Medgar Evers’ assassin was an actively churchgoing white supremacist

Evidence

Evers stayed at the church to finish some work before heading home to his wife and three young children. As Evers got out of his car just after midnight, a gunman shot and killed him in the driveway. The murder weapon, including a fresh fingerprint on the rifle scope, was found in a field nearby and traced to Byron De La Beckwith Jr., a member of the White Citizens’ Council in Greenwood and an active member of the Greenwood Episcopal Church of the Nativity. … “I shall oppose any person, place, or thing that opposes segregation. And further when I die I will be buried in a segregated cemetery. When you get to heaven, you will find me in the part that has a sign saying ‘for whites only,’ and if I go to Hades, I’m going to raise hell all over Hades until I get to the white section.… For the next 15 years, we here in Mississippi are going to have to do a lot of shooting to protect our wives, children, and ourselves from bad niggers.” — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 132

Categorization

• XREF: This epitomizes the book’s core thesis that white Christianity and white supremacy were fused, not opposed. — connects to: The heroic evangelical man was invariably white and defended against nonwhite men — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 93

Broader Connections

• The heroic evangelical man was invariably white and defended against nonwhite men #corroborates (0.85) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 93