Byron De La Beckwith Sr. November 9, 1920 - January 21, 2001) was an American white supremacist and a member of the Clan of Greenwood, Mississippi, who murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Two trials in 1964 on this charge resulted in a jury hang out. In 1994, he was tried by the state in a new trial based on new evidence; he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Seven years after being convicted of killing Evers, De La Beckwith died in prison in 2001 at the age of 80.
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De La Beckwith was born in Colusa, California, son of Susan Southworth Yerger and Byron De La Beckwith Sr., who was the head of the post office of the town. His father died of pneumonia when he was five years old. A year later, De La Beckwith and his mother settled in Greenwood, Mississippi, to be close family. Her mother died of lung cancer when she was 12 years old, leaving her an orphan. He was raised by his mother's uncle William Greene Yerger and his wife.
Maps Byron De La Beckwith
Military services
In January 1942, De La Beckwith enrolled in the United States Marine Corps, serving as a machine-gunner in the Pacific theater of World War II. He fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal and was shot at the waist during the Battle of Tarawa. De La Beckwith was dismissed with respect in August 1945.
Marriage and family
After serving in the Marine Corps, De La Beckwith moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where he married Mary Louise Williams. The couple moved to Mississippi, where they settled in his hometown of Greenwood. They have a son, Delay De La Beckwith. De La Beckwith and Williams divorced. He later married Thelma Lindsay Neff.
Careers
De La Beckwith works as a seller for most of his life, selling tobacco, fertilizers, wood stoves, and other items. In 1954, following the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Education Council that a separate state school is unconstitutional, it becomes a member of the newly formed chapter of the White Citizens Council. The group was formed in Mississippi that year to fight integration and defend the exceptions of most blacks from the country's political system.
White supremacy activities
The White Citizens Council was established in 1954 after the US Supreme Court ruling that the segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Beginning in Mississippi, chapters appeared in southern cities among whites who wanted to resist integration. Their members use various economic tactics to suppress black activism and maintain segregation. The Council imposed heavy pressure by boycotting black businesses, refusing loans and credit to African Americans, firing people from their jobs, and other means. In Mississippi they prevented school integration until 1964. Although similar to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the White Citizens Council is considered a more reputable association than the KKK because of the lack of physical means as a disposition device.
The state twice demanded De La Beckwith for the murder in 1964, but the two trials ended with a suspended jury. The judges are all men and all white. Mississippi has effectively deprived her since 1890, and they were removed from duty in the jury, whose members were drawn from the voter's list. During the second trial, former Governor Ross Barnett interrupted the trial, handcuffed with De La Beckwith while Myrlie Evers, widow of Medgar Evers, was testifying.
In January 1966, De La Beckwith, along with other members of the Ku Klux Klan White Knights, was summoned by the House's Unity Committee of Activities to testify about the Klan's activities. Although De La Beckwith gave his name when asked by the committee (another witness, like Samuel Bowers, asked the Fifth Amendment in response to the question), he answered no other substantive questions. In the following years, De La Beckwith became a leader in the Phineas segregationist Priesthood, a branch of the Christian Identity Church of white supremacy. This group is known for its hostility towards African-Americans, Jews, Catholics, and foreigners.
According to Delmar Dennis, who acted as a key witness for prosecution in the 1994 trials, De La Beckwith boasted his role in Medgar Evers' death at several KKK meetings and similar meetings in the years after his betrayal. In 1967, he did not succeed in finding a Democratic nomination for Mississippi Lieutenant Governor.
In 1969, Beckwith's allegations were fired earlier. In 1973, the informer informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation that De La Beckwith planned to kill A.I. Botnick, director of the New Orleans-based B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, in retaliation for Botnick's comments about the South and race relationships. After a few days of surveillance, New Orleans Police officers stopped De La Beckwith as he traveled by car at Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge to New Orleans. Among the contents of his vehicle were several weapons loaded, maps with directions highlighted to Botnick's house, and dynamite time bombs. On August 1, 1975, De La Beckwith was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder; he served nearly three years at Angola Prison in Louisiana from May 1977 until he was released in January 1980. Just before entering his prison to serve his sentence, De La Beckwith was ordained by Rev. Dewey "Buddy" Tucker as minister at the Temple Memorial Baptist Church, the Christian Identity congregation in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In the 1980s, Jackson Clarion-Ledger published a report on his investigation into the courts of De La Beckwith in the 1960s. It was found that the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a state institution backed by a resident tax and purportedly to protect the country's image, has assisted lawyer De La Beckwith in his second trial. The Commission has worked against the civil rights movement in various ways. In this case, he uses state resources to investigate the jury members during the voir dire so that defense can try to select the best judge. Findings on the illegal role contributed to De La Beckwith's re-trial by the state in 1994.
