Myrlie Evers-Williams Biography

Myrlie Evers-Williams

Evers-Williams married civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1951. The couple worked for the NAACP against segregation and discrimination in Mississippi. After Evers was assassinated in 1963, Evers-Williams moved to California, where she continued her civil rights work. In 1967 she coauthored a book, For Us, the Living, with William Peters. Evers-Williams became the first Black woman to serve on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works. She was elected the first woman to chair the NAACP in 1995. In 1999, her memoir, Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be, was published.