Synopsis
Born in California in 1920, Byron De La Beckwith spent his formative years in Mississippi. A staunch segregationist and member of the Ku Klux Klan, he infamously shot and killed Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary, on June 12, 1963. Although arrested for the crime, Beckwith faced two all-white juries that failed to reach a verdict in 1964. It was not until 1994 that he was finally convicted of murder. Beckwith remained incarcerated until his death in 2001 at the age of 80.
Early Life
Byron De La Beckwith was born on November 9, 1920, in Colusa, California. Following the death of his alcoholic father in 1926, his mother returned to her hometown of Greenwood, Mississippi. After her passing a few years later, Beckwith was raised by relatives in Greenwood. He experienced several unsuccessful attempts at college before enlisting in the Marines during World War II, where he earned a Purple Heart for his service. In 1945, he married and welcomed a son the following year. Back in Greenwood, Beckwith became involved with the Ku Klux Klan and the segregationist Citizens’ Council, an organization that emerged in response to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.
Killing of Medgar Evers
For a white supremacist like Beckwith, Medgar Evers represented a profound threat. Serving as the field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Evers was a prominent advocate for the Civil Rights Movement and its calls for racial equality. Despite facing numerous threats and acts of violence, Evers and his family chose to remain in Jackson, Mississippi.
On the morning of June 12, 1963, as Evers was returning home and exiting his vehicle, he was shot in the back and succumbed to his injuries shortly thereafter. At the time, Mississippi was rife with tensions between segregationists and civil rights activists, and Evers’s murder garnered significant media attention. Beckwith, whose rifle was discovered at the crime scene along with his fingerprints on its scope, was swiftly apprehended.
Justice Delayed
In Mississippi, the atmosphere surrounding Byron De La Beckwith was notably supportive, as he received numerous letters of encouragement and financial contributions for his defense fund while incarcerated. Additionally, two police officers claimed to have witnessed Beckwith in Greenwood, over 90 miles away from Jackson, on the night of Medgar Evers’s assassination. When Beckwith’s case went to trial in 1964, the jury could not reach a verdict. A retrial later that same year also resulted in a hung jury. Notably, both juries comprised exclusively white men.
Myrlie Evers Williams, the widow of Medgar Evers, remained undeterred in her pursuit of justice for her husband’s murder. Following a 1989 newspaper investigation that revealed evidence of jury tampering by a Mississippi state agency in 1964, she advocated for a new trial. Because Beckwith had faced mistrials rather than acquittals, he was not protected by the double jeopardy clause.
Conviction and Death
In 1990, Beckwith was once again indicted for the murder of Medgar Evers. After years of legal proceedings, he was retried in January 1994. Although Beckwith consistently denied publicly that he had shot Evers, he was less reserved in private conversations. Witnesses testified that Beckwith had boasted about the killing, referring to Evers derogatorily as a “chicken-stealing dog.”
On February 5, 1994, Beckwith was convicted of murder and subsequently sentenced to life in prison. His appeals, which argued that he had been denied his right to a speedy trial, were ultimately unsuccessful. Beckwith remained incarcerated until his death at Jackson’s University Medical Center on January 21, 2001, at the age of 80.