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Women Civil Rights Activists

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The quest for civil rights for people of all races and economic backgrounds has been a fundamental part of U.S. history.

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Civil Rights Timeline

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United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

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Family Life & Youth Media Relations Migration and Refugee Services Communications Cultural Diversity

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Relations Human Resources International Justice and Peace Justice

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Catechesis General Counsel Anti-Trafficking Program Canonical Affairs and Church Governance Catholic Campaign for Human Development Catholic Education Catholic News Service Child and Youth Protection Children and Migration Clergy

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Church Divine Worship Doctrine Domestic Social Development Ecumenical

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United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration Policy National Collections National Religious Retirement Office New American Bible Pro-life Activities Religious Liberty Resettlement Services

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Rebuilding the Bridge: African American Affairs' 50th Anniversary Initiative

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Rebuilding the Bridge: African American Affairs' 50th Anniversary Initiative to commemorate the Civil Rights Movement milestones

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Deconstructing a Prompt

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Medgar Evers Questions

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Ole Miss( James Meredith) and Medgar Evers

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Medgar Evers video

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Shortly after midnight on June 12, 1963, NAACP field secretary and civil rights leader Medgar Evers was gunned down in the driveway of his Jackson, Mississippi, home at the age of 37. His murder, which came just hours after President John F. Kennedy's famed civil rights address, shocked a nation, and has inspired dozens of songs, poems, books and films in the 50 years since. As we honor his life and legacy, here are seven things you should know about Medgar Evers.

1. Evers was a World War II veteran who participated in the Normandy invasion.
Born in Decatur, Mississippi, on July 2, 1925, Medgar Evers was the third of five children born to farmer and sawmill worker James Evers and his wife Jesse. Evers left high school at the age of 17 to enlist in the still-segregated U.S. Army, eventually rising to the rank of sergeant. In June 1944, Evers' unit was part of the massive, post D-Day invasion of Europe, and he served in both France and Germany until his honorable discharge in 1946. Due to his wartime service, Evers was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors following his death in 1963.

2. He was the NAACP's first field secretary in the South.
Returning to Mississippi after the war, Evers attended Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University) on the G.I. Bill, earning honors as one of the most successful students in the nation. After moving to nearby Mound Bayou, Evers worked as an insurance agent and began attending meetings of a local civil rights organization, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL). In 1954, the same year the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education struck down racial segregation in public schools, Evers became one of the first blacks to apply for admission to the University of Mississippi Law School. When Evers' application was denied on a technicality (the school claimed that he had failed to include the required letters of recommendations), Evers approached the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for help. NAACP Mississippi State Conference leader E.J. Stringer was so taken with Evers' poise and determination that he instead offered him a position as the organization's first field secretary in the state. Evers accepted, and by December 1954 he had opened an office in Jackson where within three years he had nearly doubled NAACP membership in Mississippi to more than 15,000.

3. One of Evers' first assignments was investigating the murder of Emmett Till.
In August 1955, the Chicago-born Till (just 14 years old and visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi) was kidnapped by a group of white men after reportedly flirting with the wife of a local shopkeeper. Three days later, Till's beaten and disfigured body was found in a nearby river; he had been shot in the head, and weighted down with a metal fan in an attempt to hide his body. In Chicago, Mamie Till Bradley's insistence on a well-publicized, open-casket funeral for her son brought the plight of African Americans in the South to newspapers across the country. In Mississippi, the NAACP, fearful that the highly segregated sheriff's office wouldn't mount much of an effort to catch Till's white murderers, launched their own investigation. Medgar Evers and two other field workers, Ruby Hurley and Amzie Moore, tracked down potential witnesses to the events leading up to and including Till's abduction. They convinced several people to come forward, keeping them in protective custody when they testified at the 1955 trial of two men accused of killing Till, and then shepherding them out of town in secrecy when the all-white jury returned a verdict of "not guilty" after deliberating for just an hour.

4. Evers helped integrate Ole Miss.
Seven years after Medgar Evers own failed attempt at gaining admittance to the University of Mississippi, he was instrumental in finally desegregating the school through his work with James Meredith. Meredith, who like Evers had approached the NAACP for help after being denied admission, had taken his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor in 1962. That September, Meredith, accompanied by Evers, other NAACP members and a protective phalanx of U.S. marshals and federal troops, tried to register for classes, setting off a riot among the mob gathered to prevent him from matriculating. In response, President John F. Kennedy sent in more than 30,000 National Guardsmen, and two people were killed in the melee, but Meredith was successfully admitted and graduated the following year (having previously earned credits at another school). Evers' involvement in the integration of Ole Miss gained nationwide attention, and garnered him the enmity of local white segregationists.

