Williams, Hosea

▪ 2001

      American civil rights leader and politician (b. Jan. 5, 1926, Attapulgus, Ga.—d. Nov. 16, 2000, Atlanta, Ga.), was a major figure in the struggle against segregation and served with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as organizer and advance man. He helped lead such demonstrations as the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Ala., in 1965, during which marchers seeking voting rights for African Americans were tear-gassed and brutally beaten, and he was present when King was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968. Williams had a difficult childhood and in his teens was, as he put it, a “thug and gangster.” After holding a series of odd jobs, he lied about his age and joined the army after the U.S. entered World War II. Seriously wounded, he spent over a year in a British hospital before returning home and completing his education—a high-school diploma at age 23, followed by a bachelor's degree from Morris Brown College, Atlanta, and a master's degree in chemistry from Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University). While working for the Department of Agriculture in Savannah, Ga.—the first federally employed black research chemist in the South—Williams became involved in the civil rights movement, in part as a result of having been nearly fatally beaten by a white mob years earlier when he drank from the only water fountain in an Americus, Ga., bus station and also in part because of his distress when his children could not join white children spinning on the stools of a segregated lunch counter. He became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and worked his way up through the ranks but was denied a position on its board because his parents had not married. Williams then (1963) joined King at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and by the following year he was helping run it. He traveled to numerous cities in the South, recruiting and organizing volunteers, teaching them the techniques of nonviolent demonstrations, leading them on marches, and otherwise paving the way for King and his associates Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson. Williams was ousted from the SCLC in the late 1970s in a power struggle but had already entered politics by running successfully for the Georgia state legislature, in which he served from 1974 to 1985. In 1984 he made an unsuccessful run for a U.S. Senate seat, and in 1985 he was elected to a term on the Atlanta City Council. In 1989 he lost a bid to be mayor of Atlanta, and he thereafter served for several years as a county commissioner. Although Williams's later years were troubled by numerous traffic arrests and erratic behaviour, he continued working to help the poor and homeless.

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