On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the right of states to prohibit assisted suicide, holding: 1 asserted right to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamenta
Trang 1Ct 2258, 138 L Ed 2d 772, 65 [1997]), three
terminally ill patients, four physicians, and a
nonprofit organization brought action against the
state of Washington for DECLARATORY JUDGMENT,
that a statute banning assisted suicide violated
due process clause On June 26, 1997, the
Supreme Court unanimously upheld the right
of states to prohibit assisted suicide, holding: (1)
asserted right to assistance in committing suicide
is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by
due process clause, and (2) Washington’s ban on
assisted suicide is rationally related to legitimate
government interests In Vacco v Quill (521 U.S
793, 117 S Ct 2293, 138 L Ed 2d 834[1997]),
physicians challenged the constitutionality of
New York statutes making it a crime to aid a
person in committing suicide or attempting to
commit suicide The Supreme Court held that
New York’s prohibition on assisting suicide did
not violate the EQUAL PROTECTION clause of the
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
Involuntary Euthanasia
The term involuntary euthanasia is used to
describe the killing of a person who has not
explicitly requested aid in dying This term is
most often used with respect to patients who are
in a persistent vegetative state and who probably
will never recover consciousness
Euthanasia Considerations
Euthanasia is a divisive topic, and different
interpretations of its meaning, practice, and
morality abound Those who favor active
eutha-nasia and a patient’s right to die do not
acknowledge a distinction between active and
passive euthanasia They assert that the
with-drawal of life-sustaining treatment cannot be
distinguished in principle from affirmative steps
to hasten a patient’s death In both situations,
they argue, a person intends to cause the patient’s
death, acts out of compassionate motives, and
causes that single outcome In their view, turning
off a life-sustaining respirator switch and giving a
lethal injection are morally equivalent actions
Opponents of active euthanasia argue that it
undermines the value of, and respect for, all
human life; erodes trust in physicians;
desensi-tizes society to killing; and contradicts many
people’s religious beliefs Moreover, they
main-tain that the intentions and natures of active
and passive euthanasia are not essentially the
same In active euthanasia, a person directly
intends to cause death and uses available means
to achieve this end In passive euthanasia, a person decides against using a certain form of treatment and then directs that such treatment
be withdrawn or withheld, accepting but not intending the patient’s death, which is caused by the underlying illness
While people cite differing reasons for choosing to end their own lives, those suffering from a terminal illness typically state that a serious disorder or disease has adversely affected their quality of life to the point where they no longer wish to continue living Under such circumstances, patients may have been diagnosed with a degenerative, progressive illness such as ALS, Huntington’s disease, multiple sclerosis, AIDS, or Alzheimer’s dis-ease Patients with such illnesses often fear, with good reason, a gradual loss of the quality
of life in the future as the disease or disorder progresses, or they might already have lost a good deal of their independence and thus might require continuous care Some feel that this loss
of autonomy causes an unacceptable loss of personal dignity Others realize that they will be dying in the near future and simply want to have total control over the process Some point out that in addition to physical considerations, they do not want to diminish their assets by incurring large medical costs as their death approaches They feel that they ought to have the option to die sooner and to pass on their assets to their beneficiaries
Some patients who decide that they wish to commit suicide are unable or unwilling to accomplish the act without assistance from their physician Physician-assisted suicide helps them
to die under conditions, and at the time, that they choose PAS is currently legal only in the state of Oregon, under severe restrictions In other states, terminally ill individuals who want
to die must continue living until their body eventually collapses or until a family member or friend commits a criminal act by helping them
to commit suicide
Historical Considerations
Traditional Christian beliefs concerning all forms of suicide were addressed by Thomas Aquinas during the thirteenth century He condemned all suicide (whether assisted or not) on the theory that it violated one’s natural desire to live Among European writers, Michel
de Montaigne was the first major dissenter on this issue During the sixteenth century, he
Trang 2wrote a series of essays arguing that suicide should be a matter of personal choice, a human right He asserted it is a rational option under certain circumstances
Attempting to commit suicide was once a criminal act It has been decriminalized for many decades in most jurisdictions However, assisted suicide remains a criminal act
Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide
killing) and physician-assisted
ending the suffering of individuals who
have painful, debilitating, and terminal
diseases These methods are much
de-bated and involve complicated questions
One question concerns whether
indivi-duals in such conditions have the right to
die as they wish rather than live in
persistent agony Other questions have to
do with attending physicians’ roles,
par-ticularly their prescribing certain
medica-tions and giving direcmedica-tions for taking a
