CALIFORNIA--It was not only a full house, but an overflowing crowd, at Moorpark High School’s performing arts center when Myrlie Evers-Williams spoke there Thursday evening.
The audience was young and old, white and black, and the anticipation was palpable before she got up and spoke about the responsibility of Americans, learning about the country’s history and bridging the generation gap.
Why would hundreds of high school students and other residents be so eager to hear the words of a civil rights leader who rose to fame, through fate and not intention, nearly half a century ago? What was it about Evers-Williams, a 78-year old grandmother, that has remained so compelling?
Evers-Williams was a young mother who happened to be married to a driven civil rights worker who was assassinated. In the decades since then, Evers-Williams has transformed herself from a grieving young mother of three small children into a well-educated, hard-working advocate for African-Americans and women. As an author, she has written three books. Evers-Williams has twice run for Congress, is a co-founder of the National Political Women’s Caucus, was the first woman chairperson of the NAACP, and was honored with the 2009 National Freedom Award.
Her husband, Medgar Evers, ran the only NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) office in the entire state of Mississippi in the early 1960’s. It was a dark time in American history when segregation was a polarizing issue in the South.
After working on civil rights issues for nearly a decade, including the investigation into the murder of 14-year old Emmett Till, on June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers was shot in the back on his own front porch as he returned home late at night. Evers was quickly taken by neighbors to the whites-only University Hospital. He was refused admission but when officials realized who he was, he was treated for the gunshot wound. He died within an hour.
That event spurred President John Kennedy to announce his pursuit of passage of the Civil Rights Act. Another assassin guaranteed that JFK would not live to see the Act become law, but President Lyndon Johnson followed through and the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.
Evers-Williams brought a message to the students about the necessity to learn about this country’s history, including the civil rights era.
“If you do believe in America, you have the responsibility to act like a fine upstanding citizen who knows the history of this country,” she said.
Bridging the generations was another theme.
“I told my grandson, ‘I think the time has come where we will not be placing ourselves in front of fire trucks, we will not be kneeling to pray, and perhaps we will not be singing We Shall Overcome,’ ” Evers-Williams said. “ ‘But just as sure as we are here with each other, the hatred and prejudice will still exist.’ ”
Illustrating that point, Evers-Williams relayed an incident that happened a few days earlier while she was in Claremont. She witnessed a public demonstration with two opposing sides: one side carried the banner of the swastika and the other side held signs saying “Freedom.” In a parking lot, she was confronted by a young man on the swastika side, who muttered a few racist words before passing her.
Shaken by the experience, Evers-Williams said she got into her car, “and I wept for the first time in a long time. I wondered about our young people today. What are they being taught? What are their dreams?”
Later in her speech, Evers-Williams, who was raised by her grandmother and aunt, explained what keeps her going. It was her grandmother’s insistence that when she said her prayers, to include a prayer to “make me a blessing.”
“Today it is something that I can’t do without, the prayer to make me a blessing,” Evers-Williams said. “Everything that has happened in my life, all of the fears, of seeing Medgar shot down, of dealing with all the hate, including my own, I wanted to strike out and hurt. But those who lose are the ones who let negativity sneak in and take over. Everything that has happened in my life, I embrace it.”
She then revealed one of her tricks.
“It is so easy to get down, to give up, to be sad, to feel worthless, without having anyone to say that you are special,” Evers-Williams said. “I get up every morning, even before I brush my teeth, and look in the mirror and smile. And I say, ‘Hi beautiful!’ It works.”
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Saturday, March 26th 2011 at 3:48PM
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