Highlights of the archival collection donated to Pomona College by civil rights icon Myrlie Evers-Williams will be on view at The Claremont Colleges’ Honnold Library, 800 N. Dartmouth Ave., Monday, August 26 through December 20.

The collection, “A Voice for Change: The Life of Myrlie Evers-Williams,” includes photos, documents, campaign materials, and other memorabilia from Evers-Williams’s life in Southern California. It will be available online and open for in-person viewing during normal library hours, 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.

A free and open to the public reception and lecture by Lorn S. Foster, emeritus professor of politics at Pomona College, will be held in the Founders Room at Honnold from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, September 25.

Evers-Williams, who lives in Claremont, enrolled at Pomona College in 1964, not long after her husband, Black civil rights activist and NAACP’s Mississippi Field Secretary Medgar Evers, was assassinated by a white supremacist at their home on June 12, 1963. The couple had been working to promote voting rights in Mississippi.

Myrlie Evers-Williams at a White House meeting with President Bill Clinton, circa 1993-2001. Image/courtesy of Pomona College and the Claremont Colleges Digital Library

After earning a degree in sociology in 1968, Evers-Williams helped launch the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971, and held prominent positions in the corporate world, including national affairs director at Atlantic Richfield Company in Los Angeles. She served as chair of the NAACP from 1995 to 1998; was named “Woman of the Year” by Ms. Magazine in 1998; was listed as one of the “100 Most Fascinating Black Women of the 20th Century” by Ebony magazine; and gave the invocation at President Obama’s second inauguration in 2013.

Evers-Williams hopes to inspire the next generation of leaders via the collection.

“I hope I encouraged others to run for office,” Evers-Williams wrote in a statement. “It might have been short-term that I was in the public limelight, but I hope it encouraged others to take the same step. I had a couple tell me that it did, and that meant quite a bit to me.”

For more info, visit library.claremont.edu and scroll down for “news & events.”