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Hosea Williams | |
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 Williams in 1971 | |
| Born | Hosea Lorenzo Williams (1926-01-05)January 5, 1926[1] Attapulgus, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | November 16, 2000(2000-11-16) (aged 74)[2][3] Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Resting place | Lincoln Cemetery (Atlanta, Georgia). |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1956–2000 |
| Known for | Activist during thecivil rights movement |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 7, includingElisabeth |
| Family | Porsha Williams (granddaughter) |
Hosea Lorenzo Williams (January 5, 1926 – November 16, 2000) was an Americancivil rights leader, activist,ordained minister, businessman, philanthropist, scientist, and politician. He was considered a member of famedcivil rights activist andNobel Peace Prize winnerMartin Luther King Jr.'s inner circle. Under the banner of their flagship organization, theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference, King depended on Williams to organize and stir masses of people intononviolent direct action in myriad protest campaigns they waged againstracial, political, economic, andsocial injustice. King alternately referred to Williams, his chief field lieutenant, as his "bull in a china shop" and his "Castro." Vowing to continue King's work for the poor, Williams is well known in his own right as the founding president of one of the largestsocial services organizations in North America, Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless. His famous motto was "Unbought and Unbossed."[a]
Williams was born inAttapulgus,Georgia, a small city in the far southwest corner of the state inDecatur County. Both of his parents were teenagers committed to a trade institute for the blind inMacon. His mother ran away from the institute upon learning of her pregnancy. At the age of 28, Williams stumbled upon his birth father, "Blind" Willie Wiggins, by accident in Florida.[4] His mother died during childbirth when he was 10 years old. He and his older sister, Theresa, were raised by his mother's parents, Lelar and Turner Williams. Williams was run out of town by a lynch mob at the age of 13 for allegedly consorting with a white girl.[5]
Williams served with theUnited States Army duringWorld War II in an all Black American unit under GeneralGeorge S. Patton Jr. and advanced to the rank ofStaff Sergeant. He was the only survivor of aNazi bombing, which left him in a hospital in Europe for more than a year and earned him aPurple Heart.[6] Upon his return home from the war, Williams was savagely beaten by a group of angry whites at a bus station for drinking from a water fountain marked "Whites Only." He was beaten so badly that the attackers thought he was dead. They called a Black funeral home in the area to pick up the body. En route to the funeral home, the hearse driver noticed Williams had a faint pulse and was barely breathing, but was still alive. There were no hospitals in the area that would serve Blacks, even in the case of a medical emergency; the trip to the nearest veterans' hospital was well over a hundred miles. Williams spent more than a month hospitalized recuperating from injuries sustained in the attack.
Of the attack, Williams was quoted as saying, "I was deemed 100 percent disabled by the military and required a cane to walk. My wounds had earned me a Purple Heart. The war had just ended and I wasstill in my uniform for God's sake! But on my way home, to the brink of death, they beat me like a common dog. The very same people whose freedoms and liberties I had fought and suffered to secure in the horrors of war ... they beat me like a dog ... merely because I wanted a drink of water." He went on to say, "I had watched my best buddies tortured, murdered, and bodies blown to pieces. The French battlefields had literally been stained with my blood and fertilized with the rot of my loins. So at that moment, I truly felt as if I had fought on the wrong side. Then, and not until then, did I realize why God, time after time, had taken me to death's door, then spared my life ... to be a general in the war for human rights and personal dignity."
After the war, he earned a high school diploma at the age of 23, then abachelor's degree and a master's degree (both inchemistry) fromAtlanta'sMorris Brown College and Atlanta University (present-dayClark Atlanta University). Williams was a member ofPhi Beta Sigma fraternity. Williams' birthday coincided with the anniversary of the death of one of that organization's most prominent members,George Washington Carver. After college, Williams worked for theUnited States Department of Agriculture as an analytical chemist in Savannah from 1952 until 1963, in its Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine chemistry laboratory where his work focused on insecticide analysis and he would develop a method ofpyrethrin determination. In 1976, Williams founded the Southeast Chemical Manufacturing and Distributing Company, which manufactured and sold specialized cleaning supplies. Williams would go on to found three other chemical companies and a bonding company.
