Obama Selects Lay Person To Deliver Prayer At Second Inauguration

The widow of murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers has been chosen to deliver the invocation at President Obama's second inauguration.  Mylie Evers-Williams will be the first woman and the first lay person in history to deliver the prayer.

Obama will privately take the oath of office for his second term on the constitutionally mandated date of Jan. 20, a Sunday. But the public ceremony will be the next day, coinciding with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. In a statement issued by the Presidential Inaugural Committee, Evers-Williams said “it is indeed an exhilarating experience to have the distinct honor of representing” the civil rights era at the Jan. 21 event.  This year is the 50th anniversary of the murder of Evers, who was the NAACP’s Mississippi field secretary at the time of his death. Myrlie Evers-Williams spent decades fighting to win a conviction of her late husband’s shooter, and served as chairman of the NAACP in the 1990s.

Wingnuts are already raising a stink that a civil rights activist has been chosen over a preacher. The Washington Post notes that "conservative evangelical" Pastor Louie Giglio has been selected to deliver the inaugural benediction.