Medgar Evers’ assassination (1963)

Site: The driveway outside Medgar Evers’ home at 2332 Margaret W. Alexander Drive, Jackson, Miss.

Then: On June 12, 1963, Evers, a well-known activist who earlier had tried to break the University of Mississippi’s blockade on black students, had just returned home from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. He was holding T-shirts that read, “Jim Crow Must Go.”

Earlier that evening, President John F. Kennedy had delivered a nationally televised speech backing the Civil Rights Movement. Before Evers left his driveway, he was shot in the back by Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist. Evers died less than an hour later.

Photo: Gravesite of Medgar Evers in Arlington National Cemetery, Va.