r/history • u/AntiBullshyt • 20d ago
The assassination of Medgar Evers Article
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/medgar-evers31
u/tysons1 20d ago edited 20d ago
My father was the FBI ballistics expert who testified in both trials. He came out of retirement to testify in the second trial (and so had to cancel his flight from DC to California, to attend my wedding) Special Agent Richard J. Poppleton. Edit: The ONLY reason Beckwith was finally convicted is because he bragged to so many people that he killed Evers.
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u/AntiBullshyt 20d ago
Damn that's crazy. What do you think about his role? What exactly did he say?
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u/tysons1 16d ago edited 16d ago
I am proud that he did it. It was impossible for a white man to get convicted of killing a black man around the time (and before) the assassination occurred, because southern blacks could not then vote, and voting records were used to get jury members, so only whites got to be on juries, and the south was full of good ol' boys. My dad couldn't determine the bullet came from Beckwith's gun because the bullet was so mangled when it hit more than one bone in Mr Evers, but there was more than enough other evidence to have convicted Beckwith if the jury would have been neutral. My dad knew (but it was no secret) that there was no way Beckwith was going to be convicted (in the south, in 1964, for killing a black man). When Beckwith was finally convicted, in 1994, attitudes in the south weren't as nearly as harsh/ugly towards blacks, and with no additional evidence, except that Beckwith had been bragging about killing a ni***r for 30 years. My dad had some good stories about some of the trials he was involved in (he worked in FBI headquarter's ballistics lab, and traveled around the country to testify), and sometimes brought home slides or videos of crime scenes or autopsies, and he would now and then take me to the lab on weekends if he only had a little work to do then, and I saw some fascinating evidence a couple times, and I have quite a few memories of being able to pick a firearm out of the extensive FBI lab firearm repository and then being able to shoot it, with my dad with me of course, in the shooting range that was in the basement of the FBI Building. Dad never let me shoot the Thompson submachine gun on anything other than single fire :) ... J Edgar Hoover was the Director the entire time my dad worked there, and Hoover was a fanatical hardass, who would reprimand or fire a Special Agent for making spelling mistakes on internal reports, or not keeping his car clean, or not going to church on Sunday, etc...
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u/ChesswiththeDevil 20d ago
I met his wife in high school. This was just after the Ghosts of Mississippi was released. She was lovely and it was a really neat experience to talk with her.
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u/Red_dragon_052 20d ago
While I respect the FBI's work in bringing at least some Justice in many civil rights cases, it cannot be forgotten that the FBI also murdered civil rights activists who they felt were to radical: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
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u/Insterstellar 20d ago
The FBI didn't bother prosecuting until 1990 even though they knew who did it decades earlier.
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u/facetiousfulloffeces 20d ago
This was my first thought, too. It's like the FBI is excited to point to a civil rights era murder that doesn't have Cointelpro directly linked to it.
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u/Obvious-Extreme9098 20d ago
The FBI caused much problems than they solved, still do.
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u/SeiCalros 20d ago
bruv civil rights abuses might be worth mentioning but they definitely dont cause more problems than they solve - like literally every kidnapping across state lines for example - upwards of 500 cases every year
hell they rescued 33 kidnapped kids in one anti human trafficking sting last january
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u/Obvious-Extreme9098 20d ago
“1.2 million children are trafficked every year.”
Tell me about those 33 kids tho
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u/SeiCalros 19d ago
that sting was particularly exceptional because most kids are victims of their parents but only 1 out of those 33 was a non custodial parental kidnapping
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u/LordShax47 20d ago
They definitely have done far more good than bad, and in a government as powerful as ours that’s something to be at least be positive about.
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u/P99_Spacepope 20d ago
Yeah.....no. Remember when Hoover kept secret files on the American public and tried to use that illegally gathered information to get martin luther king Jr to commit suicide in threatening letters? They are secret police like the gestapo.
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u/Diogenes56 20d ago edited 20d ago
Hoover was not a good person. He directed the FBI’s mission when it did some shameful things. The harassment of King, Jean Seberg; its role in events that led to Fred Hampton.
Hoover has also been dead for half a century. The FBI has done massive amounts of good since his tenure. In destroying organized crime (most famously in NYC). In anti-terrorism efforts, globally (the biggest terrorist plot in Canada in decades, the VIA rail plot, was foiled by an undercover, muslim FBI agent, not the RCMP) and domestically (Unabomber, Eric Rudolph and countless others). In civil rights cases (not just Medgar Evers, but the Mississippi Burning case, the Birmingham church bombing, Emmett Till).
And they succeed so often because they are pretty innovative, as the incredible story about the encrypted phones they made and sold to members of the global criminal underworld who then incriminated themselves!
