On June 23, 1963, two days after avowed white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was first arrested in the ambush murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the hometown Clarion-Ledger led its story with a curious headline: "Californian is Charged with Murder of Evers."
Curious because the headline obscured the fact that Beckwith, a California-born fertilizer salesman with a record of racist activities, had deep roots in the South and lived most of his life in Greenwood, Mississippi, 90 miles north of Jackson. The headline became the most quoted in the paper's 154-year history, symbolizing an alliance with segregationists that had earned it the nickname "The Klan-Ledger" from civil rights advocates in Mississippi during the 1950s and '60s.
Read Full Article »
