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History Battle of Black Race for Liberty and Justice

Khalid Elhassan May 12, 2020 34 min

Deacons for Defense - Deacons for Defense and Justice — Black demonstrators arriving in Franklinton, Louisiana, after a two day march from Bogalusa. Face 2 Face Africa

3. A Pioneering Civil Rights Activist

Medgar Wiley Evers (1925 – 1963) was a native of Decatur, Mississippi, who grew up and attended school in the days of Jim Crow. Racist laws required him to walk 12 miles every day to a dilapidated segregated school for blacks, rather than the better-funded school closer to his home that was reserved for white students.

After graduating high school, Evers was inducted into the US Army in 1943 and sent to the European Theater of Operations. There, he fought in the Normandy Campaign, and served throughout the remainder of the war in France and Germany, before being honorably discharged at the war’s end as a sergeant.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.