At Inaugural
Evers’ Widow Set to Give Invocation

 

By CALVIN S. SCRIBNER
Special to the Chronicle

 

WASHINGTON--The widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers will deliver the invocation at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration on Jan. 21.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee announced last week that Myrlie Evers Williams would deliver the prayer. 
Her invocation comes 50 years after her husband, field secretary of the Mississippi Conference of Branches of the NAACP, was gunned down in the driveway of his Mississippi home. 
The inauguration falls on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Mrs. Williams is a distinguished scholar at Alcorn State University in Lorman, Miss. 
She was chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1995 to 1998.
Inaugural organizers said Rev. Louie Giglio of Atlanta’s Passion City Church will deliver the benediction for President Obama’s swearing-in.
In a statement, the president said Mrs. Williams and Rev. Giglio represent the ideals of justice, equality and opportunity that he pursues.