Medgar Evers, JFK, and the University of Alabama: Remembering the events of June 1963

It is not always easy to view disparate events and see how they are connected. That is one of the challenges we face as a people. Fortunately, today we have three seemingly disparate events that surely can be recognized and connected.

On June 11, 1963, Vivian Malone and James Hood were formally registered at the University of Alabama, racially desegregating it. That act, however, culminated only after a long hard-fought battle on the part of many. Malone of Monroe County, AL and Hood of Gadsen, AL had to drum-up the courage to face the Jim Crow environment of 1963 Alabama. The federal district court had to issue an order that would overrule local segregation law. Governor George Wallace defied the court’s order, even physically standing in the doorway to block the students’ entrance. President John Kennedy had to federalize troops in order to carry out the court’s order.

June 11, 1963, thus entered the history books of Alabama, the U.S.A., Black America, and the world. This week marks the 63rd anniversary of the event.

During the evening of June 11, 1963, President Kennedy addressed the nation, citing the difficulty in getting Alabama, the last of the Jim Crow states, to desegregate its higher education system. In addition to citing that problem, he announced that he was in the process of introducing to Congress what would eventually become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In a stirring 30-minute speech, President Kennedy scolded white America for the moral problem that was racial discrimination. He indicated it was time for Congress to act, since the executive and judicial branches had now taken steps to resolve the problem. In what some consider his most powerful speech as president, Kennedy outlined the things that needed to be addressed, including public accommodations, public facilities, employment, and voting. (Voting, nevertheless, had to await a separate voting rights bill.)

What Kennedy said and did that evening went down in history, the history of America, of Black America, and of the world. This week marks it 63rd anniversary.

Beyond the desegregation of the University of Alabama and the proposing of a major civil rights bill, those events, along with the desegregation of the University of Mississippi by James Meredith a year earlier and the acceleration of the civil rights movement, with the apparent blessing of the Kennedy administration, were being watched by Jim Crow advocates and practitioners across the country. Especially noted among them was Byron De La Beckwith.

Beckwith, who was living in Greenwood, MS at the time, apparently took it upon himself to help halt the civil rights movement by traveling to Jackson, MS, lying in wait and assassinating Mississippi’s NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers. This he did on June 12, 1963, the very next day after the enrollment of Malone and Hood at the University of Alabama and the national address by Kennedy. (Having commemorated the assassination of Evers for all of these years, the details are still vivid in the minds of many elderly Mississippians.) This week marks the 63rd anniversary of the fatal act of murdering Medgar Evers.

As citizens remember Medgar Evers this year, perhaps they may tie together the three listed events (the desegregation of the University of Alabama, the introduction of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the assassination of Evers), recognizing that they are direct links in the chain of racial oppression in America, especially as manifest in the deep south, before our very eyes.