De La Beckwith planned a more direct action than an economic boycott. On June 12, 1963, at the age of 42, he killed the NAACP and civil rights leader Medgar Evers shortly after the activists arrived home in Jackson. Beckwith was positioned across the street with Enfield 306 caliber, and he shot Evers in the back. Evers died an hour later, aged 37 years. Myrlie Evers, his wife, and three children, James, Reena, and Darrell Evers, were at home at the time of the murder.
Myrlie Evers was remembered as she looked at her husband, saying,
"When Medgar was hit by the shot and I rushed out and saw him lying there and people from the neighborhood began to gather, there were also some white ones that had happened.I do not think I ever hated as much of my life as I did at the time it was with anyone who had white skin.I shouted at the neighbors and when the police finally got there, I told them that they had killed Medgar.And I can remember so much desire to have a machine gun or something in my hand and just stand up there and cut it all out I just - I can not explain the depth of my hatred at that moment.
His son, Darrell, remembers that night clearly: "We are ready to welcome him, because every time he comes home it is special to us, he travels often at that time, suddenly we hear gunshots.We know what happened,. Darrell and the other kids ran to the bathroom to hide in the tub. The three children have been taught by their parents and forced to practice rehearsals for safety before the death of their father because of threats against him and two previous attacks at home.
1994 experiment for Evers murder
Myrlie Evers, who later became the third woman to lead the NAACP, refused to leave her husband's case. When new documents indicate that the judges in the previous case were illegally investigated and screened by state agencies, he pressured the authorities to reopen the case. In the 1980s, reporting by Jackson Clarion-Ledger about the previous Beckwith trial resulted in the state advancing a new investigation. It finally started a third prosecution, based on this and other new evidence.
At this time, De La Beckwith lives in Signal Mountain, Tennessee. She was extradited to Mississippi for trial at the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson. Prior to the trial, "Beckwith, a 71-year-old white supremacist, has asked judges to dismiss the case against him on the grounds that it violates his right to a speedy trial, legal process and the protection of double harm." The court ruled against the muse by 4 to 3 votes, and the case was scheduled to be heard in January 1994.
During this third trial, a killer weapon was presented, Enfield caliber.30-06, with Beckwith's fingerprint. Beckwith claims that the gun was stolen from his home. She noted her health problems, high blood pressure, lack of energy, and kidney problems, saying "I need a list to read everything I suffered, and I hate to complain because I am not the type to complain." The 1994 state court was held before a jury of eight blacks and four whites. They punished De La Beckwith for first-degree murder for killing Medgar Evers. New evidence includes testimony that he had boasted the killing at the Klan rally, and that he also bragged the murder to others for three decades since the crime took place. Physical evidence is essentially the same as that presented during the first two trials.
De La Beckwith appealed to the guilty verdict, but the Supreme Court of Mississippi reinforced the verdict in 1997. The court said that 31 years between De La Beckwith's assassination and conviction did not deny it as a fair trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder without the possibility of parole. De La Beckwith called for a re-examination at the Supreme Court of the United States, but was denied certiorari.
On January 21, 2001, De La Beckwith died after being transferred from prison to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi. He is 80 years old. She suffered from heart disease, high blood pressure, and other illnesses for some time.
Representation in other media
Where Does It Come From? (1963), a short story by Eudora Welty, was published at The New Yorker on July 6, 1963. Welty, from Jackson, Mississippi, then said:
Whoever the killer is, I know him: not his identity, but he came, in this time and place. That is, I should have learned now, from here, what a man like that, who intends to do so, has gone on in his mind. I wrote the story - my fiction - to the first person: about the character's perspective.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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