One case of justice served, 1994

Despite attempts to “get beyond” the horrible years of violence against Black people during the Civil Rights Movement, there was one felicitous revisiting of that era in 1994 when a reopened murder case yielded a new verdict.

In 1963, a Black World War II veteran and civil rights activist for the Mississippi state office of the NAACP named Medgar Evers was murdered in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Despite all evidence pointing to a white supremacist named Byron De La Beckwith as the murderer, he claimed the murder weapon was his but that it had recently been stolen from him. He was confident that the all-white jury would not convict him.

During the trial, the former governor of Mississippi appeared in court and—
with the jury watching—walked over to the defendant and greeted him. Not surprisingly in Jim Crow Mississippi, De La Beckwith was found innocent in a court decision before the white jury and was set free.

Myrlie Evers, Medgar’s wife, tried repeatedly over a period of 25 years to bring De La Beckwith to justice, even though most of the evidence from the old trial had disappeared. Three decades after the murder, a young district attorney found new evidence in the case and pursued a new trial in 1994. De La Beckwith was found guilty by a mixed-race jury. He was finally convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison for the killing, three decades late.

The movie “Ghosts of Mississippi” fairly accurately conveys this dramatic story.

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