On Nov. 4, The Washington Informer reported in an online article that Mississippi Congressional leaders are calling on President Joe Biden to bestow Medgar Evers, posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Evers, assassinated in June 1963, was a civil rights activist and the NAACP’s first field officer in Mississippi, a post he started in 1954. A decorated veteran and college-educated leader, Evers was dedicated to combating Jim Crow laws and was critical to forming local NAACP chapters in Mississippi, organizing voter registration drives, and famously fought, alongside others, to enroll James Meredith into the University of Mississippi in the 1960s.
The Informer reported that Evers was holding NAACP T-shirts featuring the slogan “Jim Crow Must Go” when he was shot in the back upon entering his driveway on June 12, 1963. His murderer was Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the local White Citizens Council and Ku Klux Klan.
Evers was assassinated only a few hours after President John F. Kennedy delivered a televised address in support of civil rights, which reportedly sent shock waves throughout the country.
Ironically, President Kennedy, who was assassinated five months after Evers on November 22, 1963, established the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1963. It seems fitting that the Mississippi activist receive this prestigious civilian honor, created by the president who publicly championed the same cause for which he died.
Kennedy himself received a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom the year he was killed. Evers, who was husband to Myrlie Evers and a father of three, should too.
Along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal, the President Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian honor, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The honors differ only in that the president personally awards honorees with the Medal of Freedom, while Congressional Gold Medal recipients are awarded by an act of Congress (though presidents are still able to physically bestow awards to honorees).
According to NIH, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is awarded to an individual who has made “‘an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.’”
Fighting on the frontlines in the battle for civil rights and justice in the United States, Evers, a visionary and brave activist, husband and father, is a perfect candidate for a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.