The Murder of Medgar Evers | No Justice, No Peace | 3

It's a little after midnight on June 13th, 1963.

Ordinarily, Gines Street and Jackson would be deserted at this time of night.

It's a sleepy residential neighborhood.

But tonight, lights begin to flicker on up and down the street.

Not many people slept through the gunshot or the scream.

30-year-old Merle Evers clings to her husband Medgar trying to turn him over.

He's so heavy, and she thinks he might be dead already.

She screams again.

She can't stop screaming.

At the sound of footsteps, Merle looks up to see her neighbor Houston Wells rushing up the driveway a pistol in hand.

Houston raises his gun into the air and fires, trying to scare off any attackers who might still be lurking.

But the only people around are other concerned neighbors.

As her surroundings come back into focus, Merle realizes her children are beside her.

She instinctively tries to push them back inside the house, desperate to shield them from this.

But it's too late.

From an early age, Medgar taught his kids to drop to the ground if they ever heard a gunshot.

They know too much.

They know what's happening, even if they don't fully understand.

The children gather around their father and cry.

Begging him to get up, but he doesn't move.

Murley feels detached from reality, watching the scene through a haze of shock and horror.

More neighbors are gathering in their driveway.

People are comforting the children, trying to comfort her, but she won't leave Medgar's side.

Somebody's called the police, and when the officers arrive a few minutes later, they try to talk to Murley, asking her about what happened.

But suddenly, she's too consumed with anger to answer their questions.

She screams at the officers and asks where they were, why they didn't escort Medgar home like usual.

She tells them that they killed her husband, but they say he's not dead.

Medgar still has a pulse, but he needs to get to a hospital right now.

Thing is, there are no ambulances nearby.

So Houston volunteers to drive Medgar to the hospital.

He and one of the cops find a twin-size mattress in the children's room and toss it through the window into the front yard.

Using the mattress as a makeshift stretcher, they carry Medgar to Houston's station wagon.

As they load him into the back of the car, Murley's by his side, clinging to his hand.

She realizes that he's trying to talk, his voice so hoarse, it's barely a whisper.

She leans closer, trying to hear him.

And then, with a jolt of horror, she makes out what he's saying over and over.

Let me go.

Let me go.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

On June 22nd, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith was arrested for the assassination of Medgar Evers.

His following murder trial was a significant moment for civil rights in Mississippi.

It was the first time a white man had ever been put on trial for killing a black man in the state's history.

That was a shocking statistic, but one that gave hope to Medgar's family and loved ones, who were still in deep shock and mourning.

Maybe this would be when things finally changed.

After all, the authorities had a strong case against Byron, including physical evidence and witness statements.

Nevertheless, the road to justice would be long and fraught.

During his time in both prison and the courtroom, Byron was treated less like a criminal and more like a celebrity.

He was given special privileges, had his legal fees fronted by supporters, and was allowed to showboat on the stand in his own defense.

His cocky demeanor throughout his trial made it clear that he saw this whole thing as a formality.

There was no chance that a jury of his peers would convict him of this crime, not Mississippi.

And although the court proceedings became much messier and more complicated than either side anticipated, Byron was ultimately proved right.

The systemic, structural advantages he had as a white man in the South were enough to shield him from the consequences of his own actions, at least for a while.

This is episode 3 in our four-part series about the murder of Medgar Evers.

No justice, no peace.

It's the morning of July 2nd, 1963, three weeks since Byron De La Beckwith shot and killed Medgar Evers.

A little before 9 a.m., 30-year-old Merle Evers pulls into a parking spot outside a courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi.

She shuts off the engine, then pauses, gives herself a moment to breathe.

Today should have been Medgar's 38th birthday.

Merle should be waking him up with breakfast in bed right now.

Instead, she's here, doing the only thing that she can do for him now.

Bearing witness.

As she gets out of her car and begins walking towards the courthouse, Merle can't stop her thoughts from drifting back to that night.

Ever since Medgar was killed, she's been haunted by the revelation that his murderer was lying in wait for him for hours.

The police said that he was probably hiding in that clump of bushes just across the street.

All evening, she and her children had been going about their lives unaware they were being watched.

So today, she wants to look Byron De La Beckwith in the eye and let him know that she's watching.

But inside the courtroom, Byron refuses to look at Murley.

He doesn't make eye contact with anybody at all as he swiftly indicted for murder.

He sits quietly beside his legal team, answering only yes and no to the questions asked of him by the judge.

He looks calm, confident.

Even when the district attorney announces that the state will be seeking the death penalty, Byron doesn't flinch.

It's as if he knows he's untouchable.

When the news of the indictment gets out, reactions in his hometown of Greenwood are mixed.

Some people can't believe it.

To them, Byron's always been amiable and polite, always stopping to say good morning.

If anything, he's a little too friendly with his strangely off-putting mannerisms and over-the-top southern charm.

It's hard to imagine him shooting somebody in cold blood, but to others, the accusation is completely plausible.

It's no secret that Byron's an extreme segregationist.

He barely talks about anything else.

They also know he's got a nasty temper and has been beating his wife for years.

To the people who've actually been paying attention to Byron, the idea of him murdering someone like Medgar Evers, well, it doesn't seem like a stretch.

Whether they believe he's guilty or not, plenty of people are quick to rally around Byron.

Within 48 hours of his arrest, a legal defense fund has been set up and donations start pouring in from across the South.

Byron's a member of a lot of wealthy organizations, like the White Citizens Council and the Sons of the American Revolution, and these groups pony up hundreds of dollars for the fund.

Local businesses even start putting collection jars next to their registers.

Within a few days, Byron's legal fund grows large enough to cover the costs of his trial and then some.

The money is nice, of course, but what really thrills Byron is the attention.

During his first few weeks in jail, he receives countless letters from well-wishers, some of them very powerful people.

Buff Hammond, a Greenwood Police Commissioner, writes a reassuring letter where he tells Byron, I can appreciate your state of anxiety, but knowing the feeling of the white people, it is hard for me to imagine any justification for your fears.

Because his performance in the courtroom notwithstanding, Byron does have some fears creeping in about what's going to happen to him.

In the days following his indictment, the specter of death row looms large on his mind at night when he's trying to sleep.

But the Police Commissioner's words help reaffirm his belief that he'll come out on top.

And his treatment inside the Hines County Jail certainly makes it seem like the justice system is firmly on his side.

He has a large cell which he can come and go from as he pleases to roam around the jail.

Sympathetic local restaurants send him decadent dinners like steak and shrimp.

He gets a television, an exercise kit and a typewriter, all donated by local businesses.

And he's allowed to have unlimited visitors.

He spends hours with them holding court about his segregationist mission which he calls the cause.

At no point does Byron ever admit to killing Medgar Evers, but he often stops just short of it.

During visits and in letters to friends, he calls himself a vormant hunter and makes veiled references to a plan which has been carried out successfully.

His tone is gleeful.

Despite Byron's indiscretion, his legal team is hard at work building a case to prove that he's innocent.

Meanwhile, the prosecution is working equally hard to prove the opposite.

And a few weeks after his arrest, they make their first move.

District Attorney William Waller files a motion asking the court to have Byron examined by a psychiatrist.

It's unclear what the strategy is here.

Waller is still keeping his cards close to his chest, but Byron's team don't like what the request implies.

They fight the examination every step of the way, determined not to let the prosecution control the narrative.

They clearly don't believe that their client needs the protection of an insanity plea, and Byron himself is furious at the suggestion.

He insists that he's completely sane and always has been.

But at a sanity hearing in court, several witnesses testify to the contrary.

Among those witnesses is the psychiatrist who treated Byron in 1962, after his wife insisted he seek psychological help.

That doctor diagnosed Byron as schizophrenic with paranoid tendencies.

But he's not allowed to say that in court.

All he can get out is that he arrived at a diagnostic conclusion before Byron's lawyers object.

After that, a cousin of Byron's testifies that he's mentally disturbed and violent.

He's not a medical professional, but his words still carry enough weight to frustrate Byron's lawyers who object at every possible opportunity.

That tactic keeps a lot of key evidence from being entered into the record.

But what's presented is enough to give the judge pause.

He orders that Byron be transferred to a state hospital for psychiatric tests.

Even though he fought it in court, Byron seems unfazed by this new development.

Outside the hospital, he smiles and poses for the press cameras, treating the whole thing like a publicity opportunity.

Maybe because he's so convinced of his own sanity, he's happy to submit to the hospital's testing.

But his lawyers don't share his confidence.

They immediately file a motion to get the testing process halted.

After less than a week, a county circuit judge rules that Byron's detention at the hospital is illegal and has him transferred back to the county jail.

Behind bars again, Byron enjoys even more privileges than before.

He's still got his spacious cell, his generous gifts and his typewriter, but now one of his jailers takes a liking to him and begins escorting Byron for afternoon constitutionals.

At first, they just take walks around the courthouse, but soon they start going further afield.

The jailer takes Byron into town to get a haircut or just to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee.

During these walks, he's not handcuffed or physically restrained in any way.

To any onlooker, he's just like a regular citizen, not a prisoner awaiting trial for murder.

As if he weren't already having a pretty easy time of it behind bars, two things happened to lift Byron's spirits even further.

First, on November 22nd, 1963, President John F.

Kennedy is assassinated in Texas.

Byron has always loathed Kennedy, partly because he's a Catholic, but especially because of his efforts to end segregation.

Hearing Kennedy's address to the Nation on Civil Rights spurred him on to kill Medgar Evers.

Now, just five months later, Kennedy is dead, too.

And Byron couldn't be happier.

Whenever he speaks about it, he calls the assassination the act of a patriot.

Around the same time, Byron is contacted by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The KKK is a white supremacist hate group which has been around since the mid-19th century.

It hasn't had an active chapter in Mississippi for many years, but Byron learns that it's in the process of reforming, and its founders want him to join.

This only inflates his ego further.

The KKK is seeking him out, calling him a hero, an inspiration to its members.

Even as Byron is making new connections with an organization he deeply admires, he's alienating the people closest to him.

He and his wife Willie have been separated for more than a year now, but when she begins to visit him in jail in the run-up to his trial, she doesn't know what to make of the man she finds.

She's a nervous wreck, drinking heavily and barely leaving the hotel where she lives, but Byron tells her not to worry.

He talks about being acquitted as if it's a foregone conclusion, and makes all kinds of promises about the life they'll lead after all of this is over.

He's gonna start his own business, he says, and he's also gonna be a famous author.

He's already working on a book, part autobiography, part manifesto.

He envisions it as a way to inspire more people to join the cause.

Willie is not reassured.

For one thing, Byron can't seem to get his story straight.

He's evasive about the murder itself.

He tells her it wasn't him, and some days she believes him.

But just like in his letters to friends, he makes a lot of veiled references that imply otherwise.

Willie knows Byron knows he's always been desperate to belong.

She suspects that the White Citizens Council got in his head somehow and persuaded him to kill Medgar Evers and accept the punishment that went along with it.

And when he starts talking about the KKK, she gets even more alarmed.

She's from Tennessee, where the Klan originally formed, and she knows that it's a far more radical and violent group than the Citizens Council.

If Byron is off the deep end now, what's going to happen once he becomes a Klansman?

But she doesn't dare to voice her concerns.

She knows it won't do any good.

She knows better than to expect her husband to respect her opinion.

For now, Byron is limited in what he can do for the KKK, but they share his belief that his trial will be a mere formality.

And once he's a free man, he'll be a valuable recruiter for them.

As his trial day draws close, Byron feels on top of the world.

He's never had so many people eager to hear what he has to say before.

At long last, he's being treated with the respect he's always felt he deserved.

He's surrounded by admirers and well-wishers who constantly reassure him that he's on the right side of history and that he's done nothing wrong.

And soon, he'll have the chance to prove it in court.

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It's January 31, 1964.

The Hines County Courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi is packed with purporters, photographers and members of the public.

They're here for the first day of Byron De La Beckwith's murder trial.

But despite the huge crowd, the room is perfectly silent.

That's because 30-year-old Merle Evers is on the witness stand.

Under questioning from DA.

William Waller, she's ready to testify about the night of her husband's murder.

But the silence in the courtroom is broken not by Merle's voice, but by the sound of a heavy door creaking open.

Even from the front of the room, Merle recognizes Ross Barnett, the governor of Mississippi, as soon as he walks in.

Barnett meets her gaze for a moment.

His expression is unreadable.

Then he strolls across the room to where Byron De La Beckwith is seated.

He sits down and shakes the defendant's hand.

The two men smile at each other, like their lifelong friends.

Then Governor Barnett turns and looks expectantly at Merle.

His message couldn't be clearer.

The state is not on your side.

Merle is stunned.

She's not naive.

She knows that Mississippi is run by white men who protect their own.

But for the governor to come here and brazenly shake the hand of the man who killed her husband right in the middle of the proceedings, she wasn't prepared for this.

She takes a sip of water and forces herself to focus.

She has to be strong for Medgar.

Leaning forward, she speaks clearly and confidently, answering all of DA.

Waller's questions in as much detail as she can.

She describes hearing the gunshot outside their home and racing outside to find Medgar face down, bleeding from a bullet wound in his back.

As she testifies, she tells herself to focus on what she can control.

But there's a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, and she can't shake it.

It's the terrible suspicion that this trial is a sham.

Merle Evers is the second witness to take the stand at the trial of Byron De La Beckwith.

She's just one piece in a very detailed puzzle which the prosecution builds over a period of several days, laying out the full chronology of what happened on the night of the assassination.

Doctors and police officers testify about Medgar's injuries, and the physical evidence found at the scene.

They go into detail about the rifle that was found lying beneath a clump of bushes opposite the Evers' house, and the fingerprint on it that matched Byron's.

To bolster the connection between Byron and the murder weapon, the prosecution calls two witnesses, the man who sold him the rifle, and the man who traded him the scope.

Two cab drivers testify that Byron approached them in Jackson in the days leading up to the murder, asking if they knew where Medgar Evers lived.

And several witnesses confirm that they saw a white compact car matching Byron's in the neighborhood on the night of the crime.

Once he's tied Byron to the murder weapon in the crime scene, DA.

Waller moves on to establishing a motive.

Everyone knows that Byron is a militant segregationist.

He's declared this proudly in multiple letters, which Waller uses against him in court.

The most damning is a letter that Byron wrote to the NRA in the late 1950s.

Where he said, We here in Mississippi are going to have to do a lot of shooting to protect our wives, our children and ourselves from bad Negroes.

All in all, it's a damning case.

But you wouldn't know it to look at Byron.

Throughout the prosecution's arguments, he projects cocky confidence.

He wears a bright red tie and matching socks to court every day and has a broad smile on his face throughout most of the proceedings.

He watches the witnesses closely, taking down notes on a small pad.

He positions his chair at a slight angle to allow the court sketch artist to get a better view of him.

During breaks, he chats amiably with whoever approaches him and repeatedly goes up to Waller to offer him a cigar.

His attorneys finally tell him to knock it off, worrying that his carefree demeanor will alienate the jury.

But Byron's convinced this whole thing is a formality and he might as well enjoy it.

After the prosecution rests, the first person to take the stand in Byron's defense is a neighbor of Medgar Evers.

She claims that she heard the gunshot, and as she ran to her window, she saw three men fleeing the scene, not a lone gunman.

The defense then pulls out a trio of surprise alibi witnesses, all of them police officers.

These men claim that they saw Byron in Greenwood, almost a hundred miles from Jackson around the time of the crime.

But the attorneys make no effort to contradict the narrative that Byron is obsessed with segregation, nor that he had a reason to want to kill Medgar Evers dead.

And on that final day of the defense arguments, it becomes clear why.

Hardy Lott, the lead defense attorney, announces that Byron will be taking the stand in his own defense.

This news is met by gasps in the courtroom.

Nobody anticipated this, including the prosecution.

But Byron's been ready for this moment for days, and he intends to make the most of it.

He's cheerful and animated on the stand and flatly denies having anything to do with Medgar's death.

He agrees that the murder weapon looks like a gun that he used to own, but claims that it was stolen some weeks before the crime.

Under cross-examination, Byron has asked about his beliefs on segregation.

He doesn't hold back, and confirms that he's passionate about stopping integration at all costs.

But when Waller asks him about that letter to the NRA, the one about having to shoot a lot of Negroes, he denies that he meant it as any kind of specific threat.

He claims that he only condones fighting for segregation within reason, and within civilized, organized society.

Waller tries to pin him down, pointing to a specific letter in which Byron talks about hunting varmints.

But Byron plays dumb, explaining that he was referring to crows and other animals.

He grew up hunting and he's always been a good shot, that's all.

His tone is innocent, as if he can't imagine what else someone could think he meant.

When it comes to closing arguments, Assistant DA John H.

Fox III is determined not to let Byron's conduct pass without comment.

He highlights his arrogant behavior throughout the proceedings, and his clear lack of respect for both the law and the Evers family.

Fox says that Byron sat in that witness chair as if he were on a throne of glory, and he reveled in it.

He summarizes all of the evidence against Byron, who he characterizes as an expert shot with both the capability and the motivation to carry out this murder.

He concludes, as coolly as he would shoot a crow out of a tree, he did execute Medgar Evers, a human being, shot him like a varmint in the driveway of his home.

Despite the evidence tying Byron to the crime, the jurors just aren't convinced.

After a single day of deliberations, the foreman tells the judge that they're unable to reach a verdict.

The next day, they declare that they're hopelessly deadlocked.

Five jurors are dead set on convicting Byron, while the rest want to acquit, and no one's going to budge.

The judge has no choice but to declare a mistrial.

This brings Byron crashing down to earth.

Almost since his first day in jail, he's been convinced that he'll be acquitted, that this jury of white men will obviously be on his side.

But now, he has to come to terms with the sobering realization that five out of 12 white jurors would have convicted him.

This wasn't a close thing.

They were miles from acquittal.

On the other side of the courtroom, Murley Evers is also stunned and for pretty much the same reasons.

Like Byron, she spent the last few weeks mentally preparing herself for an acquittal.

She even has a statement ready for that outcome.

After all, this is the first time in the history of Mississippi that a white man has been put on trial for the killing of a black man.

She knew the odds were against them, and she hardly expected the jury to convict.

But a mistrial?

That means they'll get another shot at this.

And when she learns about the jury breakdown, it gives her a tiny shred of hope.

There were five white men willing to convict.

Five.

It's a start.

Back in the county jail, Byron is fuming.

And it's not just the unexpected mistrial that's on his mind.

Public opinion seems to have shifted.

Whether it's because of the evidence presented by the prosecution, or Byron's own arrogant behavior in the courtroom, he's getting fewer and fewer visitors these days.

The gifts from local businesses are drying up, and so are the legal fund donations.

It seems that he's getting a reputation as somebody who's always after a handout, and that's not a good look.

Willie stops coming to see him for a while, too.

Before the trial, she felt confused and conflicted, unsure what to believe.

But after listening to all of the evidence, and watching how her own husband conducted himself, there's now no doubt in her mind that he killed Medgar Evers.

And that realization, coupled with the years of abuse she's endured from him, makes her feel sick to her stomach.

Based on what she heard in that courtroom, she doesn't see how any jury could acquit him.

They'll get him for sure next time.

But Byron's lawyers are bullish.

Once the date of the second trial is announced for that spring, they get to work.

The missed trial was a setback, but at least now they have an opportunity to figure out what went wrong the first time and fix it.

They have to make sure that they can convince everybody on that jury that their client is innocent.

To do that, they enlist the help of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a secretive organization overseen by the state's governor, Ross Barnett.

The commission's aim is to promote racial segregation in order to protect the quote unquote sovereignty of Mississippi.

And one of its investigators is only too happy to step in and assist a patriot like Byron.

With the help of the commission, Byron's lawyers conduct covert background checks on prospective jurors for the new trial.

These dig into people's affiliations and their attitudes to race.

Their goal is to ensure that anybody sympathetic to Medgar Evers and to the civil rights movement in general is screened out of the jury pool.

Byron's lawyers realize that they were complacent the first time around.

They assume that just because the jury was all white, they'd be biased in favor of Byron.

But next time, they won't be making the same mistake.

If they're going to roll the dice again, they want to make sure the odds are firmly in their favor.

And if they have to bend a few rules to get what they want, then that's just what they'll do.

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It's April of 1964 at the Hines County Courthouse.

44-year-old Byron De La Beckwith sits at the defense table, watching the judge formally open proceedings in his second trial.

It's only been three months since he was last in this courtroom, but it feels like a lifetime ago.

Last time, he hadn't been worried at all.

Hell, he'd been excited.

But now it's all starting to feel a little too real.

For the first time, he actually feels like a criminal on trial, and he doesn't care for it, not one bit.

Over the last few months, Byron has become more and more paranoid.

After the first trial, his privileges at the county jail were curtailed with no explanation and his television taken away.

He'd been allowed to keep his typewriter, but he was too nervous to use it.

After several of his private letters were used by the prosecution in the first trial, he'd begun to suspect all of his letters were being intercepted and examined for evidence.

Now, facing down this second trial, he feels angry, afraid, and backed into a corner.

And it shows.

To observers in the courtroom who were present for the first trial, Byron looks like a different man.

Subdued and sullen, he doesn't crack a smile throughout the entire proceedings.

His lawyers have instructed him to memorize his testimony from last time, warning him that any inconsistency could be used against him.

So instead of preening for the court sketch artist and taking careful notes, he spends most of the time with his head down, eyes glazed over, frantically running his own words through his brain over and over again.

He knows he has to get this right.

His life depends on it.

Aside from the transformation in the defendant, the second trial plays out very much like the first.

District Attorney William Waller has already told the press that the state won't be presenting any new evidence, explaining a fingerprint is a fingerprint and a gun is a gun.

We have done the best we could, and we will try all the harder this time.

The defense evidence also looks pretty much the same, but with the addition of one major new witness.

A man called James Hobby, who looks a hell of a lot like Byron De La Beckwith, testifies that he lives in the same neighborhood as Medgar Evers and happens to own the same type of car as Byron, a white Plymouth Valiant.

He also testifies that he remembers parking it exactly where the prosecution's witness claimed they'd seen Beckwith's car on the night of the murder.

Now, whether he's telling the truth about any of this is unclear.

When it comes time for Byron to testify again, there's no grandstanding, no wisecracks.

He gives curt answers when questioned and tries to regurgitate his previous testimony verbatim.

Last time, he'd been trying to make a name for himself, to solidify his status as a hero to the white supremacist community.

Now, he just wants to avoid the electric chair.

After ten days of proceedings, the jury begins deliberating around midday on April 16th.

Despite the defense team practically handpicking the jurors, within 24 hours, the foreman comes back into the courtroom with a familiar announcement.

They're hopelessly deadlocked, unable to reach a verdict.

The final ballot is 8-4 in favor of acquittal.

The jury tampering has moved the needle, but not enough to actually get Byron off.

The judge declares another mistrial, but there will be no third trial.

Byron will remain under indictment for murder.

Now the state can choose to order a third trial if new evidence or witnesses come forward, but for all intents and purposes, 43-year-old Byron De La Beckwith is a free man.

As Byron is escorted out of the court room, shaking his lawyer's hands as he goes, Merle Evers sits numbly in her seat.

It wasn't the acquittal she'd feared, but this almost feels worse.

There's no closure in a mistrial, and with no plans for another attempt, things feel so final.

A not guilty verdict would at least have been something to protest, to rail against, to miscarriage of justice.

This is anticlimactic, quiet, but no less devastating.

Despite all of the compelling evidence that the state presented, her husband's killer gets to pick right back up where he left off.

After gathering his belongings from his cell, Byron gets ready to leave the courthouse for the last time.

The sheriff is concerned about his safety and offers to escort him home personally.

At first, Byron is thrilled by this show of respect.

But then, the sheriff hands him a rifle, tells him to keep it by his side just in case.

All of a sudden, Byron's worried too.

The idea that somebody, some everyday civilian, might want to harm him for what he did hasn't really occurred until now.

By this stage, the courthouse is surrounded on all sides by a crowd.

Some of the onlookers gathered are supporters there to cheer him on, but a lot of them aren't.

Byron has whizzed through a side door and ushered swiftly into an unmarked police car.

He hunches down as low as he could get in the back seat, feeling rattled and vulnerable, like he's being driven away toward an uncertain future.

But as it turns out, there's no need to worry.

Things quiet down once they get out of the center of town, and Byron straightens up in the back seat and looks out at the blue skies outside.

After they've been driving north towards Greenwood for about an hour and a half, he starts to see people on the side of the highway, waving banners and flags.

News of the mistrial has already spread, and Byron's hometown supporters are out in force.

As he looks out the window, he sees a couple waving a banner that says, Welcome home, De La.

It almost brings a tear to his eye.

Byron's release isn't just a victory for him, but for bigots in Mississippi and beyond.

The night of his release, Ku Klux Klan groups across the south go out in force to celebrate, burning crosses and chanting racist slogans.

But of course, not everyone is happy with the outcome of the trial.

Medgar Evers' friends and colleagues are reeling, devastated and enraged by this reminder of just how unequal justice is in the south.

James Meredith, the civil rights activist who was mentored by Medgar, dismisses the trials as shams and predicts that Byron De La Beckwith will be assassinated within a year.

But this idea doesn't bring Medgar's family any comfort, and his brother Charles releases a statement asking supporters not to resort to violence.

They don't want vengeance.

They want justice.

It's the only way society can move toward the future Medgar Evers dedicated his life to.

But for that, they'll have to wait a long, long time.

From Airship, this is episode 3 in our series on the murder of Medgar Evers.

On the next episode, Byron De La Beckwith finally gets what's coming to him.

We use many different sources while preparing this episode.

A few we can recommend are Portrait of a Racist, The Real Life of Byron De La Beckwith by Reed Massengill, Medgar and Murly, Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America by Joy Anne Reed, and Ghosts of Mississippi, The Murder of Medgar Evers, The Trial of Byron De La Beckwith, and The Haunting of the New South by Mary Ann Vollers.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details.

And while in some cases, we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Mohammed Shazi.

Sound design by Matthew Fillett.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Emma Dibdin, managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson, and Lindsey Graham.