University of Arkansas Press Author to Speak at Nightbird Books

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Michael Vinson Williams, author of Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Michael Vinson Williams will be reading from and discussing his book Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr at Nightbird Books in Fayetteville on at 7 p.m. Friday, April 27. The book, published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2011, chronicles Evers’ life from childhood through his assassination in 1963. Publishers Weekly called it “an important and readable study of this seminal leader and the history of the civil rights movement.”

Williams, assistant professor of history and African American studies at Mississippi State University, will also be on the University of Arkansas campus speaking to classes through the university’s African American studies program.The biography draws on personal interviews from Myrlie Evers-Williams (Evers’ widow), his two remaining siblings, friends, grade-school-to-college schoolmates, and fellow activists to elucidate Evers as an individual, leader, husband, brother, and father. Extensive archival work in the Evers Papers, the NAACP Papers, oral history collections, FBI files, Citizen Council collections, and the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Papers provides a detailed account of Evers’ NAACP work and a clearer understanding of the racist environment that ultimately led to his murder.

Library Journal said of the book, “Williams’s work tops what have been too few head-on examinations of the substance and significance of this martyr’s sacrifice, a man who demonstrated the truth he liked to repeat: ‘You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.’ General readers and scholars will benefit from reading this work.”

Nightbird Books is located at 205 W. Dickson St. in Fayetteville. A book signing will follow the discussion. The event is free and open to the public.