MEMPHIS, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Former NAACP national chairwoman Myrlie Evers-Williams is set to receive a National Freedom Award at a Memphis museum, a museum official said.
National Civil Rights Museum chairman Benjamin L. Hooks said Evers-Williams, 76, took on her former NAACP mantle despite receiving no financial compensation, The Memphis Commercial Appeal reported Sunday.
"She did it all and did it well. She's an amazing person," Hooks said.
Evers-Williams' husband, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, was killed in June 1963. A segregationist named Byron De La Beckwith was tried twice at the time on murder charges for the killing, but both cases ended with a deadlocked jury.
Evers-Williams said after her husband's death, she became an active participant in the civil rights movement, culminating in her receiving the National Freedom Award Tuesday.
The award may pale in comparison to the 1994 conviction of Beckwith on murder charges, a judicial victory Evers-Williams convinced state officials to seek.
"This is the one thing that I claim for myself -- my own victory," she told the Commercial Appeal. "It ended up being not just a victory for myself, but for a lot of people. When that verdict was read, for the first time in my life I felt free."
