The Jackson City Council has passed a resolution asking the Defense Department to reverse its possible plans to remove Medgar Evers’ name from a Navy ship, and his niece plans to urge the president to change course on this decision.

In its resolution, the council noted that a long list of presidents have praised Evers, who served as field secretary for the Mississippi NAACP until his 1963 assassination, including President Donald Trump.

In 2017, Trump attended the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and praised Evers, his widow, Myrlie Evers, and his brother, Charles Evers, who supported Trump in his campaign for president.

He noted that Medgar Evers “loved his family, his community, and his country.  And he knew it was long past time for his nation to fulfill its founding promise: to treat every citizen as an equal child of God.”

After his assassination, “Sergeant Evers was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors,” Trump said. “In Arlington, he lies beside men and women of all races, backgrounds, and walks of life who have served and sacrificed for our country. Their headstones do not mark the color of their skin, but immortalize the courage of their deeds.

“Their memories are carved in stone as American heroes. That is what Medgar Evers was. He was a great American hero. That is what the others honored in this museum were: true American heroes.”

Three years later, the Trump administration’s Interior Department established the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home as a national monument.

But after Trump started his second term in 2025, he signed an executive order to eliminate all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs.

In the wake of that order, Evers was erased from a section of the Arlington National Cemetery website that honored Black Americans who fought in the nation’s wars, although not from website itself.. 

A week after Pentagon leaders announced their intention to possibly rename the USNS Medgar Evers, christened for the World War II veteran and civil rights leader, his family urged the Department of Defense and the Navy to not do so.

The ship is one of eight vessels named after activists – among them Cesar Chavez, Harvey Milk, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harriet Tubman – that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to rebrand in a large offensive against “wokeness” and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the military to reestablish the “warrior ethos.”

Jackson City Council member Aaron Banks said, “It’s unfortunate that our politics have gotten to a place where we are moving away from people like Medgar Evers. It was rough enough that they took his name out of Arlington Cemetery, but this is an even bigger blow.”

On Tuesday, Evers’ niece, Hinds County District 2 Supervisor Wanda Evers, told the council that this is heartbreaking to her.

“You do this for a man who fought for our country?” she asked. “It’s nothing but the devil working, and we’re going to let him play in his playground, and after that it’s over.”

She plans to meet personally with Trump regarding the matter, she said. “We are fighting this.”