A sniper shot Medgar Evers in the back as he returned from a meeting late at night. Tensions had been running high because Evers, the first field secretary for the NAACP, was making headway in pushing the state's black citizens to register to vote. White Mississippians who had lived comfortably under segregation could feel the ground shifting beneath them — and they didn't like it.
Evers and his wife, Myrlie Evers, regularly received death threats tied to Evers' work. They had created a drill for their two older children, Reena and Darrell: If you hear shots, drop to the floor and carefully crawl to the bathroom. Get in the tub. You'll be safe there. Watch out for your brother. The tub was a bulwark of porcelain-covered cast iron, strong enough to stop a bullet or protect from a firebomb.
So on the evening that Byron De La Beckwith fired a rifle at Medgar Evers as Evers was emerging from his car, Reena and Darrell Evers did what they'd been told. They took their little brother, Van, with them to the bathroom and placed him in the tub and ran outside when they heard their mother's cries. They encircled their father while he bled in the driveway. He died in a local hospital an hour later.
