Hosea Williams
| Hosea Lorenzo Williams | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 5, 1926 Attapulgus, Georgia |
| Died | November 16, 2000 (aged 74) Atlanta, Georgia |
Hosea Lorenzo Williams (January 5, 1926 – November 16, 2000) was a United States civil rights leader, ordained minister, businessman, philanthropist, scientist and politician. Though deeply involved and committed to the struggle for racial equality before they met, Williams may be best known as the firebranded but trusted member of fellow famed civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King, Jr.'s inner-circle. Under the banner of their flagship organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King depended on Williams' keen ability to organize and stir masses of people into nonviolent direct action in the myriad of protest campaigns they waged against racial, political, economic, and social injustice. While serving as his Chief Field Lieutenant, King alternately referred to Williams as his "bull in a china closet" and his "Castro".
Inspired by personal experience with and his vow to continue King's work for the poor, Williams may be equally well known as the founding president of one of the largest social services organizations for the poor and hungry on holidays in North America, Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless. His famous motto was "Unbought and Unbossed" (which was also the motto of former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm).
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[edit] Background
Williams was born in Attapulgus, Georgia, a small city in the far southwest corner of the state in Decatur County. Both of his parents were teenagers committed to a trade institute for the blind in Macon. Due to fear of his parent's response to her becoming an unwed mother, she 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.[1] His mother died during childbirth when he was ten years old. He was raised by his mother's parents, Lelar and Turner Williams. He left home by age 14.
Williams served with the United States Army during World War II in an all-African-American unit under General George S. Patton, Jr.. He advanced to the rank of Staff Sergeant. Williams was the only survivor of a Nazi bombing, which left him in a hospital in Europe for more than a year and earned him a Purple Heart.
After the war, he earned a high school diploma at age 23, then a bachelor's degree and a master's degree (both in chemistry) from Atlanta's Morris Brown College and Atlanta University (present day Clark Atlanta University). Williams was a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
In the early 1950s Williams married Juanita Terry and worked for the United States Department of Agriculture as a research scientist. Williams had four sons: Hosea L. Williams II, Andre Williams, Torrey Williams, and Hyron Williams and four daughters: Barbara Emerson, Elizabeth Omilami, Yolanda Favors, and Jaunita Collier. Williams was preceded in death by his wife and son Hosea II.
[edit] Civil Rights
Though he courageously fought for his country in World War II earning a Purple Heart, 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 for "Whites Only". They had beaten him so badly, they thought he was dead. They called the black funeral home in the area to pick up the body. In route to the funeral home, the hearse driver noticed Williams had a faint pulse and was barely breathing, but was still alive. Since there were no hospitals in the area servicing blacks, even in the case of a medical emergency, the detour to the nearest veterans hospital would be well over a hundred miles away. 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% 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 was still 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."
Over the course of his 40 plus years as a civil rights activist, he was arrested more than 125 times fighting to liberate the oppressed.
He first joined the NAACP, but later became a leader in the SCLC along with Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, James Bevel, Joseph Lowery, and Andrew Young among many others. He played an important role in the demonstrations in St. Augustine, Florida that some claim led to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.[2] While organizing during the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement he also lead the first attempt at a 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, and was tear gassed and beaten severely. The Selma demonstrations and this "Bloody Sunday" attempt led to the other great legislative accomplishment of the movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
After leaving SCLC, Williams played an active role in supporting strikes in the Atlanta, Georgia area by black workers who had first been hired because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[2]
In 1974, he organized the International Wrestling League (IWL), based in Atlanta, with Thunderbolt Patterson serving as president. The promotion ran three cards before folding.
In politics, he was elected and served on the Atlanta City Council, Georgia General Assembly, and the Dekalb County Commission. He was one of few Georgia elected officials to ever be elected to serve on the city, county, as well as state-level of government. He was also one of few, if not only, Georgia elected official to ever win an election while incarcerated. Not only did Williams win the election, but his margin of victory was characterized as a landslide. In 1972 Williams was a candidate in the primaries for U.S. Senator from Georgia. In 1976 he supported former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter for president. He surprised many black civil rights figures in 1980 by joining Ralph Abernathy and Charles Evers and endorsing Ronald Reagan. By 1984, however, he had soured on Reagan's policies, and returned to the Democrats.
In 1987 he led another internationally-covered march, this one consisting of 75 people in Forsyth County, Georgia, which at the time (before becoming a major exurb of northern metro Atlanta) had no non-white residents. He and the others were assaulted with stones and other objects by the KKK and other white supremacists. Another march the following week brought 20,000 people and an enormous showing of police and sheriff department officers, plus national media. Forsyth County, rapidly integrated following Hosea's demonstration, due, in part, to the availability of reasonably priced housing, a rarity in metro Atlanta. Forsyth is no longer considered merely an exurb of Atlanta but is a rapidly growing suburb.
In 1989, he unsuccessfully ran against Maynard Jackson for mayor of Atlanta.
[edit] Later life
He founded Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless, a non-profit foundation widely known in Atlanta for providing hot meals, haircuts, clothing, and other free services for the needy on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Easter Sunday each year. Williams' daughter Elizabeth Omilami serves as head of the foundation. Among many other entrepreneural endeavors, he also founded Hosea Williams Bail Bonds, Inc.,a bail bond agency located in Dekalb County, Georgia providing bail for inmates throughout the metro-Atlanta area. Williams' son, Torrey Williams, serves as president and his daughter, Jaunita Collier, as a vice president.
Both his wife and his son, Hosea Williams II, died prior to his own death.
Williams died at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, after a three-year battle with cancer. Services were held at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where close friend Dr. Martin Luther King was once the pastor. He was buried at Lincoln Cemetery.
Hosea frequented "CHOPS," a fine dining restaurant where he was known for regular dining and drinking. The restaurant even had a special drink key for Hosea that properly charged him for an unusual beverage that was his own favorite concoction.
[edit] Hosea L. Williams Drive
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 the East Lake neighborhood at the intersection of Hosea Williams Drive and East Lake Drive.
Hosea Williams Drive is in the DeKalb County portion of Atlanta and originates at Moreland Avenue, running east-west through the communities of Edgewood, Kirkwood, and East Lake. The street ends at Candler Road.
Hosea L. Williams Papers are housed at Auburn Avenue Research Library On African American Culture and History in Atlanta, Georgia. His daughter Elisabeth Omilami also maintains a traveling exhibit of valuable civil rights memorabilia.
[edit] References
- ^ Branch, Taylor (1998). Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 124. ISBN 0684808196.
- ^ a b Civil Rights Act of 1964
[edit] External links
- Williams v. Forsyth County Defense League Federal-court complaint by Hosea Williams
- Hosea Williams, 74, Rights Crusader, Dies By DANIEL LEWIS, November 17, 2000
- New Georgia Encyclopedia: Hosea Williams (1926-2000) Biographical information
- Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless Official Site
- Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History
