Civil Rights Champion to Speak at Smith

Myrlie Evers-Williams, former NAACP chair and widow of assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers, will read from her new book, "Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be," at 4:30 p.m., Friday, January 29, in Stoddard Auditorium. Following the reading, Evers-Williams will answer questions from the audience and sign copies of her book.

In "Watch Me Fly," Evers-Williams provides what her publisher, Little, Brown and Company, calls a "moving and vivid portrait of a childhood within a family of proud, determined Mississippi women." She writes of "the harrowing dangers her family faced during the civil rights struggle; her efforts as a single mother to raise three children while attending college--efforts that left her battling depression; her opening her heart to another wonderful man, only to lose him to cancer; and her path from business and civic careers to her brilliant leadership of the NAACP through scandal and to a newfound vitality."

Evers-Williams chaired the NAACP, the largest civil rights organization in the nation, from1995 to 1998 and has also served as director of consumer affairs for Atlantic Richfield Company. In 1988 she became the first African-American woman appointed as a commissioner on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.

Evers-Williams has also written "For Us, the Living," published in 1967. In 1969, she was a contributing editor for Ladies' Home Journal.

Her talk, which is open to the public at no charge, is part of the college's week-long "Celebration of Unity."