James Charles Evers was an American civil rights activist, businessman, radio personality, and politician. Evers was known for his role in the civil rights movement along with his younger brother Medgar Evers. After serving in World War II, Evers began his career as a disc jockey at WHOC in Philadelphia, Mississippi. In 1954, he was made the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) State Voter Registration chairman. After his brother's assassination in 1963, Evers took over his position as field director of the NAACP in Mississippi. In this role, he organized and led many demonstrations for the rights of African Americans.
James Howard Woods is an American actor. He is known for fast-talking intense roles on stage and screen. He received numerous accolades including three Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. He started his career in minor roles on and off-Broadway before making his Broadway debut in The Penny Wars (1969), followed by Borstal Boy (1970), The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1971), and Moonchildren (1972). Woods' early film roles include in The Visitors (1972), The Way We Were (1973) and Night Moves (1975). He starred in the NBC miniseries Holocaust (1978) opposite Meryl Streep.
Medgar Wiley Evers was an American civil rights activist and the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi. He was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith.
Ross Robert Barnett was an American politician, 53rd governor of Mississippi from 1960 to 1964. He was a Democrat who supported racial segregation.
Byron De La Beckwith Jr. was an American from Greenwood, Mississippi known for the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Evers was the first NAACP field secretary in the state.
The Citizens' Councils were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash against the US Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The first was formed on July 11, 1954. The name was changed to the Citizens' Councils of America in 1956. With about 60,000 members across the Southern United States, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of public schools: the logical conclusion of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
William Lowe Waller Sr. was an American politician and attorney. A Democrat, Waller served as the 56th governor of Mississippi from 1972 to 1976. Born near Oxford, Mississippi to a farming family, Waller went to law school and in 1950 established a law practice in Jackson. Nine years later, he was elected District Attorney of Hinds County, Mississippi. Waller attempted to reform the position and provoked the ire of local law enforcement for aggressively prosecuting several cases. In 1964, he twice prosecuted Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, with both trials resulting in deadlocked juries. In 1967, he launched an unsuccessful campaign for governor, finishing fifth in the Democratic primary.
Maryanne Vollers is an American author, journalist and ghostwriter. Her first book, Ghosts of Mississippi, was a finalist in non-fiction for the 1995 National Book Award. Her many collaborations include the memoirs of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dr. Jerri Nielsen, Sissy Spacek, Ashley Judd, and Billie Jean King. Her second book on domestic terrorism, Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph – Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw, was published in 2006. A former editor at Rolling Stone she has written articles for publications such as Esquire, GQ, Sports Illustrated, Time,and The New York Times Magazine.
Samuel Holloway Bowers Jr. was an American white supremacist who co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard. Previously, he was a Grand Dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, appointed to his position by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Bowers was responsible for instigating and planning the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner by members of his Klan chapter near Philadelphia, Mississippi, for which he served six years in federal prison; and the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, 32 years after the crime. He also was accused of being involved in the 1967–1968 bombings of Jewish targets in the cities of Jackson and Meridian. He died in prison at the age of 82.
Myrlie Louise Evers-Williams is an American civil rights activist and journalist who worked for over three decades to seek justice for the 1963 murder of her husband Medgar Evers, another civil rights activist. She also served as chairwoman of the NAACP, and published several books on topics related to civil rights and her husband's legacy. On January 21, 2013, she delivered the invocation at the second inauguration of Barack Obama.
Ti-Hua Chang is a Chinese American broadcast journalist based in New York City since 1989. He was the climate change investigative reporter for TYT Investigates.
Jerry W. Mitchell is an American investigative reporter formerly with The Clarion-Ledger, a newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi. He convinced authorities to reopen many cold murder cases from the civil rights era, his investigations providing the basis for prosecutions, prompting one colleague to call him "the South's Simon Wiesenthal". In 2009, he received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation.
For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story is a 1983 American made-for-television biographical film based on the 1967 book, For Us, the Living, by Myrlie Evers-Williams and William Peters. It was broadcast on the PBS television program American Playhouse on March 22, 1983.
Robert Burt DeLaughter Sr. is a former state prosecutor and then Hinds County Circuit Judge. He prosecuted and secured the conviction in 1994 of Byron De La Beckwith, charged with the murder of the civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Two earlier trials in Mississippi in 1964 had resulted in hung juries.
Eugene Hunter Hurst Jr. was an American, dairy farmer, and politician from Amite County, Mississippi. Elected as a Democrat to the Mississippi House of Representatives for a single term in 1959, Hurst supported segregation and opposed the civil rights movement, which had expanded into Amite County by the early 1960s.
"Sweet, Sweet Blues" is an episode of the NBC drama series In the Heat of the Night, starring Carroll O'Connor as Chief Bill Gillespie and Howard Rollins as Detective Virgil Tibbs. In the Heat of the Night was based on the 1965 novel by John Ball, which was also the basis for the Academy Award winning film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, directed by Norman Jewison.
The history of the 1954 to 1968 American civil rights movement has been depicted and documented in film, song, theater, television, and the visual arts. These presentations add to and maintain cultural awareness and understanding of the goals, tactics, and accomplishments of the people who organized and participated in this nonviolent movement.
The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, also known as Medgar Evers House, is a historic house museum at 2332 Margaret Walker Alexander Drive within the Medgar Evers Historic District in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. Built in 1956, it was the home of African American civil rights activist Medgar Evers (1925–1963) at the time of his assassination. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2017. The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed March 12, 2019, by President Donald Trump, authorized it as a national monument; it was established on December 10, 2020, after the National Park Service (NPS) acquired it from Tougaloo College.
The Last White Knight is a documentary by Canadian filmmaker Paul Saltzman about his meetings with Delay de la Beckwith, son of Byron de la Beckwith, who assassinated Medgar Evers. In the film, Saltzman also interviewed Harry Belafonte, Morgan Freeman and others active in the civil rights movement. Belafonte's line, “People tell me that things have changed. And yet, I don’t trust Mississippi", is a key line from the film.
