Myrlie Evers-Williams is known as one half of the greatest team of the civil rights movement. Prior to her husband Medgar Evers’ assassination, she worked closely with him during the early fifties and sixties. Myrlie Louise Beasley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in a frame house that belonged to her ma ternal gran dmother. Her mother was 16 years old and she was raised by her father, James Van Dyke Beasley and paternal grandmother Annie McCain Beasley, a retired schoolteacher who Myrlie adored and called “mama.” She grew up in a loving family and spent time with her maternal grandmother and an aunt who gave her piano lessons. She dreamed of pursuing music studies in college but her aspirations to attend Fisk University and major in music were deterred when she was denied Mississippi state financial aid, due to segregation. She enrolled in Alcom A&M College majoring in education. While there, she met another student, Medgar Evers, and they were married in 1951. The couple eventually relocated to Mound Bayou, Mississippi in 1952. She began a business career with Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. This position required extensive travel in the Delta and she came across incidents of poverty and injustice for impoverished people. These experiences led to her desire to make concrete changes for those who suffered. In 1954 the couple moved to Jackson, Mississippi where they opened and operated the first NAACP office. Myrlie dealt with constant perils while working for voting rights, fair housing, equal justice, equal education and economic stability. This work led to Medgar Evers being slain in 1963 by a white supremacist. Myrlie worked for more than three decades seeking justice for the murder of her husband. In 1964 the pain was too much to bear with residing in the home she use to share with Medgar. She made the decision to relocate to California with her three children in the mid-sixties to start over and became an activist in her own right. Her bid for election to the U.S. Congress in 1970 was unsuccessful. In 1976 she married Walter Williams who was also a civil rights activist In 1987, she was the first black woman appointed Commissioner to the Board of Public Works in Los Angeles, California. Myrlie was active on the NAACP board and rose to chairman in 1995. From 1995 to 1998 Myrlie was the first woman to lead the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). At President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, she gave an invocation. She is the author of For Us the Living (1967) and Watch Me Fly (1999). In 1998 she founded the Medgar Evers Institute in Jackson, Mississippi. Today it is known as The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute which offers youth and partnership programs.

click here