Byron De La Beckwith, Jr. (November 9, 1920 – January 21, 2001) was an American white supremacist and Klansman from Greenwood, Mississippi who was convicted in the 1994 state trial of assassinating the civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Two previous trials in 1964 on this charge had resulted in hung juries.
Villainy
The White Citizens' Council was founded in 1954 following the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation was unconstitutional. Begun in Mississippi, chapters arose in towns across the South, where sometimes prominent citizens used a variety of economic tactics to suppress black activists and sustain segregation; they applied pressure through boycotts, denial of loans and credit, ending jobs and other means, and in Mississippi prevented school integration until 1964.[6]
De La Beckwith became a member; however, he thought more direct action was needed. On June 12, 1963, he assassinated NAACP civil rights leader Medgar Evers outside Evers' home in Jackson.
The state twice prosecuted De La Beckwith for murder in 1964, but both trials ended with hung juries. The jurors were all male and all white. Mississippi had effectively disfranchised black voters since 1890, and they were thus prevented from serving as jurors, who were limited to voters. During the second trial, the former Governor Ross Barnett interrupted the trial to shake hands with Beckwith while Myrlie Evers, the widow of the activist, was testifying.[1] In the 1980s, the Jackson Clarion Ledger published reports of its investigation of the trial, which found that the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, supported by residents' taxes, had assisted De La Beckwith's attorneys in his second trial by using state resources to investigate members of the jury pool during voir dire.[1][2]
In January 1966, De La Beckwith, along with a number of other members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify about Klan activities. Although De La Beckwith gave his name when asked by the committee (unlike other witnesses, such as Sam Bowers, who invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to that question), he answered no other substantive questions.[2] In the following years, Beckwith became a leader in the segregationist Phineas Priesthood, an offshoot of the white supremacist Christian Identity Movement. The group was known for its hostility towards African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and foreigners.
According to Delmar Dennis, who acted as a key witness for the prosecution at the 1994 trial, De La Beckwith boasted of his role in the death of Medgar Evers at several KKK rallies and similar gatherings in the years following his mistrials. In 1967, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party's nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi.[2]
In 1973, informants alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation of Beckwith's plans to murder A.I. Botnick, director of the New Orleans-based B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, for comments Botnick had made about white southerners and race relations. Following several days of surveillance, Beckwith's car was stopped by New Orleans Police Department officers as he crossed over the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge. Among the contents of his vehicle were several loaded firearms, a map with directions to Botnick's house highlighted, and a dynamite time bomb. On August 1, 1975, Beckwith was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder; he served nearly three years in the Angola Prison in Louisiana from May 1977 until his parole in January 1980.[2] Just before entering prison to serve his sentence, Beckwith was ordained by Rev. Dewey "Buddy" Tucker as a minister of the Temple Memorial Baptist Church; a Christian Identity congregation in Knoxville, Tennessee.[7]
1994 trial for Evers murder
In the 1980s, the reporting of the Jackson Clarion Ledger of the Beckwith trials stimulated a new investigation by the state and ultimately a third prosecution, based on new evidence.[1] By this point, De La Beckwith was living in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, and was extradited to Mississippi for his trial at the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson. The 1994 state trial was held before a jury of eight black and four white jurors; it ended with De La Beckwith's conviction of first-degree murder for killing Medgar Evers. New evidence included testimony of his having boasted of the murder at a Klan rally and to others over the three decades after the crime. The physical evidence was essentially the same as was used during the first two trials.[1]
He appealed the guilty verdict, but the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 1997. The court said the 31-year lapse between the murder and De La Beckwith's conviction did not deny him a fair trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder. Although Mississippi had a death penalty in 1963, it was unavailable because it and other death penalty laws in force at the time had been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Furman v. Georgia. Beckwith sought review in the United States Supreme Court, but that Court denied certiorari.[8]
On January 21, 2001, De La Beckwith died at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi. He was 80 years old. He had suffered from heart disease, high blood pressure and other ailments.