On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers, a noted civil rights leader and Mississippi field secretary for the National Association of Colored People, was shot and killed in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Evers had led voter registration drives, worked to integrated higher education in Mississippi, and organized boycotts of merchants who operated racially segregated facilities in Jackson. His widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams who later remarried, served as national chair of the NAACP from 1995 to 1998.
On January 11, the United States Department of Interior designated Evers’ home as a national historic landmark. The announcement of the decision stated that “both Medgar and Myrlie were major contributors to advancing the goals of the civil rights movement on a national level. Medgar Evers was the first nationally significant civil rights leader to be murdered.”
The Evers’ ranch-style home in Jackson (pictured below) has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2000. It has been operated as a museum by historically Black Tougaloo College. Funding for this museum has come from state grants and private donations. Now with the designation as a national historic landmark, the museum will be eligible for federal grants and tax breaks.
