James Charles Evers (1922- ) is a civil rights activist and politician. Born in Decatur, Mississippi, Evers is the older brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Charles Evers fought in World War II in the Pacific and later graduated from Alcorn A&M University in Lorman, Mississippi. After graduation he worked in a Chicago hotel and sent money to his brother to support his civil rights work in Mississippi. When Medgar, who was appointed Mississippi's first full-time field secretary for the NAACP in 1954, was murdered in 1963, Charles Evers returned to Mississippi and took over his brother's role in the organization. In 1969 Charles Evers was elected mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, a town of 1,626 residents. He became the first African American mayor of a bi-racial town in Mississippi since Reconstruction. Charles Evers later ran unsuccessfully for governor of Mississippi and for the U.S. Senate.

Image courtesy of Vanderbilt University Special Collections and University Archives. Photo by Edwin Schmidt, 1970.