Myrlie and me
In terms of journalistic privilege, my day with Myrlie Evers-Williams was among the best
Myrlie and me in 1993 outside her Central Oregon house. (Photo by Paul Carter of The Register-Guard)
Note: In February, when a new book involving Myrlie Evers came out, Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid, I knew I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell readers about my day with this remarkable woman. Here it is.
IT WAS JUNE 1963 when the phone rang at the home of Medgar and Myrlie Evers in Jackson, Mississippi. The early-morning call from the NAACP office had awakened the couple, though their three small children slept on.
Myrlie was frightened. Not of the NAACP. She was frightened of her husband the civil-rights activist being assassinated.
In an intensifying American war involving race, Medgar Evers had taken point to defend fellow African-Americans. He’d been hauled to a police station for refusing to move from the front (white) section of a Trailways bus. As a field secretary for the NAACP, he’d become a leader and spokesman for the fight against racial segregation, the latest incarnation a lawsuit the organization hoped to file soon against Jackson’s still-segregated school district. He’d worried about a country he served in World War II that had seemingly turned on him; were white veterans having to teach their children to take cover if they heard “noises”—code for gunfire—outside their houses?
It had been nearly ten years since a Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, had deemed the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional. But in the summer of 1963 Alabama Gov. George Wallace was galvanizing white nationalists by defying a federal order to allow two black students to attend the University of Alabama.
In the Evers home, Myrlie, realizing that the phone call was from the NAACP, mechanically placed the phone back in its cradle. In her eyes, the NAACP had been dragging its feet on the Jackson lawsuit; beyond that, her stressed-out husband needed his sleep. Click.
It was February 1993, thirty years later, when the phone rang at the home of Myrlie Evers in Bend, Oregon. And rang. And rang. And rang. Finally, I heard a woman’s voice on the tape, presumably hers, asking me to leave a message. I did so.
I can’t remember how I heard Myrlie Evers had moved to Central Oregon in early 1989 or how I got her phone number. As a features writer for The Register-Guard, I surmise I’d seen a story on her in The (Bend) Bulletin and, after contacting the reporter who had written it, played the “I’m-a-Bulletin-alum-and-any-chance-I-could-get-the-number?” card.
Myrlie not only didn’t pine for the spotlight but had lived much of her life in fear of outsiders. I knew that because as soon as I heard she lived near Bend, I’d gone to the library and checked out every book I could about Medgar Evers. I was enthralled by his courage and amazed at how she stood by him despite how his activism was suffocating their marriage.
It was a Sunday morning, June 9, 1963, and Myrlie’s nerves were as brittle as the bacon she’d overcooked for breakfast. The rumors and threats were wearing on them both; Medgar, some of the voice messages said, had a target on his back.
“I don’t want to live without you,” Myrlie told him, tears streaking her face.
“Myrlie,” he said. “You are stronger than you think you are. You take care of my children.”