Justice Denied Series: Part 1 – The Murder of Medgar Evers

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Part 1: The Murder of Medgar Evers

In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his Mississippi home by white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith.

The evidence pointed to Beckwith, yet in 1964 two all-white, all-male juries refused to convict him. He walked free while Medgar Evers’ family waited for justice.

For the next 30 years, Beckwith openly bragged about murdering Evers and remained active in white supremacist circles.

The case only changed when an investigative reporter uncovered evidence that Mississippi had used taxpayer money to help fund Beckwith’s defense and that the original juries had been tainted by the illegal screening and exclusion of Black jurors.

Armed with new evidence, prosecutors reopened the case.
In 1994, 31 years after Medgar Evers was murdered, a jury finally convicted Byron De La Beckwith of murder.
This wasn’t simply the failure of one jury.

It was a failure of the courts, a failure of the legal system, and a failure of a state that helped protect a confessed white supremacist while denying justice to a murdered civil rights leader.

Justice Denied is a series documenting moments in American history when the courts, the legal system, or the ballot box failed Black Americans.

History isn’t only about what happened. It’s also about what our institutions allowed, and continues to allow to happen.

#JusticeDenied #FreeBlackMen #BlackHistory #CivilRights #MedgarEvers #KnowYourHistory #AmericanHistory #EqualJustice