Medgar Evers

Shortly after midnight on June 12, 1963, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in the carport of the home that he shared with his wife Myrlie and their three young children in Jackson, Mississippi. His death, the first murder of a nationally significant leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, heightened public awareness of civil rights issues and became a catalyst for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Today on America's National Parks, our newest National Park Service Unit, the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson, Mississippi.