Your take on the FBI is shallow.
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u/Obvious-Extreme9098 20d ago
and domestically (Unabomber, Eric Rudolph and countless others). In civil rights cases (not just Medgar Evers, but the Mississippi Burning case, the Birmingham church bombing, Emmett Till).
What? They solved the cases years latter when they could have prevented half or not instigated most?
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u/Diogenes56 20d ago edited 20d ago
“Later”
Someone might point out that you don’t seem to be very familiar with 1. the extremely difficult task of identifying perps in these incredibly complex cases (where evidence is burned or bombed into almost nothing) and 2. building a case that results in conviction in a court of law. Not trying to be mean when I say that, btw.
Your argument seems to be that the FBI deserves no credit because it can’t always prevent crimes from occurring. That they are incompetent because they can’t anticipate or predict all crime. That they aren’t batting 1.000.
Think that over for a bit and tell me if you truly believe that this is a reasonable standard for assessing the achievement and value of any institution (not just the FBI).
In your view, what would a truly successful domestic security/intelligence service worthy of your approval look like?
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u/Obvious-Extreme9098 20d ago
"In destroying organized crime (most famously in NYC)" There is no destroying organized crime in NYC.
"In anti-terrorism efforts, globally (the biggest terrorist plot in
Canada in decades, the VIA rail plot, was foiled by an undercover,
muslim FBI agent, not the RCMP). That's awesome but thats on0
u/P99_Spacepope 19d ago
The fbi won't allow video of interviews. The officers take notes which are presented in court so they can lie about what is said systematically. I hope you never end up being on their bad side or you might regret your advocacy of the secret police.
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u/LordShax47 20d ago
Yeah, I’ll not lie that’s fucked up, but comparing them to the Gestapo is rather sensationalist, especially given how hard they went after White Supremacist groups like the KKK around the same time.
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u/P99_Spacepope 19d ago
Why? Their job is to investigate dissidents such as anti war Americans and convince the mentally ill to accept explosives for anti terrorism headlines and photoshoots. They are part and parcel of the police state and a fair comparison to other secret police throughout history.
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u/banjono 20d ago edited 20d ago
Strangely enough, I met Byron De La Beckwith a time or two. He was the neighbor of a college professor of mine. According to my professor, Beckwith was an unrepentant bigot, stating things such as "Jews eat babies" and the like. Though he never said such things to me, he had the look of a man filled with rage.
Edit:typo
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u/jl55378008 20d ago
Unrelated, but when I was in college in Jackson, Mississippi about 15 years ago, there was an insane story about one of the guys who was allegedly (at the time) one of the Klan members who murdered Cheney, Schwerner, and Goodman in Neshoba County.
He was about to be tried in federal court for the murders. He was eventually convicted (40 years after the fact) in a courthouse across the street from my office. But around 2004 or so, he hadn't been tried yet and was still living free.
He filed for a permit to have a booth at the state fair where he would be signing autographed photos.
Of Cheney, Schwerner, and Goodman.
Yes, he deserved to die, and I hope he burns in hell.
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u/Brad_Wesley 20d ago
What's his name?
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u/coleman57 20d ago
Edgar Ray Killen, according to the wiki for the killings. But he was convicted in state court in 2005, not federal, and he died in the notorious Parchman state prison in 2018. In the federal trial in 1967, he walked because a lone juror stated she "could never convict a preacher". None of the others tried in '67 served more than 6 years.
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u/Harsimaja 20d ago
The end bit there is crazy. When convicted in 2005 he shared a cell with an African American preacher James Heart Stern (convicted of wire fraud after being named by employees involved in the scam... he maintains his innocence) who discussed race, life, God etc. with him. Killen handed over his land and POA to the guy. According to Stern's Wikipedia page, the leader of the National Socialist Movement also went to Stern and handed over his leadership of the NSM to him (a black man) to undermine it, in another attempt at reform (no idea if either was earnest)... It says 'Michigan corporate records' list him as leader, so I assume that means something like majority owner of the associated corporation? All pretty damn nuts if true.
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u/coleman57 19d ago
Yeah, pretty wild. Either a sincere change of heart about the whole racism thing (which does seem to happen most often when racists are forced into close proximity with individuals of other races), or at least the fear of hellfire.
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u/BackwardPalindrome 20d ago
Why did the prosecutor not yeet that woman in selection?
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u/coleman57 20d ago
"Trial...began on October 7, 1967 in the...courtroom of Judge William Harold Cox, ...known to be an opponent of the civil rights movement. Defense attorneys exercised peremptory challenges against all seventeen potential black jurors. A white man, who admitted under questioning by Robert Hauberg, the U.S. Attorney for Mississippi, that he had been a member of the KKK "a couple of years ago," was challenged for cause, but Cox denied the challenge."
