During the Voices of Courage and Justice program, Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs Jr. announced that a monument honoring Evers-Williams, a Vicksburg native, will be placed in the city's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kuhn Civil Rights Memorial Park. The announcement comes as the city prepares to celebrate its bicentennial in 2025.
"We know that all of us stand on your shoulders," Flaggs said. "And we couldn’t celebrate 200 years of Vicksburg without acknowledging the courage and the struggle and the leadership that you provide for us to be us."
Evers-Williams is a civil rights activist who worked for over three decades to seek justice for the 1963 murder of her husband Medgar Evers, the NAACP'S first field secretary in Mississippi. June 12 will mark the 60th anniversary of Medgar’s assassination. Evers-Williams went on to serve as national chair of the NAACP. She also founded the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute in 1989 to continue the work she and Medgar did together.
During the program, Evers-Williams reflected on her upbringing in Vicksburg.
"I was born in Vicksburg, was reared there," Evers-Williams said. “The substance of Vicksburg was pushed into me, but also to stand up for what was right... the courage was always there. Not coming from me, but from all of those who embraced me as their child."
After the program, Evers-Williams and attendees were taken on a tour that included stops to Evers-Williams childhood home and Mt. Heroden Baptist Church, where she was baptized and wed.
