Under Sweeping Public Lands Bill, Civil Rights Leader Medgar Evers' Home Could Become A National...

Civil rights leader Medgar Evers' home could become a national monument under a massive, bipartisan public lands bill President Trump is expected to sign into law this month.

Evers, the first field secretary for the NAACP and a prominent activist and organizer, was assassinated in front of his Jackson, Mississippi, home in 1963. Minnie White Watson, who since 1997 has been the curator of the Medgar Evers House Museum, a stop on the U.S. Civil Rights Trail, says she is "pleased" the home could become a national monument.

"[The National Park Service] can afford to do things that possibly we could never afford to do," such as putting in a parking lot and bathrooms, Watson tells Here & Now's Peter O'Dowd.

Evers' home sits on a street that was owned by two young, black World War II veterans who wanted to build homes for "middle class professional blacks," Watson says. But for many years, their plans were blocked because the street rested between neighborhoods where mostly whites lived.

"[Medgar] came in here he said because he had a connection with the two young men who were building the houses," Watson says. "They were World War II veterans and so was Medgar."