June 12, 1963 - A sniper lying in ambush shot and fatally wounded a Negro civil rights leader in Jackson, Mississippi early today. The slaying touched off mass protests by Negroes in which 158 were arrested. The victim of the shooting was Medgar W. Evers (pictured), 37-year-old Mississippi field secretary of the NAACP. Struck in the back by a bullet from a high-powered rifle as he walked from his automobile to his home, he died less than an hour later — at 1:14 a.m. in University Hospital. Agents of the FBI joined Jackson, Hinds County, and state authorities in the search for the killer. Investigators discovered a .30-06 caliber rifle with a newly attached telescopic sight in a vacant lot near the honeysuckle thicket from which they believed the fatal shot had been fired. The first demonstration today occurred at 11:25 a.m., when 13 ministers left the Pearl Street African Methodist Episcopal Church and walked silently toward City Hall. The police arrested all 13. The group included many of the Negro leaders who had been working with white officials in efforts to resolve Jackson’s racial crisis. An hour and a half later, roughly 200 Negro teenagers marched out of the Masonic Building on Lynch Street, site of Mr. Evers’s office. Some 100 city policemen, Hinds County deputy sheriffs, and state highway patrolmen armed with riot guns and automatic rifles halted them a block away. A total of 145 demonstrators, including 74 aged 17 and under, were arrested. One girl was struck in the face with a club, deputies wrestled a middle-aged woman spectator to the sidewalk, and other Negroes were shoved back roughly.
