On the recordFebruary 2, 2010
I support House Resolution 1022. This resolution honors the life and sacrifice of Medgar Evers, and also it congratulates the United States Navy for naming a supply ship after Mr. Evers in 2009. Known today for his struggles in the civil rights movement in Mississippi and his untimely death at the hands of an assassin, Medgar Evers left behind an impressive record of achievement. He was born in 1925 near Decatur, Mississippi, and he entered the United States Army in 1943 and served in Normandy in World War II. He received a B.A. degree in 1952, and began to establish local chapters of the NAACP. He organized boycotts of gasoline stations that refused to allow blacks to use the restrooms there. In 1954, he applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi School of Law. And when his application was rejected, he filed a lawsuit against the university. He became the focus of the NAACP effort to desegregate the school, a case aided by the United States Supreme Court in a ruling of Brown v. Board of Education that segregation was unconstitutional. Evers and his wife eventually moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where they worked together to set up an NAACP office. Evers began investigating violent crimes committed against African Americans, and sought ways to prevent them in the future. His boycott of Jackson, Mississippi merchants in the early 1960s attracted national media attention.
