Myrlie Evers-Williams

Myrlie Evers-Williams
Born	Myrlie Beasley March 17, 1933 (1933-03-17) (age 78) Vicksburg, Mississippi USA
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	African American
Citizenship	American
Education	Alcorn A&M College Pomona College
Occupation	activist
Spouse	Medgar Evers 1951–1963 (his death) Walter Williams 1975–1995 (his death)

Myrlie Evers-Williams (born March 17, 1933, in Vicksburg, Mississippi) née Myrlie Beasley is an American activist. She was the first full-time chairman of the NAACP and is the widow of murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers. She met him when they were students at Alcorn A&M College in 1950. They married on December 24, 1951, and she left school before finishing her degree.

They moved to Mound Bayou where her husband sold insurance for Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a civil rights activist. She worked for Howard as a typist until the couple moved to Jackson, Mississippi in 1954.^[1]

Myrlie and Medgar had three children before his murder in 1963. In 2001, their oldest son, Darrell Kenyatta Evers, died of colon cancer[1]. Their two surviving children are Reena Denise and James Van.

Evers-Williams went back to school after Evers' death and graduated from Pomona College in 1968, with a degree in sociology. She served as director of consumer affairs for Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), where she developed the concept for the first corporate booklet on women in non-traditional jobs. This booklet, Women at ARCO, was in great demand throughout many printings and revisions.

She twice ran for Congress from California's 24th congressional district. Both times (in a June 1970 special election and the general election later that November) she lost to Republican John Rousselot. In 1971 she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus.

In 1975, Evers-Williams married her second husband, Walter Williams. He died in 1995 of prostate cancer.

In 1987, Evers-Williams was the first African-American woman appointed to serve as commissioner on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works. Evers-Williams was chairman of the NAACP from 1995 to 1998. She is credited with spearheading the operations that restored the association to its original status as the premier civil rights organization in America. She is the author, with William Peters, of For Us, the Living (1967) and Watch Me Fly: What I Learned On the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be (1999). In the best seller, I Dream A World: Black Women Who Changed America, Evers-Williams states that she "greets today and the future with open arms". Evers-Williams was a consultant on the movies "For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story" (1983) and "Ghosts of Mississippi" (1996).

Whoopi Goldberg played her in Ghosts of Mississippi. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

Electoral history

Year	Office		Democrat	Votes	Pct		Republican	Votes	Pct
1970	U.S House of Representatives District 24(special election)		Myrlie Evers	29,248	31.8%		John Rousselot	62,749	68.2%
1970	U.S House of Representatives District 24 (general election)		Myrlie Evers	61,777	32.4%		John Rousselot	124,07	65.1%

References

1. ^ David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009)

External links

• Myrlie Evers-Williams's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project

Persondata
Name	Evers-Williams, Myrlie
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 17, 1933
Place of birth	Vicksburg, Mississippi USA
Date of death
Place of death