Honoring the life and sacrifice of Medgar Evers and congratulating the United States Navy for naming a supply ship after Medgar Evers.

Whereas Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi;

Whereas Mr. Evers was hired by Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard to sell insurance for the Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company;

Whereas Mr. Evers was inducted into United States Army in 1943 and fought in the Battle of Normandy;

Whereas Dr. Howard, as President of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, helped to introduce Mr. Evers to civil rights activism;

Whereas Mr. Evers applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi School of Law in February 1954;

Whereas Mr. Evers’ application was rejected resulting in a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) campaign to desegregate the school;

Whereas Mr. Evers was hired as a field secretary for the NAACP;

Whereas Mr. Evers was the target of a number of death threats as a result of his activism;

Whereas, on May 28, 1963, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of Mr. Evers’s home and 5 days before his death Mr. Evers was assaulted by a car outside of an NAACP office;

Whereas Mr. Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his home in Jackson after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers on June 12, 1963;

Whereas this assassination occurred just hours after President John F. Kennedy’s speech on national television in support of civil rights;

Whereas the death of Mr. Evers helped to prompt President John F. Kennedy to ask Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill;

Whereas that bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson;

Whereas Mr. Evers’ assassination has been memorialized in numerous popular songs, movies, and written pieces;

Whereas in 1969, Medgar Evers College was established in Brooklyn, New York, as part of the City University of New York;

Whereas, on June 28, 1992, the city of Jackson, Mississippi erected a statue in honor of Mr. Evers;

Whereas in December 2004, the Jackson City Council changed the name of the city’s airport to Jackson-Evers International Airport; and

Whereas, on October 9, 2009, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced that the United States Naval Ship (USNS) Medgar Evers (T–AKE–13), a Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship, will be named after Mr. Evers: Now, therefore, be it