Charles Evers, the brother of murdered civil rights leader and icon Medgar Evers, has endorsed Donald Trump for president.

“I believe in him first of all because he’s a businessman,” Charles Evers said to the Clarion-Ledger. “I think jobs are badly needed in Mississippi.”

photo credit: Kevin O’Brien/US Navy

Evers’s brother, Medgar Evers was the first field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi, an investigator into the death of Emmett Till and prominent desegregationist who was assassinated in his driveway in Jackson, Miss., in 1963.

Although Charles Evers, 93, also has a storied history in Mississippi’s civil rights movement—he was also the state’s NAACP field secretary and the first black mayor in Mississippi post-Reconstruction—he became a Republican in 1980 and endorsed Ronald Regan for president that year.

Evers says, “I haven’t seen any proof of [Trump] being a racist. All of us have some racism in us. Even me.”

Evers then referenced a recent proclamation by Gov. Phil Bryant declaring April “Confederate Heritage Month” and said that Trump was not endorsing such overt acts of racism, according to he Clarion-Ledger.

Evers adds that he respects Trump’s religious faith that he hopes to meet him in person during a Monday rally in Madison, Miss.

Mississippi’s GOP presidential primary is next Tuesday.

Source: The Root