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u/jl55378008 20d ago edited 20d ago
I tried to avoid naming him, but since you asked...
Edgar Ray Killen.
I had the good fortune of working in an office overlooking the federal courthouse where he was convicted. Every once in a while I'd look out the window at the news trucks and commotion, and I'd think to myself "that disgusting, murdering, racist motherfucker is going to die in prison."
And I was right.
Now let's do it some more.
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u/WithTheBronco 20d ago
I find it hard to feel joy in the statement from the article that justice had been found when he was finally convicted.
Justice would have been his imprisonment when he murdered Evers. Not finally getting around to it decades later. Better late than never but not exactly justice.
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u/kittypryderama 20d ago
You’re right. De La Beckwith died in 2001, so he served very little time for murder.
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u/Whygoogleissexist 20d ago
He was arrested crossing the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in an attempt to blow up a Synagogue in New Orleans. How do you get out on bail on that?? Crazy. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1977/04/30/byron-de-la-beckwith-held-here-on-louisiana-warrant/da9e16e0-a051-47fe-a917-eec58659bb1a/
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u/mytwocentsshowmanyss 20d ago
I cried when they shot Medgar Evers, the tears ran down my spine
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u/GimmeDatDaddyButter 20d ago
In case people aren't sure what you're referencing:
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u/TempusVincitOmnia 20d ago
There's this one too:
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u/gentlybeepingheart 20d ago
That song came on Spotify when I opened this post! Phil Ochs is so good.
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u/Painting_Agency 20d ago
The Ballad of Medgar Evers, by the legendary Phil Ochs.
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u/Inexorably_lost 20d ago
Another great song about the shooting.
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u/TexehCtpaxa 20d ago
A bullet from the back of a bush,
Took Medgar Evers' blood.
A finger fired the trigger to his name.
A handle hid out in the dark,
A hand set the spark,
Two eyes took the aim,
Behind a man's brain,
But he can't be blamed,
He's only a pawn in their game
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u/PortusMaior 20d ago
They made a good movie about those events in the 90s, Ghosts of Mississippi https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0116410/
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u/insaneHoshi 20d ago
Huh too bad the main character ended up falling from grace:
On March 28, 2008, DeLaughter was suspended from the bench indefinitely by the Mississippi Supreme Court due to allegations of bribery and judicial misconduct.[2] On February 12, 2009, DeLaughter pleaded not guilty to a five-count federal indictment; these charges were linked to the criminal investigation of disgraced tort attorney Richard Scruggs.[3] On July 30, 2009, he pleaded guilty to one obstruction-of-justice charge.[4] On November 13, 2009, DeLaughter was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison by Judge Glen Davidson.[5] In keeping with the recommendation of his plea agreement, Judge Davidson did not impose a financial penalty on DeLaughter due to his negative net worth. He was incarcerated in the federal prison at McCreary[6] and was released on April 13, 2011.
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u/browneyesays 20d ago
It is on hbo max right now. Watched it last night actually for the first time.
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u/Reaper_of_Souls 18d ago
Was surprised no one referenced Ghosts of Mississippi, it’s the reason I’ve always known about this. I had never heard of Medgar Evers before watching it in eight grade and made my whole family watch the movie. Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg and James Woods… you can’t go wrong with that cast.
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u/breakingcups 20d ago
It's crazy that this thread has someone who met the wife, someone who knew the killer and someone who's father is the FBI ballistic expert.
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u/Important_Fruit 20d ago
The article finishes: "The brutal, senseless murder helped galvanize the nation in its steady march towards equality and justice. "
Does anyone believe America has got there yet?
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u/Gravybone 20d ago edited 20d ago
A simple answer to the question you posed: yes.
Clearly a huge number of people BELIEVE that we have achieved that goal, that the civil rights movement somehow “succeeded”, and that racism no longer exists in America (see: liberals are the real racists rhetoric). It’s an extremely ironic viewpoint in that it is racist and ignorant of the real struggle that people of color face still face today in America.
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u/wolfsoundz 20d ago
His home where he was assassinated is now a museum and open to the public (but currently closed due to covid). It’s now a national historic landmark and stylized exactly how it was in 1963.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medgar_and_Myrlie_Evers_Home_National_Monument
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u/b0bsledder 20d ago
It’s good to remember exactly how evil you had to be to merit the designation of “white supremacist” back then.
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u/agentargo 20d ago
There's a college in Brooklyn named after him along with a subway stop.