lethal dose People wonder if there are
certain circumstances in which a person
ought to help another person commit
suicide These are just some of the
questions that surround the issue of
physician-assisted suicide, a widely
debat-ed ethical issue in modern mdebat-edicine
Physician-assisted suicide is a form of
voluntary euthanasia In other words, it
involves a patient voluntarily acting to end
his or her life Physician-assisted suicide
differs from conventional suicide in that it
is facilitated by a physician who confirms
the patient’s diagnosis, rules out
condi-tions such as depression that may be
finally provides the means for committing
suicide Such action usually consists of
taking a lethal overdose of prescription
KEVORKIANbetween 1990 and 1998 chose to
press a button which delivered a lethal
poison into their veins or to put on a mask
that emitted carbon monoxide into their
lungs As of 2010 ASSISTED SUICIDE was a
felony offense in most states and was also
expressly forbidden in theAMERICAN
MEDI-CAL ASSOCIATION(AMA) Code of Medical
Ethics In 1999, Kevorkian was found
assisted suicide case He was sentenced to serve 10 to 25 years, but was paroled in
2007 after serving eight years in prison
The debate surrounding physician-assisted suicide in the United States has been influenced by medical practices in other countries, particularly the Nether-lands, which legalized both active eutha-nasia and physician-assisted suicide in
2002 Physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands is conducted within strict guidelines that include the following requirements: the patient’s request for assisted suicide must be voluntary, the patient must be experiencing intolerable suffering, all other alternatives for treat-ment must have been explored, and the physician must consult another indepen-dent physician before proceeding A study commissioned by the Dutch gov-ernment indicated that, in 2001, about 3,500 deaths, or 2.5 percent of the 140,000 death cases that were reported
in the Netherlands that year, occurred by active euthanasia The study, known as the Remmelink Report, defined euthana-sia as the termination of life at the patient’s request Figures also indicated that 300 deaths, or 0.2 percent, were caused by physician-assisted suicide
In the United States, the debate on legalizing assisted suicide began in ear-nest in the 1970s On one side of the debate were patients’ rights groups who lobbied for what they call the right to die—or the right to choose to die, as some have clarified it—of terminally ill patients The strongest opposition to the legalization of physician-assisted suicide has come from physicians’ groups such
as the AMA and from religious groups that are morally opposed to the practice
One person who has done much to make the case for physician-assisted suicide is Derek Humphry, a former journalist who founded the Hemlock Society, in 1980, after witnessing his first wife’s suffering as she was dying from cancer In 2003, the organization changed its name to End-of-Life Choices, which encompasses more clearly the issues supported by its members With a new
Com-passion Control,” the organization con-tinues to advocate for the right of terminally ill people to choose voluntary euthanasia or what Humphry has termed self-deliverance
Humphry has written several books
on the subject of voluntary euthanasia, including Jean’s Way (1978), which recounts his struggle to assist his wife’s death in 1975; Final Exit: The Practicalities
of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying (1991), a controversial book that gives detailed advice on how terminally ill people may take their own life; and Lawful Exit: The Limits of Freedom for Help in Dying (1993), which contains Humphry’s own recommendations for legislation that would legalize physician-assisted suicide
Humphry’s words, the “right to choose
to die” is “the ultimate civil liberty.”
physician-assisted suicide as a merciful, dignified option for people whose illness has eroded their quality of life beyond the limits of tolerance He also points out that what he calls beneficent euthanasia occurs every day in medical facilities as physicians make decisions regarding the end of life Others, including some medical ethicists, go so far as to claim that a decision to withhold antibiotics, oxygen, or nutrition from a terminally ill
260 EUTHANASIA
Trang 3throughout the United States, with
the exception of the state of Oregon In that
state, it is permitted under tightly controlled
conditions
Oregon’s Euthanasia Law
In 1994 voters in the state of Oregon approved
a ballot measure that would have legalized euthanasia under limited conditions Under the
euthanasia than is administering a fatal
dose of morphine Indeed, they see the
common practice of withholding life
support as more open to potential abuse
than the practice of physician-assisted
suicide The former, they argue, is a less
visible, less easily regulated decision
Proponents of physician-assisted suicide
also claim that diseases kill people in far
more cruel ways than would any means
of death that a physician might provide
for an irreversibly ill patient As a result,
they see the action of assisting in suicide
as entirely compatible with the
physi-cian’s duty to the patient
However, Humphry has been an
open critic of Kevorkian’s work He has
described Kevorkian’s theory and
prac-tice of assisted suicide as open-ended
euthanasia Noting Kevorkian’s lack of
precautionary measures such as the use
of waiting periods and second opinions,
Humphry sees any wider application of
Kevorkian’s methods as potentially
lead-ing to abuse and tragedy.“The thinking
people in our movement are appalled by
it,” Humphry said “If you have
Kevor-kian’s type of euthanasia, it will be a
slippery slope Kevorkian’s is a recipe for
skiing down a glacier.”
