Alcorn names auditorium after alumnus and civil rights leader Medgar Evers - Noteworthy News - Alcorn State University - Brief Article

Black Issues in Higher Education, April 10, 2003

LORMAN, MISS.

Alcorn State University dedicated an auditorium in a campus library to slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers last month.

Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, spoke to a crowd of several hundred people at a ceremony to unveil the newly named auditorium in the J.D. Boyd Library.

"I had hoped Alcorn State one day would recognize Medgar Wiley Evers as one of their esteemed graduates," Evers-Williams said. "Medgar deserves this recognition, and it will serve this university and all of us well into the future."

Alcorn State President Dr. Clinton Bristow Jr. ordered the unveiling and led the applause after giving a solemn tribute to Medgar Evers.

"It's an historic moment for me," said Nettie King, an academic counselor who attended the ceremony. "It's fitting to have his name remembered at the university."

Evers-Williams and her late husband also were honored last month by the Mississippi House and Senate nearly 40 years after an assassin's bullet took Evers' life in the driveway of his Jackson home.

Evers, field secretary for the NAACP, was slain on June 12, 1963, hours after President Kennedy delivered a civil rights speech.