Everything about Byron De La Beckwith totally explained
Byron De La Beckwith (b.
November 9 1920,
Colusa, California – d.
January 21 2001,
Jackson, Mississippi) was an
American white supremacist and the convicted murderer of
civil rights leader
Medgar Evers.
Early life
Beckwith was born in
California, but
orphaned and raised in
Greenwood, Mississippi from the age of five. He became an ardent supporter of
segregation and joined the
Ku Klux Klan. De La Beckwith was a
Marine Corps veteran of
World War II, and was awarded the
Silver Star. He had three turbulent marriages to the same woman and was diagnosed as a
schizophrenic.
Assassination of Medgar Evers
During the 1960s the Klan was involved in numerous acts of violence and
terrorism. Medgar Evers' assassination, on
June 12,
1963, in
Jackson, Mississippi, was another episode in the Klan's violent campaign against
racial integration and
civil rights for
African-Americans.
De La Beckwith was twice tried for murder in 1964. Both trials ended in
mistrials with the
all-white jury unable to reach a verdict. In the following years, he became a leader in the
Phineas Priesthood, a branch of the
Christian Identity movement known for espousing extreme white supremacist, anti-government, anti-
gay, and anti-
abortion ideologies.
Imprisonment
A third trial in 1994, before a jury of eight African-American and four Caucasian jurors, ended with Beckwith being convicted of the murder of Evers. The conviction was based, in part, on new evidence proving that he'd boasted of the killing 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.
Sentenced to
life imprisonment for murder, De La Beckwith died at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 2001 in
Jackson, Mississippi, aged 80. He had suffered from
heart disease, high blood pressure and other ailments.
Fictional portrayals
The 1996 film
Ghosts of Mississippi tells the story of the murder and 1994 trial.
James Woods portrayed De La Beckwith in an
Academy Award-nominated performance.
De La Beckwith was the subject of the 1963
Bob Dylan song
Only a Pawn in Their Game, which deplores Evers' murder and the racist South, and dismisses De La Beckwith and his actions as a product of his environment.
Further Information
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