Detractors of physician-assisted
sui-cide also use the familiar“slippery slope”
argument, proposing that once
physi-cian-assisted suicide is legalized, other
forms of euthanasia will more likely be
practiced as well They see assisted
suicide as potentially leading to situations
in which elderly, chronically ill, and
handicapped people, along with others,
are killed through active, nonvoluntary
euthanasia Related to this idea is the
view that widespread practice of
physician-assisted suicide might claim the lives of
those whose intolerable suffering is
caused by treatable depression They
point out that terminally ill people or
others in pain are often also suffering
from depression and that despite their
illness, their feelings of hopelessness can
often be addressed through means such
as counseling and antidepressant medi-cation
The Catholic Church opposes eutha-nasia and assisted suicide Basing its arguments on passages from the Bible, Catholic theology has for many centuries opposed all forms of suicide Catholicism argues that innocent human life may not
be destroyed for any reason whatsoever
The debate over physician-assisted suicide eventually reached the Supreme Court In 1994 an advocacy group known as Compassion in Dying filed two lawsuits (Compassion in Dying et al v
Washington and Quill et al v Vacco) challenging the constitutionality of state laws banning assisted dying in Washing-ton and New York Compassion in Dying won in the district court in Washington
Chief Judge Barbara Rothstein wrote,
“There is no more profoundly personal decision, nor one which is closer to the heart of personal liberty, than the choice which a terminally ill person makes to end his or her suffering and hasten an inevitable death.” In New York, Com-passion in Dying lost and filed an appeal
in the Second Circuit
ruling was overturned by the NinthCIRCUIT COURT of Appeals, reinstating the anti-suicide law In 1996, however, after reconsideration, the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals issued a reversal decision in Compassion v Washington That decision held that assisted dying was protected by liberty and privacy provisions of the U.S
Constitution The majority wrote that
“Those who believe strongly that death must come without physician assistance are free to follow that creed, be they doctors or patients They are not free, however, to force their views, their reli-gious convictions, or their philosophies on all the other members of a democratic society, and to compel those whose values differ with theirs to die painful, protracted, and agonizing deaths.”
In April 1996 the Second Circuit joined the Ninth in recognizing constitu-tional protection for assisted dying in the Quill case, holding that the New York statutes criminalizing assisted suicide vio-late the EQUAL PROTECTION clause of the
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT However, on June
26, 1997, the U.S Supreme Court reversed both the Ninth and Second Circuit Court
in WASHINGTON V GLUCKSBERG (521 U.S
702, 117 S Ct 2258, 138 L Ed 2d 772 [1997]) and Vacco v Quill (521 U.S 743,
117 S Ct 2293, 138 L Ed 2d 834[1997]) The Court ruled that state laws against assisting a suicide are not
unconstitution-al, but it also stated that patients have a right to aggressive treatment of pain and other symptoms, even if the treatment
“Throughout the Nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality and practicality
of physician assisted suicide Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society.” However,
in Gonzales v Oregon (546 U.S 243, 126 S
Ct 904, L Ed.[2006]), the Court agreed with the state of Oregon that the federal government could not prosecute doctors who prescribe medications to help their patients commit suicide
Ultimately, then, the voters and representatives of the states and the legal system itself will have to decide whether physician-assisted suicide will be legal-ized Regardless of what side prevails in the debate, the exchange of ideas that it creates may lead to a greater understand-ing of the difficult choices surroundunderstand-ing death in modern times
FURTHER READINGS Cohen-Almagor, Raphael 2001 The Right to Die with Dignity: An Argument in Ethics, Medicine, and Law New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ Press.
Hendin, Herbert 2002 “The Dutch Experi-ence ” Issues in Law & Medicine (spring) CROSS REFERENCES
Death and Dying; Physicians and Surgeons.
Trang 4Death with Dignity law, a person who sought physician-assisted suicide would have to meet certain criteria:
n The person must be terminally ill.
n The person must have six months or less
to live
n The person must make two oral requests for assistance in dying
n The person must make one written request for assistance in dying
n The person must convince two physicians that he or she is sincere and not acting on a whim and that the decision is voluntary
n The person must not have been influenced
by depression
n The person must be informed of “the feasible alternatives,” including, but not limited to, comfort care, hospice care, and pain control
n The person must wait for 15 days.
