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This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. and Cooley. How to Be a Civil Rights Widow is one chapter title in a book by Joy Reed, the former MSNBC evening show host. The widow is Merley Evers. Her husband

was Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist who served as the NAACP's Mississippi Field Secretary

and risked his life to push for voting rights, desegregation, and freedom. Reed's book is called Medgar and Merley, and is now out in paperback.

Medgar and Merley were both from Mississippi.

Merley constantly worried about the safety of her husband and their children, with good reason.

Their house was firebombed.

Later, in June 1963, Medgar was assassinated just outside the door of their home.

Merley had heard the gunshot and found her husband bleeding out. His was the first in a series of

high-profile assassinations in the 1960s. Next came President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy.

Joy Reid describes her book, Medgar and Murley, as a love story, between two black people in

Mississippi, their love for their children, and the higher love it took for black Americans

to love America and to fight for it, even in the state that

butchered more black bodies via lynching than any other. The love story between Merley and

Medgar Evers also is fraught with tension, with Merley objecting to how much he was away from home,

leaving her wondering if he loved his work more than he loved his family.

He often left her alone to deal with the constant phone calls,

threatening the lives of her family.

After her husband's death,

Merley became an activist, an in-demand public speaker,

an executive director of the NAACP.

She gave the invocation at President Obama's second inauguration. Joy Reid spoke with Terry Gross last year. Joy Reid, welcome to Fresh Air. Oh, thank you, Terry. It is so wonderful to be here.

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