Medgar Evers was born in 1925 in Decatur,Mississippi . He was the next to last child born in the family of a four to a small farm owner. He grew up in one of the more racially tense states in the South during the 50s and 60s. Mississippi was considered to be a supercharged beast of inhumanity. At an early age, Medgar Evers learned of how inhospitable white people were when he the white kids riding by in a school bus would throw things at them as they were walking to school. Medgar Evers got another lesson of the cruelties of Mississippi when a family friend was lynched for arguing with a white women at the Decatur Fairgrounds. The man's bloody clothes were left on the fence to remind the other blacks that their place was beneath the "white man".

In spite of all this tyranny and opression, Medgar Evers graduated from high school and joined the US Army. He was discharged in 1946 with an honorable discharge. Upon his return to Mississippi, he was astonished to found out that nothing had really changed in the state of Mississippi. White people still felt like white were to be subservient to them. Mr. Evers along with his brother Charlie attempted to vote and were confronted by a white mob of 100+ people.

This event led Medgar Evers and his brother to join the NAACP. He became an active member even while he was in college at Alcorn A&M College in Lorman,Mississippi. He graduated in 1952 with a degree in business administration and got a job as an insurance salesman close to his hometown where he and his new wife,Mrs. Evers(Myrlie Beasley), made a comfortable living. This was the beginning of a career as an activist for Equality and Human Rights began.

In 1954 while his father was on his death bed at a hospital in Union, a black man had got into a fight with a white man in Union and was shot in the leg by a white mob. The police officers had bought the man to the hospital where Evers' father was to be attended to, but a mob was outside waiting to string the man up. This event was a culmination of things that would compel Medgar Evers quit his job as an insurance man and become a full-time chapter organizer. Within two years, he became the State Field Secretary for the NAACP. After this appointment, he moved his family to Jackson, Mississippi where Evers worked closely with black church leaders and other civil rights activists. He received constant telephone threats because of his tireless efforts. It got so bad that Medgar taught his kids to drop down on the floor when noises where heard outside of the house.

Medgar Evers was shot in the back on June 12, 1963, after returning late from a meeting. He was 37 years old. He was shot in the back by , Byron de la Beckwith, an outspoken opponent of integration and a founding member of Mississippi's White Citizens Council. He was tried twice in the sixties, but acquitted both times in a hung jury. He was later tried again in the 90s where he was found guilty. It was a fitting end to one of America's tragic and unjust stories. Mr. Evers made a radio speech two weeks before his death that summed up what his ideas where. Evers delivered a radio address about the NAACP and its aims in Mississippi. "The NAACP believes that Jackson can change if it wills to do so," he stated, as quoted in Martyrs. "If there should be resistance, how much better to have turbulence to effect improvement, rather than turbulence to maintain a stand-pat policy. We believe that there are white Mississippians who want to go forward on the race question. Their religion tells them there is something wrong with the old system. Their sense of justice and fair play sends them the same message. But whether Jackson and the State choose to change or not, the years of change are upon us. In the racial picture, things will never be as they once were."