Woods, Abraham Lincoln, Jr.

▪ 2009

      American civil rights activist

born Oct. 7, 1928, Birmingham, Ala.

died Nov. 7, 2008, Birmingham

led the protesters who staged (1963) the first sit-ins at a whites-only lunch counter in downtown Birmingham, a landmark event in the fight for civil rights; authorities blasted hundreds of black demonstrators with fire hoses, set police dogs upon them, and imprisoned them. Woods was jailed along with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (a friend from his Morehouse College days), who wrote the impassioned “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in which King justified acts of civil disobedience to protest discriminatory laws. While serving (1990–2006) as president of the Birmingham chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Woods again took a leading role, this time in organizing (1990) the demonstrations against the whites-only Shoal Creek Golf and Country Club, which was to host the Professional Golfers' Association championship that year. Woods's actions prompted the withdrawal of major advertising sponsors for the televised event. In response, the club decided to accept blacks as members. Woods, the pastor of St. Joseph Baptist Church, was also on the scene on Sept. 15, 1963, when a dynamite blast claimed the lives of four black girls at the nearby 16th Street Baptist Church. He was instrumental years later in fighting for a reinvestigation of that bombing (only one Ku Klux Klansman [Robert E. Chambliss] had been indicted in 1977). Owing to Woods's effort, two additional Klansmen were convicted—Thomas E. Blanton, Jr. (in 2001), and Bobby Frank Cherry (in 2002).

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