Visitors in 2025 to the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument described powerful tours from National Park Service rangers, but people who visited the house last month say they walked away puzzled by omissions both to the couple’s story and the motives of Medgar Evers’ assassin.

On Jan. 17, Jack Storms was part of a civil rights tour from the state of Washington, which visited the Evers home in Jackson. Before taking the trip, he did research about the home and one detail moved him — there were still bloodstains on the driveway where Medgar Evers was shot to death in 1963.

While on the tour, he noticed that the park ranger made no mention of the stains, he said.

“I asked him about the bloodstains, and he said they are no longer able to discuss that. He also alluded to the fact they were supposed to remove the reference to (Byron De La) Beckwith as a racist,” Storms said, referring to Evers’ assassin.

Other visitors said they heard the same remarks.

READ: Medgar Evers’ killer was a Klansman, but Trump administration says stop calling him a racist

Park Service officials told Mississippi Today that anticipated changes to Evers home brochures included no longer referring to his killer as a “racist.” A National Park Service spokesperson said parks “regularly remove or replace brochures that are outdated, as was the case at Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument.” No brochures were present when a Mississippi Today reporter visited on Jan. 20.

READ: Visitor brochures are returned to Medgar Evers home

But the monument’s superintendent, Keena Graham, told the Mississippi Free Press that the brochures haven’t been removed. She said some edits are planned for the brochures and that work is being coordinated with the Evers family.

Reena Evers-Everette, executive director of the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute and daughter of the couple, told Mississippi Today last week that the family was informed the matter is under review, “but the final product has not been put out yet.”

In texts Tuesday with Mississippi Today, Graham denied that rangers couldn’t refer to Beckwith as a racist. As for the reported bloodstains on the driveway, she responded, “Organic matter cannot last that long in outdoor elements. We had the stains tested three and a half years ago.” The culprit was likely an old rusty water heater, she said.

Myrlie Evers has said that after her husband’s assassination, she couldn’t get the bloodstains off the driveway. A half dozen people who visited the park in 2024 and 2025 said rangers pointed out those bloodstains.

Last March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which accused the previous administration of rewriting history. Under the order, the interior secretary must revise or remove from national parks and monuments any content that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living.”

The Washington Post has reported that the administration has ordered the editing or removal of signs or informational material in at least 18 parks, including the removal of an 1863 photo that Christian abolitionists used to show the horrors of slavery.

Outside magazine reported that the Park Service recently flagged signs at Big Bend National Park in Texas referencing fossils and prehistoric times. In Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, the Park Service removed a sign about Native American history. A sign that described the displacement of Native Americans has been taken away from the Grand Canyon.

The city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is now suing the Trump administration after the National Park Service removed a long-standing exhibit on slavery in Independence National Historical Park.

In a Tuesday hearing of the U.S. House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California said the current administration is airbrushing out the darker parts of our nation’s history to create its own version.

“Actual history is getting whitewashed from national parks and museums,” Huffman said. “We can honor the 250th anniversary of America by telling the truth.”

He showed two signs regarding slavery that the National Park Service had removed and said one problem the administration had with these signs was referring to those abducted from Africa as “stolen.”

Alan Spears, senior director for cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association, responded, “Stolen is an entirely accurate depiction of what happened to African people. Nobody came as a volunteer on those slave ships.”

‘Changes were coming’

When Keith Plessy visited the Evers home in 2024, he was overcome with emotion. “It was a beautiful experience,” he said. 

His family knows about sacrifice. His great-grandfather was a first cousin to Homer Plessy, arrested in 1892 in the famous case, Plessy v. Ferguson, challenging racial segregation in New Orleans streetcars.

He had deep conversations with park rangers at the Evers home who showed him the bloodstains on the driveway and how the house was designed to keep its occupants safe, he said. “When I saw how they renovated the house, the care they took in recreating how the Evers family lived, I was kind of glued to the house.”

He was so glued, in fact, that the tour bus left without him.

Malcolm Reed, an Advanced Placement history teacher from Louisiana, described a powerful visit to the Evers home that he and his wife had last June.

During the tour, he said rangers spoke about the couple’s lives and how they made their home a fortress. They put their children’s beds on the floor so if someone shot into the house, the bullets would miss them. Rangers spoke, too, about how when the Evers family built the home, they didn’t include a front door to help keep the family safe.

A month later, Erin Smith said she and fellow Mississippi history teachers heard the same stories about making the home safe. As they toured outside, she said rangers pointed out the bloodstains still on the driveway.

Catherine McGowin, a history teacher at Southeast Lauderdale High School, has made several visits to the home, most recently last September. She praised rangers, saying they make clear “this is sacred, hallowed ground and ensure that all visitors understand the weight and significance of where they are standing.”

What stood out to her, she said, “is how thoughtfully they tell the full story of both Medgar and Myrlie, not only the tragedy that occurred there, but the rich lives they lived before they met and the life they built together. It is easy for visitors to become consumed by the sorrow of the event that took place at that home, but the rangers do an amazing job of making sure people leave remembering Medgar for his work, his purpose, and the legacy he continues to carry even after his death.

“They also go above and beyond in honoring Mrs. Myrlie Evers, not only the tireless work she did after his assassination, but the work she still continues today. They speak with great care about their children as well and the many ways the family remains actively engaged in carrying forward their father’s mission.”

Last September, Elizabeth Dickson Gavney and her husband, Dean, who live in Jackson, visited the park for the first time. She praised the rangers, who kept the park open for them to visit. As they shared thoughts about Medgar Evers’ death, she and the rangers wept.

But change was in the air as evidenced by the new sign that told visitors that if they saw a sign that reflected something “negative about either past or living Americans,” to complain through a QR code or website, Dean said.

“They knew the changes were coming,” he said. “They said, ‘In the meantime, we’re going to tell the story the best we can.’”

‘There was nothing about Medgar Evers being murdered’

Jack Storms’ wife, Michele, who serves as executive director for the ACLU in Washington state, described the Jan. 17 tour given at the Evers home as strange.

Park rangers announced it was “Wellness Day,” she said, but she heard nothing about Medgar Evers fighting for his country in World War II, nothing about his fight for justice and equality for all Americans, nothing about his courage or principles he stood for, nothing about his death on the driveway where they stood, she said.

“It was pretty surreal to listen to that, because there was nothing about Medgar Evers being murdered,” she said. “I thought it was the weirdest thing.”

She said she heard nothing about Evers’ assassin, who belonged to the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, or why Evers was killed.

Instead, she said, the talk focused on “all the amazing things that Myrlie Evers did after he was gone,” focusing on her connection with her community and discussing how she maintained her mental wellness through friendships with Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz.

The ranger did mention that Myrlie Evers won the Spingarn Medal, which is given by the NAACP for outstanding achievement by a Black American, but there was no mention of what she won the award for, she said. “I didn’t hear anything about her personal battle to continue her husband’s legacy. It was all very superficial.”

Storms said she was shocked.

“This man lost his life in service of something huge,” she said. “It’s a sacred site of someone in a family who gave literally all you can give for Black people and everybody because the gains through the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act benefitted everybody.”

She called this story “a huge piece of American history that shouldn’t be lost.”

She sighed. “I hope they will tell it again.”