Medgar Evers

NAACP field secretary in Mississippi who organized voter registration drives in the face of systematic violence. Evers was shot in his driveway by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith on June 12, 1963 — hours after President Kennedy's civil rights address. His assassination accelerated passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. De La Beckwith was not convicted until 1994, 31 years after the murder.