William L. Waller | Ex-Miss. governor, 85

William L. Waller, 85, who as a prosecutor in 1964 twice tried to convict the segregationist Byron de la Beckwith of murdering the civil-rights leader Medgar Evers, and who in 1971 forged a coalition of poor whites and newly enfranchised blacks to become governor of Mississippi, died Wednesday in Jackson, Miss. The cause was heart failure, his family said.

Mr. Waller, a Democrat and self-described "redneck," used his governorship from 1972 to 1976 to appoint blacks to administrative boards and commissions for the first time in post-Reconstruction Mississippi. He elevated three historically black colleges to university status, and he abolished the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, which had fought integration.

The changes were accepted without much protest, but his declaring a state holiday to honor Evers was criticized, particularly by rural whites.

Mr. Waller gained prominence as a prosecutor after Evers, the Mississippi field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was assassinated outside his Jackson home shortly after midnight June 12, 1963. Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and an outspoken racist, was charged. His fingerprint was on the murder weapon, a high-powered rifle.

Even so, in two trials, two all-white juries could not reach verdicts. Still, civil-rights advocates, seeing at least a partial victory, praised Mr. Waller, the district attorney, for preventing an acquittal.

In 1989, new evidence emerged. Witnesses said they had heard Beckwith brag about the Evers killing. Others came forward to destroy his alibi. Because there is no statute of limitations on murder in Mississippi, Beckwith was indicted again. He was convicted of murder in 1994 and died in prison in 2001 while serving a life sentence. - N.Y. Times News Service