From Normandy to Guynes Street

In 1944, Medgar Evers landed at Normandy as a nineteen-year-old soldier, fighting for the freedom of people he had never met. He came home to Mississippi and discovered he still could not vote. So he began a second war — this time without a rifle.

As NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, Evers investigated the murder of Emmett Till, organized voter registration drives, and challenged segregation in Jackson's public facilities. The threats came daily. A Molotov cocktail was hurled at his home in May 1963. Friends urged him to leave the state. He refused.

On the night of June 12, 1963, Evers pulled into his driveway on Guynes Street in Jackson, carrying an armload of "Jim Crow Must Go" T-shirts. A bullet from a high-powered rifle struck him in the back. He was thirty-seven years old.

Psalm 37:28 promises, "For the Lord loves the just and will not forsake His faithful ones." Evers' assassination looked like forsaking. Yet his blood watered seeds he had planted across Mississippi — seeds of voter registration, desegregation, and dignity that bore fruit for generations.