Under the proposed law, a person who met all requirements could receive a prescription of a barbiturate that would be sufficient to cause death Physicians would be prohibited from inducing death by injection or carbon monoxide
The NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE, supported by the Roman Catholic Church, obtained a court injunction to delay implemen-tation of the measure The law stalled in the appeals process In the meantime, the measure was not enacted In 1997 there was a second public referendum, and the law was enacted
Within 24 hours of the announcement of the results, state officials had forms for physicians
to record instances of assisted suicide These were later distributed to physicians in the state
The form is entitled“Request for Medication to End My Life in a Humane and Dignified Manner.”
Immediately after the law was affirmed, Thomas Constantine, the administrator of the federal DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION (DEA), wrote a policy statement that said that prescribing drugs to help terminally ill patients kill themselves would be a violation of the Controlled Substances Act Nevertheless, on March 26, 1998, a woman in her mid-eighties died from a lethal dose of barbiturates, which had been prescribed by her doctor under the Oregon law She was the first person to publicly use the law to commit suicide She had been
fighting breast cancer for 20 years and recently had been told by her doctor that she had less than two months to live She had been experiencing increased difficulty breathing She made a tape recording in which she stated,“I’m looking forward to it I will be relieved of all the stress I have.” Her personal doctor would not help her end her life, so she turned to an advocacy group, Compassion in Dying That group located a doctor to assist her She fell into
a deep sleep about five minutes after taking the lethal dose of pills, and she died peacefully about 25 minutes later Attorney GeneralJANET RENO officially reversed Constantine’s ruling a few weeks later, stating that doctors who use the law to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients will not be prosecuted and that drug laws were intended to block illegal trafficking in drugs, not to cover situations like the Oregon suicide law
Despite significant controversy, by the end
of 1998, one prediction of the anti-choice forces had not materialized: There was no rush of people to Oregon to seek an easy end to life While it was predicted that many would take advantage of the law, of the 23 terminally ill individuals who applied to end their own lives
in 1998, 15 committed suicide, usually within a day of receiving the prescription Six died from their illnesses without using the medication Two remained alive at the end of 1998 From
1998 to 2002, 129 people chose physician assisted suicide
In early 2001 Oregon state senator Ron Wyden wrote Attorney General JOHN ASHCROFT asking that theGEORGE W.BUSHadministration not mount an attack on the state law permitting assistance in suicide Ashcroft wrote a letter to Asa Hutchinson, chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration He declared that assisting a terminally ill patient to commit suicide is not a
“legitimate medical purpose” for federally con-trolled drugs He said that physicians who use drugs to help patients die face suspension or revocation of their licenses to prescribe federally controlled drugs This position was contrary to the position taken by Janet Reno, his predeces-sor The attorney general of Oregon, Hardy Myers, quickly initiated a lawsuit to have the Ashcroft directive declared unconstitutional The federal district court in Oregon issued a tempo-rary injunction, which prevents the federal government from enforcing Ashcroft’s
262 EUTHANASIA
Trang 5interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act
(CSA) The state of Oregon requested that the
court block the federal DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
from taking legal action against Oregon doctors
who prescribe medication to help their patients
commit suicide A federal judge ruled in favor of
the state law in 2002, and the Department of
Justice appealed the decision to the U.S Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The appeals court
upheld the Oregon law, as did the Supreme
Court in Gonzales v Oregon (546 U.S 243, 126 S
Ct 904, L Ed.[2006]) The Court acknowledged
the federal government has the right to regulate
drugs but stated that the attorney general does
not have the power to regulate the proper uses of
legal medications Moreover, prior CASE LAW
limited the power of the federal government to
regulate medical practice
Other States
According to the online website, Euthanasia
com, 35 states have legislated against assisted
suicide, while nine other states have cited it as a
crime under common law Still more states have
introduced or passed statutes criminalizing
assisted suicide These statutes forbid a person
to knowingly assist or aid another in
commit-ting suicide Some also prohibit solicicommit-ting,
advising, or encouraging another to commit
suicide Some statutes penalize assisted suicide
under guidelines established for murder or
MANSLAUGHTER, whereas others make it a unique
offense with separate penalties Few courts have
interpreted the assisted-suicide statutes, because
prosecutions for assisted suicide are rare In
cases of assisted suicide, a state usually
prose-cutes individuals for murder or manslaughter
The Supreme Court of Ohio, however, ruled in
1996 that assisted suicide is not a crime
FURTHER READINGS
Behuniak, Susan M 2003 Physician-Assisted Suicide: The
Anatomy of a Constitutional Law Issue Lanham, Md.:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Dyck, Arthur J 2001 When Killing Is Wrong:
Physician-Assisted Suicide and the Courts Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim
Press.
Euthanasia.com Available online at www.euthanasia.com
(accessed October 11, 2009).
