Byron De La Beckwith (November 9, 1920 – January 21, 2001) was an American white supremacist and Klansman from Greenwood, Mississippi, who in 1994 was convicted of assassinating civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Two previous trials in 1964 on this charge had resulted in hung juries. Seven years after being convicted of killing Evers, De La Beckwith died in 2001, while still in prison, at the age of 80. (More from Wikipedia)
On the following album by Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’, the targets are even more diffuse. “Only a Pawn in Their Game” is about the murder (Wikipedia calls it an “assassination”, and that is not really an overstatement) of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in his own driveway. The conviction of the unrepentant Klansman Byron de la Beckwith for the murder took place in Mississippi in 1994; two other trials of this man 30 years earlier resulted in hung juries. I don’t know how much visibility this murder has in other parts of the country, but it is still pretty fresh in Mississippi. One reason is that Medgar’s widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams is a civil rights activist in her own right – she was on the local news just this month.
(May 2013)
