Evers was born July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, the third of the five children (including older brother Charles Evers) of Jesse (Wright) and James Evers. The family included Jesse's two children from a previous marriage. The Evers family owned a small farm and James also worked at a sawmill. Evers walked twelve miles to attend segregated schools, eventually earning his high school diploma.

Medgar Evers lived with the constant threat of death. A large Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist population were present in Jackson and its suburbs. The risk was so high that before his death, Evers and his wife Myrlie had trained their children on what to do in case of a shooting, bombing or other kind of attack on their lives. Evers, who was regularly followed home by at least two FBI cars and one police car, arrived at his home on the morning of his death without an escort. None of his usual protection was present, for reasons unspecified by the FBI or local police. Many believe that many members of the police force at the time were members of the Klan.  In the early morning of June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's nationally televised Civil Rights Address, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Evers's family had worried for his safety the day of his assassination and Evers himself had warned his wife that he felt himself in a greater danger than usual. When he arrived home, Evers's family was waiting for him and his children exclaimed to his wife, Myrlie, that he had arrived. 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; the bullet ripped through his heart. Initially thrown to the ground by the impact of the shot, Evers rose and staggered 30 feet (10 meters) before collapsing. His wife Myrlie was the first to find him outside of their front door. He was taken to the local hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, where he was initially refused entry because of his race. His family explained who he was and he was admitted; he died in the hospital 50 minutes later. Evers was the first African American to be admitted to an all-white hospital in Mississippi, a questionable achievement for the dying activist. Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors before a crowd of more than 3,000.  After Evers was assassinated, an estimated 5,000 people marched from the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street to the Collins Funeral Home on North Farish Street in Jackson. Allen Johnson, Reverend Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders led the procession. The Mississippi police came prepared with riot gear and rifles in case the protests turned violent. While tensions were initially high in the stand off between police and marchers, both in Jackson and in many similar marches around the state, leaders of the movement maintained nonviolence among their followers.

Ask a question about this article.
What happened the day he died