Mississippi politico, civil rights figure Charles Evers dies
FILE - Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, attends the funeral for blues legend B.B. King at Bell Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Indianola, Miss., May 30, 2015. Evers, a longtime figure in Mississippi politics, died Wednesday, July 22, 2020. He was 97. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, Pool, File)
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Charles Evers, the older brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers and a longtime figure in Mississippi politics, has died in Mississippi. He was 97.
A coroner says Evers died of “natural causes” Wednesday in Brandon.
Medgar Evers was a Mississippi NAACP leader who was assassinated outside his Jackson home in 1963.
Charles Evers in 1969 became the first Black candidate since Reconstruction to win a mayor’s race in any multiracial town in Mississippi.
He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1971 and for U.S. Senate in 1978, both times as an independent. He was later a Republican but publicly supported Barack Obama for president.