Myrlie Evers retiring from civil rights work
JACKSON – Civil rights champion Myrlie Evers remains more in demand than ever, but she says her days of traveling and speaking are done.
“I can no longer keep up that pace and be healthy,” she said. “At
85, I deserve a break.”
She chuckled. “It’s not as though I’m going into hiding.”
Her last public speech came weeks ago at her alma mater, Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.,
“They had 1,285 people there. I was so surprised,” she said, and waves of satisfaction washed over her that day. “As emotional as I was about my decision, I knew this is it. I’m not doing any more. It was just a wonderful, uplifting way to end a career in social justice.”
Evers lives in a retirement village in Claremont.
The widow of Medgar Evers still has many mementos from her life with the Mississippi NAACP field secretary, whom she met the first day she set foot on the Alcorn State University campus. In 1951, they married, and she worked alongside him at the NAACP office.
After he was assassinated in
1963, her husband’s killer was tried twice, only to go free when two allwhite juries deadlocked.
The memories became too painful, and she and her three children moved to California, where she married Walter Williams (who later died of prostate cancer).
In 1994, she finally saw her husband’s killer convicted of murder in Mississippi. A year after that, she became chairman of the national NAACP, helping bring the civil rights organization back from the brink of bankruptcy.
In 2013, she became the first woman and first layperson to deliver the prayer at a presidential inauguration.
On Dec. 9, she spoke to the thousands gathered for the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, recounting what it was like seeing the museum’s photographs: “I wept because I felt the blows, I felt the bullets, I felt the tears, I heard the cries, but I also sensed the hope in those children.”
Last Saturday, she celebrated her birthday with family. This Friday, she will celebrate with neighbors and friends.
This week, she mailed the announcement to friends and supporters. She plans to devote her remaining time to cataloging “numerous documents, recordings and artifacts collected over the 60plus years,” she wrote. “Together, we have accomplished much! There is still a tremendous amount of progress to be made!”