witnesses, including several men who would eventually testify that Beckwith had actually bragged to them about the murder.
The new investigation found DNA evidence, that was not available at de la Beckwith's first trial, that proved that de la Beckwith had loaded the rifle shells that police founds found behind the tree that de la Beckwith was hiding when he shot Evers.
31 years later in 1994, as a terminally ill patient in a nursing home, de la Beckwith confessed to the murder to clear his conscience before he died.
The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission's files showed how de la Beckwith lawyers had bribed three African American jurors to vote de la Beckwith not guilty at his first two trials in 1964.
How have Medgar Evers's contributions to the civil rights movement have been honored?
His wife created what is now known as the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute in Jackson, Mississippi, to continue the couple's commitment to social change.
A statue of Medgar Evers replaced a statue of General Robert E Lee, a Confederate General in front of the Jackson Mississippi Court House.
Myrlie Evers convinced an anonymous donor created a scholarship fund to help young African American men and women attend college after graduating from High School.
Medgar Ever's young son, Tommy was appointed to West Point, the US Military Academy in West Point, New York. The army's new tank battalion, the 306th light Infantry,, the MD-240, was nicknamed the Medgar's Maulers.
Renowned civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. Growing up in a Mississippi farming family, Evers was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. Which statement about Evers is true?
At age, 25, He fought in the Pacific on the USS Missouri during World War II, and after being wounded in the Battle of Iwo Jima, he received an honorable discharge in 1948.
In 1948, he entered Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi.
Evers applied to the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) Law School in February 1954. After being accepted, he worked with Thurgood Marshall to integrate Ole Miss' Law School and gradauted in 1958
As state field secretary, Evers traveled around Mississippi extensively. He recruited new members for the NAACP and organized voter-registration efforts
