As a local prosecutor , he unsuccessfully prosecuted Byron De La Beckwith in the murder of civil rights advocate Medgar Evers ( the first two murder trials of De La Beckwith both in 1964 ended in hung juries and subsequently because De La Beckwith was never acquitted in these trials , he was later eligible to be prosecuted again ) . In 1994 , De La Beckwith was found guilty of the murder . In 1971 , Waller defeated Lieutenant Governor Charles L. Sullivan in the Democratic primary run-off . His main opponent in the general election was Evers ' brother , James Charles Evers , then the mayor of Fayette , who ran as an independent . Waller handily prevailed , 601,222 ( 77 percent ) to Evers ' 172,762 ( 22.1 percent ) . Waller is credited with winning elections without using racially charged or racially offensive rhetoric . He organized working class white voters and African American voters separately and usually did not merge their election efforts until it was too late in the election cycle for internal conflicts to disrupt the campaign . Litigation in the Southern Mississippi federal court and in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans stripped the Regular Democrats of Mississippi of their official status and their 25 seats in the 1972 Democratic National Convention . Prior to a national party policy conference in December 1974 , the Loyalist and Regular Democratic Party factions united when the subject and Aaron Henry were elected as co-chairmen of the Mississippi delegation to the Kansas City conference
1972 Democratic National Convention
1972 Democratic National Convention
Bill Waller