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Paying tribute to Medgar Evers

ARLINGTON, Va. — Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, said her husband was a man who saw a job that needed to be done, and he answered the call, “not just for his people but for all people.”

Ms. Evers-Williams and a group of about 300 visitors, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and former President Bill Clinton, observed the 50th anniversary of Mr. Evers’s assassination on Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery, where Mr. Evers is buried.

Mr. Evers was working as a field secretary for the N.A.A.C.P. when he was gunned down in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Miss., on June 12, 1963, at the age of 37. Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist, was convicted of the murder in 1994, 30 years after two all-white juries deadlocked on earlier charges....

Read entire article at NYT