Writer Eli N. Evans was born and raised in Durham, N.C. He is the son of E.J. Evans, also known as Mutt Evans, mayor of Durham, 1950-1962, and Sarah Nachamson Evans. After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1958, he served two years stationed in Japen with the United States Navy. Evans graduated from Yale Law School in 1963 and worked as a speech writer on the staff of President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964-1965. He also served as staff director for former North Carolina Governor and United States Senator Terry Sanford's nationwide study investigating the future of state government, which was sponsored by the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Foundation. Evans served as senior program director of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a national educational foundation, 1967-1977. In 1977, Evans joined the Charles H. Revson Foundation as president and retired in 2003. The Revson Foundation awarded grants to a wide range of organizations, including those involved in urban affairs, education, and Jewish philanthropy. In addition to his work at philanthropic foundations, Evans is the author of three books, The Provincials: a Personal History of Jews in the South (1976), Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate (1988), and The Lonely Days were Sundays: Reflections of a Jewish Southerner (1993), and has pursued other writing projects.
From the guide to the Eli N. Evans Papers, 1965-2008, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)
