On August 23 2019, Facebook user Steven Pokin shared a photograph along with a lengthy status update, claiming that it shows the bedroom that Medgar Evers’ sons slept in:This is where the two little sons of Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers slept. When he had this house built in Jackson, Mississippi, he had the window you see elevated to make it less likely his children would be shot.He had the house built without a front door for security reasons. The main entrance was at the side of the house, at the end of a car port.His house was the only one on the street that had small stones and gravel on a flat roof. That way, it would not catch fire is someone tossed a lit torch on the roof.He had his children’s mattresses placed directly on the floor to make them less visible targets.He told his wife and children to sit on the floor while watching TV.In 1963, he was the NAACP’s first Mississippi field director. Three times that year, someone had fired into his home.As a boy, he had witnessed the separate lynchings of a black man and a 10-year-old black boy — who had made the mistake of going to the whites-only county fair.On June 10, he was not home when someone tried to enter through the rear door of his home. His wife moved the refrigerator to block entry. They left the refrigerator there.That week, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy spoke to the nation about civil rights, justice and a more perfect union. The President said it was coming and he asked the nation to give him time that, ultimately, he did not have.Medgar Evers gave a speech in Jackson the night of June 11,1963. He returned home — to this home — lugging many T-shirts that he planned to give out at a rally the next day. They said: “Say No to Jim Crow.”He was excited about the President’s speech.He parked behind his wife’s car in the driveway and was almost in the car port when an assassin across the street shot him with a high-powered rifle.No ambulance came.A neighbor took him to the whites-only hospital. Doctors were unsure if they should treat him. They were out of “Negro blood” and feared they could lose their medical licenses if they used white blood to try to save a black man.Then, a white doctor stepped in and said none of that mattered and worked valiantly to try to save the life of Medgar Evers, who had served this country at the invasion of Normandy.He died about 40 minutes after being shot.The bullet entered his back, came out his chest, went through a window, went through an interior wall leading to the kitchen and left a dent in the refrigerator.I touched that dent today. Then, I went into the bedroom and saw the mattresses on the floor with the Teddy Bears on them.I have never before felt history the way I felt it today.Medgar Evers was the first state field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Mississippi. As the post describes, Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his Jackson, Mississippi home on June 12 1963 at the age of 37; nine days later, Klansman and white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was arrested — but all-white juries failed to reach a verdict. In 1994, Beckwith was finally convicted of first-degree murder.In May 2018, the House of Representatives passed a bill to establish Medgar Evers’ Jackson, Mississippi home as a national monument with bipartisan support. To that point, the site was managed by Tougaloo College, and its designation as a national monument allocated additional funding to maintain the home.In January 2019, Mississippi lawmakers issued a press release about the designation of Medgar and Myrlie Evers’ home in Jackson, Mississippi as a national monument:Mississippi’s two senators have reintroduced legislation to designate Medgar and Myrlie Evers’ Jackson home as a national monument within the National Park System.“The Medgar and Myrlie Evers home is of great historic significance to the civil rights movement as well as our American history and deserves to be recognized as a national monument,” U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker said in a news release [in January 2019]. “That is why I have continued to work with the members of our Mississippi congressional delegation to bring additional resources to the site. These efforts will help ensure future generations can learn about the life and legacy of the Evers family.”Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith added, that “The preservation of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers home as a national monument will help future generations understand this family’s important role in the pursuit of equality and justice as part of the civil rights movement.”A month later, the site was one of four newly-designated national monuments included in a “massive lands bill” passed by Congress. United States President Donald Trump signed the bill establishing the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson in March 2019. NBC News reported plans for the site, enabling visitors to tour it more formally.That article also noted that the home was vacant for three decades and restored with reproduction furnishings after the family donated it to Tougaloo College in 1993:The federal government will take over the modest ranch-style home from Tougaloo College, which supports the change, bringing money for preservation. The Evers family donated the home to historically black Tougaloo in 1993, and it is open by appointment for tours. The three-bedroom home stood vacant for years after the family moved away in the 1960s, and it was restored in the mid-1990s. It is now filled with midcentury furniture, and one of the bedrooms has a display about the family’s history. A bullet hole is visible in a kitchen wall.The National Park Service named the home a national historic landmark in 2016.Ben West of the National Park Service told Mississippi Public Broadcasting on [in March 2019] that the park service was waiting on the president’s signature to begin planning the project, including parking, access and tour sizes, restrooms and other visitor services.The National Parks Service maintains a page about the site, but no information about its interior is included. In March 2019, Smithsonian Magazine described pending updates to the new monument:After Evers was killed and his family moved away, the three-bedroom stood empty for many years. In 1993, the Evers family gifted the property to the historically black Tougaloo College, and tours became available by appointment. In 2016, the National Park Service named the Medgar Evers House Museum a national historic landmark. With the signing of the new bill, the federal government will take over the site, and experts who work there hope the change will enable the museum to make some important upgrades. Minnie White Watson, curator of the museum, tells WBUR’s Peter O’Dowd that the National Park Service can afford “to do things that possibly we could never afford to do,” such as installing a parking lot and restrooms.Multiple tourism-related sites showed the interior of the house (and the boys’ bedroom) in a way that indicaed that the images were accurately identified. TripAdvisor reviewers made mention of the low height of the childrens’ beds in relation to the window, as did people on other tours. Some said the beds lacked frames, while others claimed that the windows were specifically raised for the same reason:“Apparently, when Medgar built the house, he had the foresight to have the windows raised 2 or so extra inches so they could lay on the floor. That would allow them less likely to be seen through the window for a shooter.”“So sad his kids had to sleep on mattresses on the floor rather than in beds so bullets would harm them through windows.”“Amazing to hear and read about all that Medgar Evers endured, the sacrifices he and his family made, like: no front door, for safety reasons, beds were lower than the height of the window sills, for protection from gunshots, the safety drills for the children in case someone starts shooting. Very sobering.”Like TripAdvisor reviewers, it seemed the Facebook post’s author paraphrased the descriptions provided by tour guides. However, those descriptions were not entirely consistent with one another. A Wikipedia page for the site (lacking sources) stated that the Evers family chose the home, but it didn’t go so far as to say they were able to modify its structure. In December 2017, Medgar Evers house museum curator Minnie White Watson discussed the childrens’ beds in a profile of the site:“The first time the house was shot into, Medgar said put the kids beds on the floor,” said Minnie White Watson, Medgar Evers Home museum curatorA database of historical site markers explained the Evers’ family’s efforts to remain safe in the face of increasing violence, as threats to Evers and his family increased greatly in the weeks leading up to his assassination:With success in [civil rights] efforts, however, came increased tension and apprehension. The children were taught precautions, such as dropping to the floor and crawling to safety in the bathtub when they heard loud noises. They avoided sitting in the living room near the large window. One evening a firebomb exploded in the carport, and Myrlie rushed outside to put out the flames with the garden hose. The police dismissed the incident as a prank. A few weeks later, Medgar Evers was murdered in the driveway, shot with a high-powered rifle by an assassin hiding across the street.The claims about Medgar Evers’ home made in the Facebook post were accurate — by all accounts, the Evers family avoided sitting and sleeping near windows because gunshots had been fired and and through their home. An image circulating alongside the post showed the reconstructed bedroom of the Evers’ children, with beds placed low to the floor and away from windows. Evers and his family lived in the house from 1956 to 1963; the increasing safety precautions taken by the family likely occurred in the last year or two of their time in the house.We contacted Tougaloo archivists for additional information, but have not yet received a response.
A photograph shows the bedroom of the sons of murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers.