JACKSON, Miss.—Visitor brochures that tell the unvarnished truth about the racist who murdered Medgar Evers are currently available to visitors at the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson, Mississippi, after a report early Thursday said that the National Park Service had removed them.
That story, by Jerry Mitchell for Mississippi Today, said the National Park wants to replace the brochures with a version that does not refer to white supremacist assassin Byron De La Beckwith as a “racist.”
“Not that I know of at this moment,” said Keena Graham, the superintendent of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, when asked by the Mississippi Free Press on Feb. 5 whether there had been any directive to remove such references.
She acknowledged that some edits are planned, but said that the brochures need to have tour hours and hours of operation updated. She said the goal is to give the brochures a fresh, updated look at the Evers’ family history with their cooperation.
“Right now, we are actually working with the Evers family because we have two agreements with them—one is a general agreement with the Evers family and one is the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute—to consult with them on all issues that deal with interpretation and education and all that stuff,” she said. “They’re working with us right now to revise it and include more stuff in it. More photographs, more information and the correct hours of operation.”
Graham said the editing process is still in its planning stages.
A Mississippi Free Press reporter visited the monument on Thursday to confirm that the brochures remained on display and obtained a copy. The brochure describes Evers’ assassin this way: “Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the racist and segregationist White Citizens’ Council, symbolizes the greater hatred that permeated much of the American South throughout the 1960s.”
Mitchell’s report comes well into the Trump administration’s crusade to cut diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and to whitewash parts of American history the administration does not like, including Black history.
Mitchell Says Brochures Weren’t There When He Visited
Asked about the fact that the brochures are currently available at the Evers monument, Jerry Mitchell told the Mississippi Free Press on Thursday evening that the brochures were not there when he visited sometime last week, likely on Saturday.
“They were not present in the house when I asked for one—they were back in the office is what I was told. I can’t remember the exact words, but they told me they were in the office. They did not have them there,” Mitchell said. “And I might add that I was told by others the same thing, before I ever got there, I was told the same thing by someone else who went through the home that they had pulled the brochures and that they were editing them, and that once they were done editing, they would have new brochures. I’m not denying they have brochures.”
Mitchell, who spent decades investigating civil rights-era murders like Evers’, also shared an email he received on Thursday morning from the National Park Service.
“Some changes to park brochures are not related to Secretary’s Order 3431. In reality, parks regularly remove or replace brochures that are outdated, as was the case at Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument,” the email said.
Secretary’s Order 3431, which the Trump administration also calls “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” is a directive from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum instructing a review of materials and their depictions of American history—especially as it pertains to race and colonialism. The order last year sparked widespread concern over an effort to whitewash and sanitize uncomfortable historical truths.
In the email, the National Park Service described it as “a review of certain interpretive content to ensure parks tell the full and accurate story of American history, including subjects that were minimized or omitted under the last administration.”
“That includes fully addressing slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and other foundational chapters of our history, informed by current scholarship and expert review, not through a narrow ideological lens,” the NPS email to Mitchell said. “Some materials may be edited or replaced to provide broader context, others may remain unchanged, and some removals being cited publicly had nothing to do with SO 3431 at all. Claims that parks are erasing history or removing signs wholesale are inaccurate.”
Preserving Evers’ Memory
The Trump administration removed the name of Medgar Evers, who was one of Mississippi’s most prominent civil-rights leaders, from Arlington National Cemetery’s website while deleting a section honoring the service of Black Americans. Though Evers’ name has since been restored, the U.S. Department of Defense also announced last year that it would change the name of a naval vessel named in Evers’ honor.
The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, established from the couple’s home in Jackson, Mississippi, recognizes their legacy of civil-rights reform in the 1950s and 1960s. Medgar Evers was a World War II veteran who became the NAACP’s first Mississippi-based field officer.
Some of Evers’ efforts included organizing voter-registration drives, leading statewide investigations into the death of Emmett Till and calling for economic boycotts of businesses that would not serve Black patrons.
Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens’ Council and the Ku Klux Klan, shot and killed Evers in his driveway at his Jackson, Mississippi, home on June 12, 1963. Beckwith made no secret of his racism, and though there was plenty of evidence to convict Beckwith, two trials in 1964 resulted in hung juries. Decades after Evers’ death, a third jury convicted Beckwith on Feb. 5, 1994. Beckwith died in 2001.
Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, founded the Medgar Evers Institute in 1989, which has since changed its name to recognize Evers-Williams’ efforts alongside her late first husband.
The home she shared with Medgar Evers and their three children was dedicated as a national monument in 2020 and is maintained by the National Park Service.
The National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Ashton Pittman contributed to this report.