5. Evers was shot just hours after President Kennedy had delivered a landmark speech on civil rights.
By the summer of 1963, Evers had spent nearly nine years organizing voter registration drives and leading boycotts of segregated Mississippi businesses. His efforts had been met with more than hostility: Weeks before his death a Molotov cocktail had been thrown through a window in his home, and he'd been injured when a car tried to run him down outside his NAACP office. But Jackson, Mississippi, wasn't the only American city caught up in the civil rights struggle. The violent response to protests in Birmingham, Alabama, which included the turning of fire hoses on thousands of schoolchildren, followed by the refusal of Alabama Governor George Wallace to admit African-American students to the University of Alabama, put increased pressure on President Kennedy to act. On June 11, Kennedy took to the airwaves, delivering an address from the Oval Office calling for Congressional action in the area of civil rights, defining the cause-for the first time-as a moral, and not purely legal, issue. Millions of Americans were glued to their sets, including Medgar Evers wife Myrlie and two of his three children. Evers was at an organizational meeting at a local church and returned home shortly after midnight, less than four hours after Kennedy's address. As he walked to his door he was shot once in the back, dying less than an hour later. Kennedy himself would be killed just five months later, but the reforms he had laid out his speech that night would become the most sweeping social justice legislation in American history as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

6. It took 31 years to bring Evers' assassin to justice.
Following Evers' death, demonstration broke out in Jackson, followed by a larger riot during his funeral procession, when police violently clashed with a crowd of more than 5,000 mourners. Just two weeks after the assassination, Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the local White Citizen's Council, was arrested for Evers' murder. The following year, all-white juries twice failed to convict De La Beckwith, stating they were deadlocked. De La Beckwith, who reportedly bragged about his role in the murder and even unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor of Mississippi, remained free until the 1990s when, based on new evidence gathered by Myrlie Evers-Williams and others, the case was reopened. In February 1994, De La Beckwith was finally convicted, this time by a racially mixed jury, and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 2001 at the age of 90. The decades-long effort to bring De La Beckwith to justice was dramatized in the 1996 film "Ghosts of Mississippi."

7. Medgar Evers' widow has carried on his legacy.
Myrlie Evers-Williams (she remarried after Medgar's death) had worked alongside her husband at the NAACP and has continued her civil rights work to the present day. After two unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Congress, the California-based Evers-Williams was elected chairperson of the NACCP shortly after Byron De La Beckwith's conviction, successfully overhauling the century old organization's finances. Once named Ms. Magazine's Woman of the Year, Evers-Williams is the founder of the Medgar Evers Institute in Jackson, Mississippi, and in January 2013, nearly 50 years after her husband's murder, she delivered the invocation at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama.

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7 Things You Should Know About Medgar Evers

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Shortly after midnight on June 12, 1963, NAACP field secretary and civil rights leader Medgar Evers was gunned down in the driveway of his Jackson, Mississippi, home at the age of 37. His murder, which came just hours after President John F.

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Barbara Johns

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The Conk Hairstyle

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Civil Rights Propaganda

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PROPAGANDA POLITICAL CIVIL RIGHTS RACISM COMMUNISM BLACK LIBERATION NEW FINE ART PRINT POSTER PICTURE 30x40 CMS CC3985

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US Propaganda

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Nazi Propaganda

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Great Balls of Fire

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Great Balls of Fire-Jerry Lee Lewis-original song-1957

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Rockin' Robin

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Under the Boardwalk

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Yakety Yak

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Character Types PPT

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Green Book Questions

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Bellwork:

Monday: Making Predictions: Based on the type of parents that Kenny and Byron have, what do you think will be the parent’s reaction to Byron signing for the free food at the grocery store? Why do you believe they will react in this way? Provide textual evidence to prove your answer.

Tuesday: Character Perspectives: Momma and Joetta are both upset by Byron’s new hairstyle, but for different reasons. What are the different reasons? Why do they feel this way? Give textual evidence to back up your response.

Wednesday: What does it mean to act fairly and just? When troublesome situations happen, how can we be sure to treat all people fairly?

Thursday: Do you believe that Byron should be sent to live with Grandma Sands for the summer? What about for an entire school year? What would you do as a parent in order to help Byron act correctly?

Friday: What was your method for studying the vocabulary  and TWGTB for the test today?  When and where did you find time to study?