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Williams first joined theNAACP, during which time he was a leader in theSavannah Protest Movement. However, he later became a leader in theSCLC along withMartin Luther King Jr.,Ralph Abernathy,James Bevel,Joseph Lowery, andAndrew Young, among many others. He played an important role in the demonstrations inSt. Augustine, Florida, that some claim led to the passage of the landmarkCivil Rights Act of 1964.[7]
While organizing during the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement he also led thefirst attempt at a 1965 march fromSelma toMontgomery, and was tear gassed and beaten severely. On March 7, 1965 – a day that would become known as "Bloody Sunday" – Williams and fellow activistJohn Lewis led over 600 marchers across theEdmund Pettus Bridge inSelma, Alabama. At the end of the bridge, they were met byAlabama State Troopers who ordered them to disperse. When the marchers stopped to pray, the police dischargedtear gas and mounted troopers charged the demonstrators, beating them with night sticks. Repercussions from the "Bloody Sunday" attempt led to the other great legislative accomplishment of the movement, theVoting Rights Act of 1965.
After leaving the SCLC, Williams played an active role in supporting strikes in theAtlanta, Georgia, area by black workers who had first been hired because of theCivil Rights Act of 1964.[7]
In the1966 Georgia gubernatorial race, Williams opposed both the Democratic nominee, segregationistLester Maddox, and theRepublican choice,U.S. RepresentativeHoward Callaway. He challenged Callaway on myriad issues relating to civil rights, minimum wage, federal aid to education, urban renewal, and indigent medical care. Williams claimed that Callaway had purchased the endorsement of theAtlanta Journal. Ultimately, after a general election deadlock, Maddox was elected governor by the state legislature.[8]
In 1972, Williams ran in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by the lateRichard Russell, Jr. He polled 46,153 votes (6.4 percent). The nomination and the election went to fellow DemocratSam Nunn. In 1974, Williams was elected to theGeorgia Senate where he served five terms as a Democrat, until 1984. In 1985, he was elected to theAtlanta City Council, serving for five years, until his election in 1989 when he ran forMayor of Atlanta but lost toMaynard Jackson. That same year Williams successfully campaigned for a seat on theDeKalb County, GeorgiaCounty Commission which he held until 1994. Williams supported former GeorgiaGovernorJimmy Carter for president in 1976 but surprised many Black civil rights figures in 1980 by joiningRalph Abernathy andCharles Evers in endorsingRonald Reagan. By 1984, however, he had soured on Reagan's policies, and returned to the Democrats to supportWalter F. Mondale.
On January 17, 1987, Williams led a "March Against Fear and Intimidation" inForsyth County, Georgia, which at the time (before becoming a majorexurb of northernmetro Atlanta) had no non-white residents. The ninety marchers wereassaulted with stones and other objects by several hundred counter-demonstrators led by the Nationalist Movement andKu Klux Klan. The following week 20,000, including senior civil rights leaders and government officials marched. Forsyth County began to slowly integrate in the following years with the expansion of the Atlanta suburbs.[citation needed] In 1971, Hosea Williams founded a non-profitfoundation, Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless, widely known in Atlanta for providing hot meals, haircuts, clothing, and other services for the needy onThanksgiving, Christmas,Martin Luther King Jr. Day andEaster Sunday each year. Williams' daughterElizabeth Omilami serves as head of the foundation. In 1974, Williams organized the International Wrestling League (IWL), based inAtlanta, withThunderbolt Patterson serving as president. Among other entrepreneurial endeavors, he founded Hosea Williams Bail Bonds Inc, abail bond agency located in Decatur, Ga.
In early 1951, Williams marriedJuanita Terry. Together, Williams and Terry had eight children. Williams died atPiedmont Hospital in Atlanta, after a three-year battle with cancer on November 16, 2000. Funeral services were held at the historicEbenezer Baptist Church, where close friendMartin Luther King Jr., was once the co-pastor. Williams was preceded in death by his wife three months prior and by his son Hosea II two years earlier. Williams is interred at Lincoln Cemetery.
Williams’ first comprehensive biography,Hosea Williams: A Lifetime of Defiance and Protest, was written by Dr. Rolundus R. Rice, an educator and historian who currently serves asCOO and Vice President of Student Affairs atTuskegee University. Rice traces Williams's journey from a local activist in Georgia to a national leader and one ofMartin Luther King Jr.'s chief lieutenants.[10]
Boulevard Drive in the southeastern area of Atlanta was renamed Hosea L Williams Drive shortly before Williams died. Hosea Williams Drive runs by the site of his former home in theEast Lake neighborhood at the intersection of Hosea L. Williams Drive and East Lake Drive. Hosea L. Williams Papers are housed at Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta. His daughter Elisabeth Omilami also maintains a traveling exhibit of valuable civil rights memorabilia. Williams was portrayed byWendell Pierce in the 2014 filmSelma.
Williams' granddaughterPorsha Williams stars on theBravo reality TV series,The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
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