Evans was born on December 1, 1943, in McCormick, South Carolina.[2] Her father was a Methodist minister; she described her mother as "a radical egalitarian in her bones."[11]
Evans and the writer Harry C. Boyte were wed on June 5, 1966.[4] She took the married name Sara Evans Boyte for several years, including for the publication of her children's picture book Jenny's Secret Place (1970), the first book printed by Lollipop Power.[3] However, she reverted to her maiden name in 1974 before publishing her dissertation "because," she said, "I was married to a published writer and I wanted what I wrote to be mine and to stand on its own."[3][2] Together, Evans and Boyte co-wrote the book Free Spaces: Sources of Democratic Change in America (1986).[12] They had two children and divorced in 1994.[13][1]
Books
Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (1979)
Free Spaces: Sources of Democratic Change in America (1986; 1992 2nd ed.), with Harry C. Boyte
Born for Liberty: A History of American Women (1989)
Wage Justice: Comparable Worth and the Paradox of Technocratic Reform (1989) with Barbara J. Nelson
Journeys That Opened Up the World: Women, Student Christian Movements, and Social Justice, 1955–1975 (2003)
Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End (2003)