Weird Little Guys

In 1994, Byron de la Beckwith was finally convicted of murder for killing Medgar Evers in 1963. He died in prison, his story is over. But history repeats itself.

Sources & Further Reading:

Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.

DeLaughter, Bobby (2001). Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. Scribner.

Mitchell, Jerry (2020). Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. Simon & Schuster.

Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.

Newton, Michael (2010). The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. McFarland & Company, Inc.

Dittmer, John (1994). Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. University of Illinois Press.

Ball, Howard (2004). Murder in Mississippi. University Press of Kansas.

Snipe, Tracy (2021). The 5th Little Girl: Soul Survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, The Sarah Collins Rudolph Story. Africa World Press.

Doyle, William (2001). An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi 1962. Doubleday.

Nossiter, Adam (1994). Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/719/1345/1438234/

https://shadowproof.com/2018/03/07/documents-reveal-police-targeting-anti-racists-charlottesville/
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/4404359-DHS-Bulletin-Aug-9/

https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2007/may/30/dredging-up-the-past-why-mississippians-must-tell/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/us-government-spied-anti-ice-protesters

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/us/politics/dhs-inquiry-immigration-protests-minnesota.html

https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-minneapolis-news-agents-claim-alberto-castaeda-mondragn-hit-wall-shattered-skull-triggers-tension-hospital/18514566/

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72504545/ge-v-immigration-and-customs-enforcement/
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James talks with Molly Conger about the javelina and their installable appetite for golf courses.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65x0RvhJNa8
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/nov/05/conservation.sciencenews
https://zoologicalbulletin.de/BzB_Volumes/Volume_56_1_2/049_054_BzB56_1_2_Moraves_Jiri_and_B%C3%B6hme_Wolfgang.pdf
https://www.azgfd.com/wildlife-conservation/living-with-wildlife/living-with-javelina/
https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/8e8abbf4-6775-4575-9a10-fedacb7cb2c1
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In 1964, crosses burned all over Mississippi, signaling a return of the Ku Klux Klan. Their big debut was perfectly timed as a show of support for Byron de la Beckwith.

Sources & Further Reading:

Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.

DeLaughter, Bobby (2001). Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. Scribner.

Mitchell, Jerry (2020). Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. Simon & Schuster.

Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.

Sims, Patsy (1978). Stein & Day.

Nelson, Stanley (2016). Devils Walking: Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s. Louisiana State University Press.

Dirks, Annelieke. “Between Threat and Reality: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Emergence of Armed Self-Defense in Clarksdale and Natchez, Mississippi, 1960-1965.” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, pp. 71–98.

Ball, Howard (2004). Murder in Mississippi. University Press of Kansas.

Hamm, Mark (2017). The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism. Columbia University Press

Biondi, K., and J. Curtis. 2018. “From Structural to Stochastic Violence.” Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.

Newton, Michael (2010). The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. McFarland & Company, Inc.

Dittmer, John (1994). Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. University of Illinois Press.

Payne, Charles (1995). I’ve Got The Light of Freedom. University of California Press.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/accused-in-1964-mississippi-race-slayings-wrote-hate-letter-1.668898
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Byron de la Beckwith was tried for the same murder three times. In 1964, it just wasn't generally considered illegal for a white man to kill a black man in Mississippi.

Sources & Further Reading:
Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.
DeLaughter, Bobby (2001). Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. Scribner.
Mitchell, Jerry (2020). Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. Simon & Schuster.
Evers, Myrlie (1967). For Us, The Living. Doubleday & Company.
Tyson, Timothy (2017). The Blood of Emmett Till. Simon & Schuster
Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.
Martin, Ralph (1983). A Hero For Our Time. Bandwagon, Inc.
Baden, Michael (2006). Exhumation. in Spitz & Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death.
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In the months leading up to the murder of Medgar Evers, the man who killed him was watching his world crumble. Byron de la Beckwith had dedicated his life to the cause of segregation, but it was a losing battle. The governor of Mississippi had backed down, allowing a second black student to enter Ole Miss. Governor George Wallace in Alabama backed down, too. Integration was creeping in all over. That, and his wife left him.
Sources & Further Reading:
Doyle, William (2001). An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi 1962. Doubleday.
Lambert, Frank (2010). The Battle of Ole Miss: Civil Rights vs States’ Rights. Oxford University Press.
Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.
Metzl, Jonathan (2009). The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became A Black Disease. Beacon Press.
Rolph, Stephanie (2018). Resisting Equality: The Citizens' Council, 1954-1989. Louisiana State University Press
Smith, Frank (1964). Congressman From Mississippi. Capricorn Books.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/race/100262race-ra.html
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/citizens_news/index.3.html
https://www.southernfoodways.org/the-greenwood-food-blockade/
https://snccdigital.org/events/leflore-county-cuts-off-surplus-commodities/
https://snccdigital.org/people/dick-gregory/
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/22/us/samuel-block-60-civil-rights-battler-dies.html
https://www.crmvet.org/docs/src/6210_src_ns.pdf
https://themilitant.com/1962/2633/MIL2633.pdf
https://snccdigital.org/people/lawrence-guyot/
https://snccdigital.org/events/jimmy-travis-shot-greenwood/
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/multimedia/medgar-evers-and-jackson-movement.html
https://www.wlbt.com/video/2026/07/15/medgar-evers-historic-1963-wlbt-speech-missing-over-six-decades/
https://da.mdah.ms.gov/vault/projects/OHtranscripts/AU_MP198001_119_098611.pdf
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