Perhaps the most famous martyr of the civil rights movement before the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers was gunned down in front of his home in 1963. It took more than 30 years for someone to be convicted of the killing, and that combined with the fact that his widow and brother assumed prominent roles in the civil rights movement kept Evers name in the spotlight long after his death. Evers was the most prominent civil rights leader in the state of Mississippi when he was killed. He was serving as state field secretary of Mississippi Branch of the NAACP at the time of his death, and in that role he was involved in the investigations of lynchings and other civil rights violations across the state.

Evers was born in Decatur, Mississippi in 1925. He enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and...