ABSTRACT
The assassination of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers during the early
hours of June 12,1963 delivered a severe blow to the “Jackson m ovem ent”— a
local insurgency dedicated to direct action and racial desegregation in the
Mississippi capitol.1 In the days following the murder and Evers’s funeral, “go
slow” forces within the NAACP and the Kennedy administration employed
successful strategies to curtail the m ovem ent’s sustained confrontation cam
paigns. Still, the deeply felt dissatisfaction of black Mississippians regarding
segregation and its implications could not be quickly or strategically allayed.
