Ghosts of Mississippi Movie (true story)

2011-11-27T06:08:00.001-08:00

Real Story Ghosts of Mississippi is Based On

2011-11-27T06:08:00.000-08:00

As she sat on the witness stand, staring down at the small color photograph in her lap, Myrlie Evers' hands quivered slightly. The wood-paneled courtroom was silent. Mrs. Evers paused, drew in a breath and then spoke, her clear voice cracking for the first time that day. "Yes," she said, "this is Medgar in his casket." The photograph showed the exhumed body of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who had been shot and killed in 1963; even in his coffin he wore a gold N.A.A.C.P. pin on his lapel. Evers had been taken from his grave, and his widow had been called to testify because white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was on trial for his murder.

Twice in 1964 Beckwith walked free after all-white juries deadlocked. Indeed, exactly 30 years ago to the day--Jan. 27--Beckwith's first trial had begun. Back then Mrs. Evers sat in this same Hinds County courtroom and saw former Governor Ross Barnett embrace Beckwith in full view of the jury. She watched while Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and expert marksman, winked, smiled and clowned through both trials. But today "Delay," as his friends call him, now 73, sat stonefaced. In his lapel he wore a Confederate-flag pin. He strained to hear Mrs. Evers as she recounted her husband's final moments.

Shortly after midnight on a balmy June night, she said, she and the Evers' three young children, who had waited up after listening to President Kennedy give a speech on civil rights, heard Medgar's Oldsmobile pull into the driveway. Then a rifle fired from a honeysuckle thicket some 200 ft. away. Myrlie ran to the door and saw her 37-year-old husband, bloody and dying, slump toward the steps, his car keys still in hand. His arms had been laden with T shirts reading JIM CROW MUST GO. The children ran out, crying "Daddy, Daddy, please get up, Daddy!" When he died, Mrs. Evers noted in her testimony, Medgar Evers was working for the simplest things: to have black school-crossing guards, to make it possible for blacks to try on hats and clothes in department stores.

The rifle was an Enfield 30.06, and Beckwith's fingerprint was found on the scope; his white Valiant was seen parked nearby; he later bragged at a Ku Klux Klan meeting, "Killing that nigger gave me no more inner discomfort than our wives endure when they give birth to our children." Yet he has remained free.

Until the trial, Mrs. Evers had not seen her husband's accused killer face to face in 30 years. "It was very traumatic," she said. "I can't find the words right now about what my feelings were. I simply can't. It was terribly emotional. I felt ill. I actually felt physically ill...And determined--determined to see this thing through...I'm going the last mile of the way with Medgar, and that's what it's all about."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beckwith dies

The Sixties' anti-communist who vowed he would never be reconstructed has died without breaking his promise.

Byron de la Beckwith, 80, imprisoned in the death of Sixties' minority agitator Medgar Evers, succumbed at the University Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi after a lengthy battle with heart ailments.

In a 1994 interview with All The Way newspaper, Beckwith, a wounded World-War-II Marine hero of the South Pacific, said "I'll never apologize for being an American. I'll never say I'm sorry for fighting for my country. I'll never quit or back down from standing up for freedom."

Beckwith was appealing his conviction by an affirmative-action jury, in which non-minorities were forcibly excluded, as well as seeking a pardon.

Richard Barrett, who visited Beckwith in prison and who was circulating the Beckwith Pardon Petition, said that "like a true Marine, Byron de la Beckwith was defiant against every enemy of our country and he kept his honor clean, up to the very end."

Throughout his third retrial, Beckwith defiantly wore a Confederate flag. Hinds County District Attorney Ed Peters said that the only reason Beckwith had been tried again was because the venue had turned Negro.

The panel, which was denounced as an "Ojay" jury, was made up of eight minorities, three American women and one American man.

Beckwith, a staunch segregationist and former candidate for Lieutenant Governor, had told reporters at the time of his arrest that "I didn't kill the nigra, but he's gone and he ain't coming back."

Body broken, but not spirit

According to Barry Hackney, "The Lord rescued him from the disgraceful persecution he was victimized by. His body was broken, but his spirit never succumbed. He was a proud and faithful American to the end."

Hackney added that "a hallmark of communism is that the noblest and best are hounded and persecuted, while degenerates and misfits are praised and empowered. When freedom fails, the best men rot in filthy jails."

Barrett, who produced the Redemption cable-television series interviewing Beckwith, said that a Beckwith Posthumous-Pardon Petition drive had begun, based on Beckwith's war-record and the need to abolish affirmative-action juries.

"Ojay-style juries shouldn't be allowed to whitewash Marion Barrys or blackball Byron de la Beckwiths," Barrett said. "Bus people in from the suburbs, if you have to, for there to be justice on juries and majority rule in America."

Beckwith died unreconstructed, with the Confederate and Lithuanian flags of "rebellion" displayed defiantly on the walls of his cell at the state prison in Brandon.

Beckwith, a retired fertilizer salesman, once sold the anti-communist newspaper, The Southern Review, door-to-door. He became a luminary in the now-defunct White Citizens Council.

Once convicted by an all-Negro, five-member jury, Beckwith made history when he had the law thrown out as unconstitutional on the grounds that there must be at least six members on the panel. He remained a constitutional-law buff, avid reader and prolific writer, despite physical and mental disabilities in later years.

Ever the optimist, Beckwith concluded his interview with these prophetic words: "The politicians made it this way, at the highest levels, not me. We're all paying the price. But I know we're still going to win."

Medgar Evers Photos

2009-05-01T04:54:00.001-07:00

Myrlie Evers Photos

2009-05-01T04:51:00.000-07:00

Ghosts of Mississippi movie

Ghosts of Mississippi Movie (true story)

Real Story Ghosts of Mississippi is Based On

Medgar Evers Photos

Myrlie Evers Photos