Myrlie and Reena Evers cheer the conviction of Medgar Evers’ murderer, Byron De La Beckwith, on Feb. 5, 1994.
Twenty years ago today, a jury convicted Ku Klux Klan leader Byron De La Beckwith of the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers.
Beckwith’s conviction on Feb. 5, 1994, marked the first of a wave of reprosecutions of unpunished cases from the civil rights era.
In the end, 24 men, many of them KKK leaders and members in the South, went behind bars for their crimes.
Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers, said she never realized at the time the prosecution of her husband’s case would lead to other prosecutions, but she’s glad it did.
“I can’t tell you how much it means to me that this all started with Medgar and that this all started in Mississippi,” she told The Clarion-Ledger. “It makes me feel so proud.”
Former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, who prosecuted the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls, said Beckwith’s conviction showed such reprosecutions were possible.
A memorial plaque for the four girls killed in a bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963 can be seen in the church’s basement.
It was like a lightbulb going off for prosecutors and investigators throughout the South, he said. “It made us think, `You can try these old cases after all.’ ”
The conviction of Medgar Evers’ murderer, he said, “gave hope to the families and communities who had suffered through the violence without much hope of ever seeing justice.”
In 2001 and 2002, juries convicted Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry of their involvement in the KKK’s 1963 church bombing.
They each received four life sentences — one for each of the slain girls: Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Denise McNair.