Palmer, Larry I 2000 Endings and Beginnings: Law,
Medicine, and Society in Assisted Life and Death.
Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
CROSS REFERENCE
Death and Dying
vEVARTS, WILLIAM MAXWELL William Maxwell Evarts served as attorney general of the United States during the last year
of the administration of President ANDREW JOHNSON Evarts was a distinguished and power-ful New York attorney who successfully defended President Johnson at hisIMPEACHMENT trial, represented theREPUBLICAN PARTYbefore an electoral commission during the disputed presidential election of 1876, served asSECRETARY
OF STATEduring the administration of President RUTHERFORD B.HAYES, and ended his public career
as a U.S senator
Evarts was born February 16, 1818, in Boston He graduated from Yale University in
1837 and then attended Harvard Law School
He was admitted to the New York bar in 1841 and subsequently established a successful legal practice From 1849 to 1853, Evarts acted as assistant district attorney for the New York District
Evarts entered public service during theU.S CIVIL WAR He participated in diplomatic activi-ties as a member of the Secretary of Defense Committee for the Union In 1863 he went to England as a Union delegate to convince England to stop providing war vessels and equipment to the CONFEDERACY
Following the end of the Civil War, Evarts returned to his law practice He was drawn back to Washington, D.C., in 1868 to help defend President Johnson at his impeachment trial The charges against Johnson were weak and politically motivated, yet the mood in the Senate appeared to favor conviction Evarts proved instrumental in obtaining an acquittal, though
by a margin of only one vote Johnson rewarded Evarts by appointing him attorney general Evarts served in that position until the end of the Johnson administration in March 1869
Evarts then returned to New York govern-ment He led the New York CityBAR ASSOCIATION for ten years and was an advocate for political reform in the city, which was dominated
by the corrupt Democratic political machine led
by the“Tweed Ring.” The ring was named after William Marcy “Boss” Tweed, the New York City DEMOCRATIC PARTYleader who ran the party organization popularly known asTAMMANY HALL Tweed and his associates used their political connections and political offices to gain a foothold in city and county government Once formed, the Tweed Ring misappropriated
Trang 6government funds through such devices as faked leases, padded bills, false vouchers, unnecessary repairs, and overpriced goods and services bought from suppliers controlled by the ring
In 1876 Evarts reentered the national political arena, this time as the chief counsel
of the national Republican party The presiden-tial election of 1876 between DemocratSAMUEL J TILDEN and Republican Rutherford B Hayes ended in disputes involving the voting returns
of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina Two sets of returns were submitted from each of
these states, one favoring Tilden, the other Hayes If Hayes were awarded the electoral votes from these states, and one more from a disputed Oregon elector, he would defeat Tilden in a vote
of 185–184
Congress appointed an electoral commis-sion to decide which returns to accept In the end Evarts and the Republican members of the commission were able to convince commission member and Supreme Court Justice JOSEPH P BRADLEYto cast his vote, which was the deciding vote, for the Hayes electors and Hayes was awarded the presidency Tilden agreed to the result out of fear that violence would ensue if he disputed it In return the Republicans made a side agreement with southern Democrats that led to President Hayes in 1877 removing federal occupation troops from the former states of the Confederacy Evarts was also a key player in these affairs
President Hayes, like President Johnson before him, rewarded Evarts, appointing him secretary of state in 1877 Evarts served in this capacity during the four years of the Hayes administration In 1885 he was elected a U.S senator from New York He served in the Senate until 1889 In failing health he retired from politics and the law in 1891
Evarts died February 28, 1901, in New York City
vEVERS, MEDGAR WILEY Shortly before his death, CIVIL RIGHTS activist MEDGAR WILEY EVERSwas described in the New York Times as the movement’s “quiet integrationist.” Although his contemporaryMARTIN LUTHER KING,
William M Evarts.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
William Maxwell Evarts 1818–1901
1818 Born, Boston, Mass.
◆
1837 Graduated from Yale University
1861–65 U.S Civil War
1863–64 Served as Union delegate
to England
1841 Admitted to New York bar
1876 Acted as chief counsel for the Republicans
in the Hayes-Tilden electoral battle
1868–69 Served as U.S.
attorney general
1849–53 Served
as assistant district attorney for the New York District
◆
1868 Defended President Andrew Johnson at impeachment trial
1901 Died, New York City
◆
◆
1870–80 Headed the Association
of the Bar of New York City
1873 William "Boss" Tweed convicted of stealing public funds
1877–81 Served as secretary of state 1885–89 Represented New York in the U.S.
