Mississippi Integration Leader Murdered

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30156, 13 June 1963, Page 13

Mississippi Integration Leader Murdered

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter— i Copyright)

JACKSON (Mississippi), June 12.

A negro integration leader was found shot dead in Jackson yesterday. It was only one of several outbreaks of racial violence in the South. In Cambridge, Maryland, there were fires and a riot in which two white men were shot.

The British United Press reported that police said Edgar Evers, aged 37, who had directed integration efforts in Mississippi and particularly in Jackson, was found lying under the car port of his home.

A bullet had passed through his body after striking him in the back, police said. Two negro neighbours called the police and took Mr Evers to hospital in a station waggon with a police escort, but he died two hours later. Mr Evers was the Mississippi field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. In Cambridge, State police said the two men were shot as they stood in front of the doorway of a car repair shop in the negro district. They were identified as Jerome Shenton, aged 37, owner of the shop, and George Berhard Todd, aged 42, a fire insurance agent.

The shooting occurred while crowds of whites and negroes skirmished, and three separate fires broke out in white

business establishments, one of them Shenton's shop. The fires erupted in three separate businesses, . all owned by white persons and all located in the negro district. Police said they had found two pop bottles filled

with petrol at two of the fives, and said they felt the third, a general alarm blaze which broke out in a grocery store, also was the result of such a device.

The two incendiary bombs discovered apparently had failed to go off, but police said they thought the fires resulted from additional bombs being thrown or placed in the car repair shop and a restaurant. Both of the devices found had charred rag wicks.

Fighting between negroes and whites in the negro quarter . broke out .after a group of 175 chanting, singing negroes marched on the courthouse and gaol for the second consecutive night. Earlier today hopes for any quick settlement of the racial difficulties in Cambridge dimmed when an arbitrating committee disbanded.

State police, using dogs and armed with riot sticks, were rushed in to quell the fighting, which ended late tonight. The fires were reported under control, but bricks still were flying sporadically in the negro section. One State patrolmap and one fireman were injured by bricks earlier.

Captain Paul Randall, commander of the eastern shore State police, said one of his troopers was hit an the head by a rock as he tried to control a negro mob milling about the grocery store fire. A fireman trying to battle the blaze was struck on the leg with a brick, and other firemen were stoned with brickbats and bottles as they tried to bring the blaze under control.