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Born March 1, 1933, in Vicksburg, MS
Activist Myrlie Evers-Williams is the widow of Medgar Evers, a prominent civil rights activist who was assassinated in 1963. She co-authored For Us, the Living (1967), a book on Medgar Evers and the civil rights movement. In 1987, she was appointed Commissioner to the Board of Public Works in Los Angeles— the first Black woman to hold that position. She was elected chairperson of the NAACP in 1995, and is credited with helping to restore the Association to its status as the premier civil rights organization. Her autobiography Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be was published in 1999.