Senate
264 EVERS, MEDGAR WILEY
Trang 7JR., achieved greater fame for organizing
nonvio-lent demonstrations and boycotts, Evers was an
equally dedicated reformer, whose reports of civil
rights abuses in Mississippi helped to force social
and political changes in the Deep South
From 1954 to 1963, Evers was state field
secretary for the National Association for the
ADVANCEMENT of Colored People (NAACP)
Cou-rageous, methodical, and devoted to his work,
Evers sought to dismantle a decades-old system
of SEGREGATION His approach was to create
public outrage over the treatment of African
Americans by documenting cases of brutality
and injustice Although Evers fought tirelessly
against discriminatory laws and conduct, he
rejected violence as a means of improving the
plight of his people
By antagonizing powerful white
suprema-cists, Evers put himself in constant danger in his
home state When he was shot and killed by a
sniper on June 12, 1963, many Mississippians
were not surprised Upon his death, Evers
became an early martyr in the
African-American struggle for equal rights More than
30 years later, when Byron de la Beckwith finally
was convicted of Evers’s ASSASSINATION, Evers
became a symbol of U.S justice—delayed, but
not denied
Evers was born July 2, 1925, in Decatur,
Mississippi, the younger of two sons born to
James Evers, a sawmill worker, and Jessie Evers,
a devout Christian who encouraged young
Medgar to succeed The Evers family was
hardworking but poor Townspeople remember
Evers as an upright, sympathetic young man
who chafed under the inequities of segregation
DuringWORLD WAR II, Evers served in an all–
African-American unit of the U.S Army
Although the military’s racial policies infuriated him, he fought with distinction and was decorated for his bravery in the Normandy Invasion During his tour of duty, Evers experienced in Europe a more tolerant, racially integrated society, which inspired his hope for changes in his native Mississippi
After the war, Evers attended Mississippi’s Alcorn A&M College, where he participated in football, track, debate, and choir He also met
YOU CAN KILL A MAN BUT YOU CAN’T KILL
AN IDEA
—M EDGAR E VERS
Medgar Evers.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Medgar Wiley Evers 1925–1963
❖
1925 Born,
Decatur, Miss.
◆
1944 Decorated for bravery after Normandy Invasion
1962 Aided James Meredith in his successful attempt to register at University of Mississippi
1963 Assassinated, Jackson, Miss.; Byron
de la Beckwith charged with murder, but two trials resulted in hung juries
◆ ◆◆
◆
1952 Graduated from Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College
1995 Myrlie Evers Williams, Evers's widow, elected head
of NAACP
1961–73 Vietnam War 1939–45
World War II
1950–53 Korean War
1925
1954–63 Served as NAACP field representative in Miss.
1967 Thurgood Marshall became first African American U.S Supreme Court justice
◆
◆ ◆
1958 Arrested for sitting in a "white"
bus seat in Meridian, Mississippi
❖
1971 Public school busing
to achieve integration began
1994 Beckwith convicted
of Evers's death 1990 Beckwith reindicted
◆
Trang 8his future wife, Myrlie Evers, with whom he had three children After graduation, Evers worked
as a sales agent for Magnolia Mutual, an African-American–owned life insurance com-pany Assigned a rural territory, Evers witnessed African-American poverty and debasement on such a large scale that he could no longer abide Mississippi’s racial discrimination He took a job with the NAACP in 1954, determined to make a difference
As an NAACP field representative, Evers handled routine administrative duties such as setting up chapters, recruiting new members, and collecting dues But more importantly, Evers filed detailed public reports of lynchings, beatings, and other race-related atrocities in Mississippi His work attracted national atten-tion Evers also encouraged voter registration for African Americans and, in some instances, boycotts
Because he signaled the end of the era of white power, Evers was despised by southern bigots He bravely endured their taunts and death threats Organizations opposed to inte-gration, such as the White Citizens Council, branded Evers an enemy Ironically, as African Americans became impatient with the slow pace
of social change, Evers’s work was oversha-dowed by more militant civil rights strategies
On the night of hisMURDER, Evers attended a local rally Around midnight, he returned to his Jackson, Mississippi, home, where an assassin waited for him in nearby honeysuckle bushes
Evers got out of his car and walked up the driveway, carrying shirts that read Jim Crow Must Go, a reference to laws conferring second-class citizenship on African Americans The assassin shot him in the back with an Enfield 30.06 rifle Evers’s wife and their young children, Darrell, Reena, and James, heard the gunshot and rushed to his side Evers could not be saved
As news of Evers’s death spread, riots erupted
in Jackson The nation was stunned by the killing
PresidentJOHN F.KENNEDYdenounced the assassi-nation, sending Evers’s wife his condolences and praising Evers’s devotion to civil rights The FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION(FBI) was called
in to conduct a criminal investigation Evers was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, in Washington, D.C
The trail of the FBI’s investigation led quickly to white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith, a fertilizer sales representative
