CLAIREMONT, Calif. – Marlee Evers-Williams says she hasn’t lived a day of her 90 years without love.
But he certainly fought against hate. as the widow Along with the late civil rights icon Medgar Evers, they fought against racial injustice in Mississippi.
“Our fear of losing each other was real,” Evers-Williams told CBS News.
On June 12, 1963, Evers was murdered at their home in Jackson, Mississippi.
“The love of my life was shot through her car door as she was getting out,” Evers-Williams said.
She promised her late husband that if anything happened, she and their children would move to California.
“I was determined to see that my husband’s life would not be in vain,” Evers-Williams said.
It was a mission that began with Evers-Williams earning a college degree in 1968 from Pomona College in Claremont, California.
“I’ve never felt safe anywhere, but Pomona College was the safest place I knew,” Evers-Williams said.
That safe will now be home to his personal archive collection, which includes newspapers, handwritten letters and priceless photographs depicting the life.
Evers-Williams remarried, became chairwoman of the NAACP, ran for Congress, and in January 2013 — during the inauguration of then-President Barack Obama — became the first woman to be invited to a presidential inauguration.
Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images
Every detail has been preserved, Evers-Williams said, to serve as a lesson for future generations.
“They can search those pages and see if they can find hidden solutions to our problems today,” Evers-Williams said. “Realizing that we all have hope to do better.”