Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story that Awakened America

Medgar & Myrlie is a 2024 biography of civil rights activists Medgar Evers and Myrlie Williams by African American author and journalist Joy-Ann Reid. Reid traces Evers and Williams’s lives as a married couple in Mississippi amid the freedom struggle of the 1960s, exploring Evers’s significant contributions to the civil rights movement and Williams’s powerful activism following Evers’s death. Their story illuminates the legacy of the civil rights movement and the impact of grassroots activism. Other key themes include The Crucial Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Struggle and The Power of Love and the Struggle for Social Justice.

Reid is a political analyst, author, and television host. As a national correspondent for MSNBC, she is known for her political journalism and interest in African American stories and perspectives. 

This guide refers to the 2024 e-book edition published by Mariner Books.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of sexual violence, pregnancy loss, death, and racism. In particular, they discuss racist violence, the Jim Crow era, and enslavement. 

Language Note: The guide obscures the use of the n-word in direct quotations.

Summary

The Prologue emphasizes the centrality of love in Medgar Evers and Myrlie Williams’s lives as a couple and as American citizens. Love motivated Evers to fight for equality and empowered Williams to resist racial terror. Reid sets out to secure Evers’s place in historical memory as a significant civil rights leader whose activism was the foundation of the civil rights movement.

The main narrative begins with Evers’s military service in World War II, which reinforced his social consciousness. He studied the African decolonization movements, realizing the contradiction of fighting for freedom in Europe while being oppressed and dehumanized in America. In Europe, Evers was treated as a human and was able to form interracial relationships. Instead of staying abroad, however, Evers decided to return to America and fight the racist Jim Crow system. In Mississippi, Evers and his brother claimed their political rights and registered to vote. This was Evers’s first step in civil rights activism and made him known throughout the state as well as within the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

Evers and Williams met at Alcorn College as university students. Williams grew up in a female household and learned the skills of survival and resistance to racism early on. The two fell quickly in love. Evers shared his desire to fight for Black people’s rights, and Williams admired his determination. After their marriage, the couple moved to the historically Black community of Mount Bayou, Mississippi. There, Evers worked as an insurance salesman at a company owned by a Black businessman and activist, using his job to investigate the living conditions of Black workers and galvanize the community. Along with his employer, he organized boycotts and voting registrations. While Evers was excited about his work, Williams felt lonely, even as the couple welcomed three children.

Evers continued his efforts to desegregate educational institutions after becoming a field officer in the NAACP. Reid illustrates his crucial role in the investigation of Emmett Till’s murder, one of the most notorious lynchings in US history. Williams worked as Evers’s secretary in the NAACP, and the couple decided to move to Jackson. Williams also developed a social life that supported her and Evers’s community building. 

As Evers intensified his activism, white-supremacist groups and the white community at large doubled down on their persecution of Black Americans. Evers focused on organizing direct-action protests and securing cooperation between civil rights organizations. The uptick in threats against Evers’s life contributed to a marital crisis, but love kept Evers and Williams together. 

Meanwhile, Evers began nurturing young activists and cultivating their active participation in the movement. In this and other areas, he clashed with NAACP officials, who were committed to securing justice via official avenues—e.g., legal battles. As the federal government stalled on civil rights legislation, Evers’s impatience grew.

Evers’s active support for James Meredith, who became the first Black student at the University of Mississippi, contributed to the desegregation of educational institutions. Meanwhile, Evers continued to mobilize the community for protests and voting registrations. He also realized how systemic racism resulted in the unjust incarceration of Black people. Evers gave a speech on national television proclaiming the human rights of African Americans and stating that the civil rights movement’s victory would protect American democracy. By then, he was the Ku Klux Klan’s primary target.

As young activists intensified their struggle, police brutality, mob violence, and persecution threatened the movement. This, as well as internal conflicts about strategy within the NAACP, distressed Evers. Williams sensed his discouragement and supported him but was certain that she would lose him. One night while returning home after a meeting, Evers was shot by a white supremacist and died at the hospital. His death revitalized the civil rights movement in the South, and the march during his funeral almost became a riot.

Williams’s grief transformed into rage; determined to protect her children and avenge Evers’s murder, she acted as a public speaker and fundraiser for the NAACP. After investigations supported by the government, Evers’s murderer, Byron De La Beckwith, was brought to court. However, an all-white jury acquitted him. 

Williams witnessed the Civil Rights Act passage into law, thinking that she was seeing the results of Evers’s sacrifice. However, increasing racial violence led her to move to California with her children. As the civil rights movement advanced in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Williams showed her own skills as an activist and claimed political power. She formed bonds of sisterhood with Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz, women connected by their experiences as widows of civil rights leaders. Though Evers remained the love of her life, Williams also found love again with her second husband, Walter Williams. 

Williams strived to bring Beckwith to justice to the end. A new opportunity presented itself in the 1990s after reporters found new clues about Evers’s murder. Williams managed to reopen the case, and a second trial sentenced Beckwith to life in prison. After becoming a board member of the NAACP, Williams also saved the organization from financial and moral destruction. 

Though she had accomplished her mission to honor Evers’s legacy, the loss of her second husband, her son, and the women who raised her caused another wave of grief. In the 21st century, Williams embraced her inner desire to become a pianist and performed at Carnegie Hall. Of all her achievements, Williams felt that her greatest gift was her love for Evers and their life together.