CNN.com - Black History Month 2002

Community & Society
Myrlie Evers-Williams:
civil rights activist

Myrlie Evers-Williams is most famous for being the tireless wife of murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers. But her tenacious search for her husband's killer and her own determination and leadership make her a civil rights powerhouse in her own right. In 1995, Evers-Williams became chairwoman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, but her journey really began on June 12, 1963, when she opened her front door in Jackson, Mississippi, to find her husband fatally shot in the back. White supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was charged with the murder but was not convicted after two trials ended in hung juries. Despite this initial defeat, Evers-Williams continued searching for new evidence in the case. In 1994 De La Beckwith was finally convicted of Evers' murder and sentenced to life in prison. After the verdict was read, Evers-Williams "broke into a smile, shouted a cheer and raised a clenched fist to the sky in triumph," the New York Times reported.

FULL NAME
Myrlie Evers-Williams

BORN
March 17, 1933, Vicksburg, Mississippi

EDUCATION
Student at Alcorn A&M College, 1950; Bachelor's degree in sociology from Pomona College, 1968.

CAREER
In 1954 Evers-Williams worked as a secretary for her husband who was working as the Mississippi state field secretary for the NAACP. Together they rallied civil rights demonstrators and organized voter registration drives. Following her husband's murder, Evers-Williams moved her family to California and enrolled in Pomona College in Claremont. After graduating with a degree in sociology, she got a job as the assistant director of planning and development for the Claremont College system. In 1970 she ran for Congress and lost.

Later, Evers-Williams moved to Los Angeles to take a position as consumer affairs director for the Atlantic Richfield Company. In June 1988, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley appointed her to the city's five-member Board of Public Works. She was the first African-American woman to be appointed to the position and she helped managed a budget of nearly $1 billion dollars. In 1995 she ascended to the chairmanship of the NAACP and served until 1998. She has written two books: "For Us, the Living," with William Peters, and an autobiography, "Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I was Meant to Be."

AWARDS
For her fight for equality and civil rights, Evers-Williams has garnered numerous awards, including the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus Achievement Award and the League of Women Voters' Woman of Honor Award. The NAACP recognized her with an Image Award for Civil Rights and she received the state of California Woman of the Year Award.

She has received honorary doctorates from Pomona College, Medgar Evers College, Spelman College, Columbia College, Bennett College, Tougaloo College, and Willamette University.

PERSONAL
Married Medgar Evers in 1951. Married Walter Williams in 1975; he died from prostate cancer in 1995. She had three children with Medgar Evers.