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Vocabulary D-E
TWGTB Chapters 6-9

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Deconstruction of a Prompt

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Propaganda PPT

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Vocabulary D-E

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Jim Crow Era

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the Rise and Fall of Jim Crow - TeacherTube

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Emancipation ended slavery but only to replac

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Character trait Chart

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"The Green Book"

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Green Book Article

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In Soul Food Junkies (airing 10 p.m. Jan. 14 on Independent Lens; check local listings), filmmaker Byron Hurt briefly describes what it used to be like for African Americans to travel in the United States. He talks about how blacks would take along boxed lunches in order to avoid being turned away from restaurants or dining cars. And he mentions in passing a guide called The Negro Motorist Green Book, later known as The Negro Travelers' Green Book, or more commonly, simply The Green Book.

Because of the limitations of the film's length, the documentary couldn't devote much time exploring this sidebar in black history. So we decided to delve a little more deeply into the guide many considered indispensable for safe and "embarrassment-free" travel.

The Green Book, which was published from 1936 until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, listed establishments across the U.S. (and eventually North America) that welcomed blacks during a time when segregation and Jim Crow laws often made travel difficult - and sometimes dangerous.

"Carry The Green Book with you. You may need it," advises the cover of the 1949 edition. And under that, a quote from Mark Twain, which is heartbreaking in this context: "Travel is fatal to prejudice."

The Green Book became very popular, with 15,000 copies sold per edition in its heydey. It was a necessary part of road trips for many families.

As horrendous as some of the issues African Americans were faced with, the guide referred to them in a sideways, almost genteel way. Here's an excerpt from the introduction to the spring 1956 edition:

Millions of people hit the road each year, to get away from their old surroundings, to see and learn how people live, and meet new and old friends.

Modern travel has given millions of people an opportunity to see the wonders of the world. Thousands and thousands of dollars are spent each year on various modes of transportation. Money spent in this manner brings added revenue to tradesmen throughout the country.

The white traveler has had no difficulty in getting accommodations, but with the Negro it has been different. He, before the advent of a Negro travel guide, had to depend on word of mouth, and many times accommodations were not available.

Now things are different. The Negro traveler can depend on The Green Book for all the information he wants, and has a wide selection to choose from. Hence this guide has made traveling more popular, without encountering embarrassing situations.

The tone was the same throughout the guide's history. Wendell P. Alston wrote in the 1949 edition that, "The Negro traveler's inconveniences are many and they are increasing because today so many more are traveling, individually and in groups." Inconveniences? Embarrassments? They abounded, to be sure, but the guide tended not to directly allude to the genuine dangers faced by black travelers in certain areas.

" T he Green Book, with its list of hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, beauty shops, barber shops and various other services can most certainly help solve your travel problems," Alston wrote. "It was the idea of Victor H. Green, the publisher, in introducing T he Green Book, to save the travelers of his race as many difficulties and embarrassments as possible."

Green, a Harlem postal worker and activist, thought of the guide in 1932, and four years later the first edition rolled out. Writes Novera C. Dashiell in the spring 1956 edition:

The idea crystallized when, not only himself but several friends and acquaintances complained of the difficulties encountered; oftentimes painful embarrassments suffered which ruined a vacation or business trip.

Our leaders and educators look forward to the day when as a racial group, we will enjoy the rights and privileges guaranteed us, but as of now withheld in certain areas of these United States.

In looking ahead...A trip to the moon? Who knows? It may not be so improbable as it sounds. A New York scientist is already offering for sale pieces of real estate on the moon. When travel of this kind becomes available, you can be sure your Green Book will have the recommended listings!

Green and others involved in the book had a wish that the publishers of most guidebooks and periodicals don't: They looked forward to the time they would have to cease publishing.

"There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published," Green himself wrote in one introduction. "That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States."

For further reading: Click here to see the 1949 book in its entirety. The spring 1956 edition is available online. An award-winning book, Ruth and the Green Book, is an excellent fictional introduction to The Green Book for children. And here's an interactive map of the listings in the 1956 edition.
What are your thoughts about The Green Book? Do you find it hard to believe such a book was still necessary in the Mad Men and Kennedy eras? Did you or anyone you know anyone who used The Green Book? Please share your experiences!

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'Green Book' Helped Keep African Americans Safe on the Road

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In Soul Food Junkies (airing 10 p.m. Jan. 14 on Independent Lens; check local listings), filmmaker Byron Hurt briefly describes what it used to be like for African Americans to travel in the United States. He talks about how blacks would take along boxed lunches in order to avoid being turned away from restaurants or dining cars.