affiliated with the KU KLUX KLAN Charged with murder, de la Beckwith appeared guilty to most observers, but the racial climate in Mississippi prevented a sure conviction During his trial, de
la Beckwith acted clownish and unrepentant At one point, Mississippi governor Ross Barnett entered the courtroom and hugged the DEFEN-DANT in full view of the all-white jury Despite compelling evidence from the prosecution—de
la Beckwith’s public boasting about the murder, his FINGERPRINTS on the rifle scope, his well-known ability as a marksman, and reports that his white Plymouth Valiant was parked near Evers’s home at the time of the killing—the trial resulted in a hung jury Astonishingly, a second trial also ended in a hung jury
Evers’s widow, who had remarried, refused
to let the matter drop MYRLIE EVERS-WILLIAMS lobbied long and hard to have de la Beckwith tried for a third time for Evers’s killing A third prosecution was possible in this case for two reasons First, there is noSTATUTE OF LIMITATIONS for murder, so the passage of time was not a consideration Second, de la Beckwith had not been exonerated (with a hung jury, the defendant is neither acquitted nor convicted),
so DOUBLE JEOPARDY, the constitutional guaran-tee against multiple prosecutions, was not an issue Evers-Williams’s determination to see justice done, as well as a change in Mississippi politics, made a third trial of de la Beckwith possible
Facing testimony from new and former witnesses, de la Beckwith was reindicted in
1990 A trial was conducted by District Attorney
Ed Peters On February 21, 1994, a jury of eight African Americans and four whites in Hinds County, Mississippi, found de la Beckwith, by then 73 years old, guilty of the 1963 murder of Evers The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1997 De la Beckwith died in prison in 2001 Although the third trial was a painful experience for Evers-Williams, she was relieved that the Mississippi criminal justice system had finally brought closure to a personal and public tragedy
In life and death, Evers played an impor-tant role in the fight for racial equality He inspired in others, including his family, a commitment to the same social, political, and economic goals for African Americans Evers’s brother, Charles Evers, was elected mayor of
266 EVERS, MEDGAR WILEY
Trang 9Fayette, Mississippi, in 1969, and ran
unsuc-cessfully for governor of the state in 1971 In
1995, Evers-Williams was elected to head the
NAACP, the organization to which Evers had
dedicated his life
FURTHER READINGS
Evers, Myrlie, with William Peters 1967 For Us, the Living.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
Evers-Williams, Myrlie and Manning Marable 2005 The
Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero’s Life and Legacy
Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches.
New York: Basic Civitas Books.
Massengill, Reed 1994 Portrait of a Racist: The Man Who
Killed Medgar Evers? New York: St Martin’s Press.
Nossiter, Adam 1994 Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the
Murder of Medgar Evers Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley.
CROSS REFERENCES
Civil Rights Movement.
vEVERS-WILLIAMS, MYRLIE
MYRLIE EVERS-WILLIAMS achieved national
promi-nence as the chairwoman of the National
Association for the ADVANCEMENT of Colored
People (NAACP) She was narrowly elected to the
post in 1995 as part of an effort to reform an
organization rocked by scandal and allegations
of financial mismanagement
Evers-Williams was born March 17, 1933, in
Vicksburg, Mississippi She became part of the
modern CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT through her
marriage toMEDGAR EVERS, who was the state field
secretary for the Mississippi NAACP Her world
changed dramatically on June 12, 1963, when her
husband was shot to death outside their home in
Jackson, Mississippi White supremacist Byron de
la Beckwith was charged with theMURDER, but two trials in the 1960s ended in hung juries After the second trial, Evers-Williams vowed to bring de la Beckwith to justice
Following her husband’s ASSASSINATION, Evers-Williams assumed his position as NAACP field secretary Then in 1964 she decided to move with her three young children to Claremont, California, and begin a new life In
1967, she published For Us the Living, a memoir
of her life with her late husband She earned a
Myrlie Evers-Williams.
AP IMAGES
Myrlie Evers-Williams 1933–
1999 Watch Me Fly: What I
Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be published
1995 Evers-Williams elected chair of NAACP
2005 Published
The Autobiography
of Medgar Evers,
comprised of Medgar’s writings and speeches
1994 De la Beckwith convicted of Medgar Evers's death; sentenced to life
1987–89 Appointed first African American woman to serve
as commissioner
on L.A Board of Public Works
1990
De la Beckwith reindicted
1976 Married Walter Williams
1970 Ran for seat in Congress
1968 Graduated from Pomona College; became director of planning at the Claremont Colleges
1967 For Us the Living published
1954–63 Medgar served as Mississippi's state field secretary of the NAACP
1963 Medgar assassinated in front of their home
in Jackson, Miss.; Byron de la Beckwith charged
1964 Two trials resulted in hung juries;
Evers family moved to California
1951 Married Medgar Evers
1933 Born,
Vicksburg, Miss.
