Ellington

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — All members of Mississippi's congressional delegation are asking the president to bestow the nation's highest peacetime civilian honor on slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

The two senators and four House members say in a news release Friday that they have sent President Barack Obama a letter asking him to award Evers the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Mississippi NAACP leader pushed for voting rights and desegregation of public schools and facilities. He was assassinated outside his Jackson home in June 1963.

The delegation's letter to the president says Evers' "leadership, dedication and sacrifice continue to inspire many Americans and have enhanced freedom for all of humankind."

Among the recipients of the posthumously awarded medal in 2014 were three civil rights activists killed in Mississippi in 1964.