The Everses had bought their home in Jackson from Black developers who were planning a bold experiment in the Deep South: a neighborhood for middle-class Black people, built in the middle of a White suburb.
Evers had designed the house with safety in mind. The front door did not face the street, tucked instead under the carport — providing cover, as he saw it, from potential snipers. When returning home, he would exit the passenger door directly into the side door of the house.
“It took bravery to purchase here,” Evers-Williams said. “It took bravery to move in.”
On May 20, 1963, Evers gave a 17-minute speech on WLBT, a Mississippi news station known for supporting the views of segregationists. He had demanded fair airtime to respond to then-Jackson Mayor Allen Thompson, who had recently given a speech opposing desegregation.
“The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home,” Evers said. “He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race. Let me appeal to the consciences of many silent, responsible citizens of the White community who know that a victory for democracy in Jackson will be a victory for democracy everywhere.”
Viewers called in, demanding the station take him off the air. Eight days later, the family’s house was firebombed after Evers organized a sit-in at the F.W. Woolworth lunch counter in Jackson.
The next week, five days before Evers’s death, a driver tried to run him over as he left the NAACP office.
An assassination, and a long search for justice
It was just after midnight on June 12, 1963, when Evers pulled his Oldsmobile into the house’s driveway, just outside the side door where Evers-Williams was sitting 60 years later. He had with him a stack of sweatshirts declaring “Jim Crow Must Go.”
But Evers broke his routine that night: He parked behind his wife’s vehicle, not under the carport, perhaps tired after attending late meetings. He got out of the car on the driver’s side. A White man, who had hid several yards away in a honeysuckle bush, raised a high-caliber rifle and fired.
The shot blasted a hole in Evers’s back, passed through his chest and pierced the outside wall of the house. The bullet shot through a kitchen wall, bounced off a refrigerator and landed in a cabinet.