1939–45 World War II
1950–53 Korean War
1961–73 Vietnam War
NEVER LOSE SIGHT
OF YOUR GOALS WE ARE LIVING IN A TIME WHEN WE MUST TAKE INTO OUR HANDS OUR DESTINIES AND OUR FUTURES
—M YRLIE
E VERS -W ILLIAMS
Trang 10degree in sociology at Pomona College in 1968 and then became director of planning for the Claremont Colleges system
In 1970 she ran for a seat in Congress in what was then the 24th congressional district in California Though she lost the election, it was a turning point for Evers-Williams She was publicly transformed from Mrs Medgar Evers
to Myrlie Evers In the 1970s and 1980s, she worked in the corporate arena, serving as director of consumer affairs for the Atlantic Richfield Company In 1976 she married Walter Williams, a California longshoreman and CIVIL RIGHTSactivist
In 1987 Evers-Willams became the first African American woman to serve on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works She and her husband moved to Bend, Oregon, in 1989
When Mississippi prosecutors failed to try de
la Beckwith a third time for the murder of Medgar Evers, Evers-Williams mounted a cam-paign to generate public opinion in favor of a retrial When she was told that no transcripts of the original trial were to be found, she produced
an original that she had held in a safe deposit box since the 1960s In 1994 her efforts succeeded, and de la Beckwith was convicted of the 1963 crime He was sentenced to life in prison, where
he died in 2001 In 1996, Evers-Williams served
as a consultant to the movie Ghosts of Mississippi, which recounts the story of the retrial and conviction of de la Beckwith Actress Whoopi Goldberg portrays Evers-Williams in the movie
Despite the many changes and activities in her life, Evers-Williams remained committed to the NAACP Serving on the national board of directors in the 1990s, she observed firsthand the problems that were engulfing the once dominant civil rights organization A growing dissatisfaction with the leadership of Executive Director Benjamin F Chavis Jr culminated in August 1994, when he was fired for committing more than $330,000 in NAACP funds, without the board’s approval, to settle aSEX DISCRIMINA-TION suit filed against him The focus then shifted to Chairman William F Gibson, who was also accused of misappropriating NAACP funds for personal use
Evers-Williams was approached to challenge Gibson at the 1995 board election She hesitated
to run because her husband was dying from prostate cancer However, Walter Williams
urged her to take up the fight She was elected
to the chair in February 1995, winning by a one-vote margin; Evers-Williams was the first woman elected to that position Her husband died shortly after her election
The precarious state of the NAACP soon became clear to Evers-Williams Membership had declined from 500,000 to 300,000, while the organization’s debt had risen to over $4 million Corporate support had also dropped, forcing severe staff reductions at the national headquar-ters in Baltimore
Evers-Williams moved quickly to restore trust The board hired an accounting firm to audit financial records and directed its attorney to seek restitution from Gibson Evers-Williams renewed contact with financial contributors, crisscrossing the United States in search of support By the end of 1995, she had substantially reduced the NAACP’s debt New programs were started with the goal of reinvigorating the NAACP and attracting younger members In December 1995, the board approved the appoint-ment of Representative Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.)
as president and executive director, capping a frenetic year for Evers-Williams
Evers-Williams served as chair of the NAACP until 1998 She then began work on the Medgar Evers Institute, headquartered in Jackson, Mis-sissippi, which promotes civil rights and economic development In 2003 the institute partnered with Oregon State University to establish a western regional office in Bend, home of Evers-Williams Evers-Williams continued to be a well-received speaker and author In 1999, she published a memoir, titled Watch Me Fly: What
I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be, with Melinda Blau She received numerous honorary degrees and awards, includ-ing the U.S Congressional Black Caucus Achieve-ment Award, the NAACP’s Image Award for Civil Rights, and the Woman of the Year Award from the state of California In March 2003 Evers-Williams visited Mississippi in order to partici-pate in a tribute by the Mississippi Legislature to honor the accomplishments of the late Medgar Evers and Myrlie Williams In 2005 Evers-Williams published The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero’s Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches As of early
2010, she continued to serve on the board of the NAACP and to live in Bend, Oregon
268 EVERS-WILLIAMS, MYRLIE