On this day in 1933, Myrlie Beasley Evers was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. - Mississippi Today

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Monday, March 18, 2024

March 17, 1933

In 2011, Myrlie Evers and her children christened the Military Sealift Command dry cargo and ammunition ship USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE 13) at the General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. in San Diego. Credit: Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Christopher S. Johnson/U.S. Navy

Myrlie Beasley Evers was born on St. Patrick’s Day in Vicksburg, Mississippi. She had visions of being a concert pianist, but Jim Crow conspired against her and she wound up attending what is now Alcorn State University, which offered a minor in music. 

On her first day on campus, she met Medgar Evers. The two married. He became the Mississippi NAACP’s first field secretary, and she became his secretary. 

After he was assassinated, her husband’s killer, Byron De La Beckwith, was tried twice, but walked free when the juries couldn’t reach a verdict. She pushed for his reprosecution, which finally took place in 1994 when he was convicted of murder and received a life sentence. 

A year later, she was elected chair of the national NAACP, helping rescue the civil rights organization from the brink of bankruptcy. A dynamic speaker, she became the first woman and first layperson to deliver the prayer at the Presidential inauguration in 2013. 

“I have never been in this world one day without love,” she said, “and it has carried me through everything I have been through to this point, and it will carry me off.”

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