What If Myrlie Evers-Williams Had Given Up?
The High Stakes of Courage
This article is part 2 in a series on Black women history-makers during Women’s History Month. Check out part 1 on Prathia Hall here. If you like this kind of history, support me to keep making it happen. Become a paid subscriber today.
History is shaped not only by the courageous stands people take but also by the decisions they could have made and chose not to.
It is easy to look back and assume that the arc of justice bends inevitably toward progress, but the truth is that it bends only because people like Myrlie Evers-Williams grasped it with both hands and pulled.
But what if she hadn’t? What if, after the murder of her husband, Medgar Evers, she had given in to despair? What if she had let fear, grief, or cynicism silence her voice?
The world we know today would be markedly different, and not for the better.
In the face of the unimaginable tragedy of the murder of her husband, Myrlie Evers had a choice. Succumb to fear, grief, or cynicism—an understandable reaction to such a catastrophe in her life.
Or she could find a way to keep living and pursuing justice.
If Myrlie Evers had chosen to retreat into a life of quiet mourning rather than stepping forward as a leader, the NAACP might not have survived one of its most perilous periods.
When the organization was drowning in financial debt and plagued by scandal, it took someone with a reputation of integrity and resilience to restore its standing. Myrlie, reluctantly but resolutely, answered that call in 1995, running for board chair and winning by a single vote.
Without her leadership, the NAACP may never have emerged from that crisis, its role in the ongoing fight for justice weakened—or perhaps even erased entirely.
Without Myrlie’s persistence, the long-overdue justice for Medgar Evers might never have come to pass.
Byron De La Beckwith, the man who assassinated Medgar in cold blood, was tried twice in the 1960s but walked free both times, protected by a system built to shield white supremacy.
It was Myrlie who, three decades later, continued the fight to reopen the case. In a different reality—one where she had chosen silence over struggle—his conviction in 1994 never would have happened.
The world would have received yet another message that white terrorists could murder Black leaders with impunity, and Medgar’s sacrifice would have remained unavenged.
Without Myrlie’s advocacy, the Evers home in Jackson, Mississippi, might never have been preserved as a national monument.
The house where Medgar took his last steps and where his family endured unimaginable loss would have remained just another house—unmarked, unvisited, and unknown to future generations.
The tangible history of the civil rights movement would have been further eroded, leaving fewer places where people can stand and feel the weight of what came before.
Without Myrlie’s influence, the many roles she played—as an author, a public servant, a mentor to future generations of activists—would be absent from history.
She would not have helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus. She would not have run for Congress. She would not have been the first woman and first layperson to deliver an inaugural invocation for a U.S. president.
The NAACP would not have honored her with its highest award, the Spingarn Medal. And the world would have been robbed of her example—a model of what it looks like to keep going, even when everything in you wants to stop.
This alternate history is a chilling one.
It reminds us that progress is never automatic. The victories we celebrate today exist only because of the hard choices made by those who came before us.
Myrlie Evers-Williams could have chosen a different path.
She could have let despair win. But she didn’t. She stood up, she fought, and she spoke the words that have inspired my work: the spirit of justice.
In this time of resurgent white supremacy and the frightening march of oligarchy trampling over the principles of democracy, many of us face the choice of fear or courage.
In our own time, will we choose courage? Or will history have to mourn what could have been?
Let the life of Myrlie Evers-Williams and the spirit of justice inspire our courage today.
What’s a moment in history—or in your own life—where someone’s courage made all the difference? How might our world or your own story have changed if they had chosen not to act?
Read more about Myrlie Evers-Williams in my latest book The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Religion.
My brother died last week, so we have been recalling how courageously he lived. If my parents had followed the advice of the doctors to put Bob in a long term hospital after he had polio at age 5, Bob would never have been rehabilitated. He would never have ended up in DC where he worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations to promote wise policies regarding energy. He was so humble that when he told me he had a designated phone for the secretary, I thought he meant his administrative assistant. He meant the Secretary of Energy. And he did it all living in chronic pain.
My best friend of over 30 years will be a constant model of courage and inspiration of endurance for me, and that mostly stemming from her relationship to the Lord. The world is almost consistently cruel to poor, disabled Black women, especially if no medical professional can find an easy “fix” and is challenged by her intellect, which expects that they should at least be able to help in some way, even if it is just to treat her kindly and be honest about their inability. They would rather punish her for having rare conditions that challenge their sense of command. She has taught me how in everything, wait on and for God, and then act.
But as I was thinking about the courage to act, an episode from my childhood came to me, and I recognized it as an important element in the building of courage, at least for me. When I was about 10 years old, my mother told me to prune the 2 flowering bushes in our front yard. Now, my mother could be quite cruel in often unpredictable and creative ways, and to defy her could be health- threatening depending on the day. The bushes she wanted me to prune were full of a variety of bees, and I found myself caught between a rock and a hard place; do I protest and risk her wrath, or do I carry on and get stung – possibly many times.
As I stood there paralyzed, an older neighbor boy named Joey noticed and sensed my fear from across the street. He came over to ask what was wrong, and I told him my dilemma. He said I didn’t need to be afraid, that the bees were so busy with gathering pollen that they wouldn’t bother me. He then went over and began petting the backs of the bees, who completely ignored him. His tenderness toward me, and reassurance and instruction of how to approach the job carefully, gave me the confidence and courage I needed to do a simple chore made terrifying by circumstances.
We can stir one another to courage, and it can actually be in a powerful tenderness that it can happen; especially when courage is needed in the face of perennial hostility. God is always willing to express this tenderness. Comfort [not comfortableness] can give courage.