Hosea Williams

Hosea Williams died on November 16, 2000, in Atlanta, Georgia, following a three-year battle with kidney cancer. He was buried at the Lincoln Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia.

Hosea Lorenzo Williams was born on January 5, 1926, in Attapulgus, Georgia, to teenage parents who were committed to a trade institute for the blind in Macon. When her mother learnt about her pregnancy she ran away from the institute.

Williams lost her mother at the age of 10, who died due to childbirth complications while giving birth to her second child. Thereafter, the two children were raised by their maternal grandparents, Lela and Turner Williams.

At the age of 14, Williams was forced to leave home so as to avoid being lynched due to his alleged affair with a white girl. After working on menial jobs during the next three years in Florida, he was drafted in the U.S. Army during the Second World War.

In the war, he served in an all-black unit under General George S. Patton and rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant. After being severely wounded in the battle, Williams spent a year recovering in a military hospital in Europe but was left with a permanent limp.

Upon returning from the war, Williams finished his high school and then attended the Morris Brown College in Atlanta. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, he went on to earn a master’s degree from the Atlanta University.

In early 1950s, after completing his post-graduation, Williams started working as a research chemist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Savannah, Georgia, a position he retained until 1963. In the meantime, he was also ordained as a minister.

In 1952, while working as a chemist, Williams first became involved in the civil rights movement when he joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In the early 1960s, Williams joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and subsequently emerged as one of the most trusted officers of Martin Luther King Jr. In 1964, as an important member of SCLC, Williams helped in conducting black voter registration drives in the Freedom Summer.

The following year, in March 1965, Williams played a leadership role in the march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, during which the marchers were tear-gassed and brutally beaten by police; the event came to be known as ‘Bloody Sunday’.

In 1965, William was appointed the president of the SCLC's Summer Community Organization and Political Education. In 1968, he became the field director for the SCLC's Poor People's Campaign and worked together with the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations on the Chicago Campaign.

As a trusted member of SCLC, he traveled extensively in the South, recruiting and organizing volunteers. In the struggle against segregation, he served as an able civil rights activist, and played an important role in the demonstrations that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.