Hosea Williams: Savannah Made Civil Rights Icon

Hosea Williams on top of Tomochichi Monument in Wright Square leading protest

Hosea Williams was a lion of the Civil rights Movement. He was as Martin Luther King expressed it ‘his chief field lieutenant’.  When he needed a bull in a china closet to get things done he called on Hosea Williams. He could get things done. He was in charge of the Voter Registration for King’s famed Southern Christian Leadership Conference and later the organization’s Executive Director for two, two year terms. He would be the chief organizer of the St. Augustine Movement and the notorious Selma Movement. He was leading the Selma March across the Edmund Pettus Bridge when they were attacked in what was called ‘ Bloody Sunday’.  He was with King when he was assassinated in Memphis. He can be seen on the far left of the famous picture of King and his inner circle on the balcony of the hotel with King right before he was assassinated.   After King’s assassination he would continue to fight for civil rights for the rest of his life.

Williams was born in Attapulgus, Georgia to parents who as teenagers were committed to a trade institute for the blind in Macon. At the age of ten when his mother died he moved to Florida to be with his grandparents. But at fourteen fearing for his life after people became upset he had befriended a white girl he ran away from home. After several years of scrapping for a living he joined the Army. He would serve with an African-American unit under General George S. Patton. He rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant. He was injured in a Nazi bombing and his injuries were so severe he spent a year recuperating in Europe. He earned a Purple Heart.

After the war he came back to America. Freshly arrived from the war and dressed in his uniform he was beaten severely for drinking from a white’s only fountain. He was left for dead. A black funeral home hearse and driver came to pick up the body and on the way to the morgue noticed he was still alive. He had to be taken to a hospital a hundred miles away to find a hospital that would serve blacks. He spent over a month this time recuperating.

But Hosea who would create the slogan ‘Unbought and Unbossed’ for himself did not let any of this stop him. He earned a high school diploma at the age of 23. He earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in chemistry from Atlanta's Morris Brown College and Atlanta University. After graduation, he moved to Savannah to work for the United States Department of Agriculture as a research scientist. He would be the first black scientist to be hired by the government to work in the Deep South. It was here in Savannah for the next eleven years (from 1952 to 1963) that he would start his civil rights work.

He became known for his lectures on civil rights in the various squares of Savannah. He also came under the tutorship of Savannah’s great Civil Rights leader, W. W. Law, when he joined the local Savannah NAACP while Law was the director. He served as vice president under W. W. Law. Williams led marches and sit-ins to protest segregation in Savannah. These protest led to Savannah becoming the first city in Georgia with desegregated lunch counters. He also helped to integrate the Nancy Hanks the passenger train that people rode to Tybee Island.

In the summer of 1961 Williams took part in the campaign to register voters in Savannah. In 1963 he led protests by the Chatham County Crusade for Voters. He was arrested after several white citizens swore out peace warrants against him. Williams was jailed for sixty-five days, the longest continuous sentence served by any of the civil rights leaders. During the riots that followed his arrest, the Sears and Firestone stores in Savannah were burned. Mills B. Lane Jr., president of Citizens and Southern Bank and prominent white Savannahians, fearing for their city, formed a "Committee of 100" to secure Williams's release and to work on completing the desegregation of the city.

These efforts would be recognized by King who would come to Savannah to speak to assist in the effort. In 1962 King called Savannah the most integrated city in the South.  King saw in Williams a person he needed in his work. So he raised money to create a position as the Director of Voter Registration in the SCLC. King said in fund-raising letters that such a talent as Williams needed to be extended out from Savannah to the rest of the United States. 

After King died Williams would continue the struggle for civil rights. In 1974 he began a political career and was elected to the Georgia Senate where he served five terms as a Democrat, until 1984.  In 1985 he was elected to the Atlanta City Council and, served there for five years. In 1989, Williams successfully campaigned for a seat on the DeKalb County, Georgia County Commission which he held until 1994.

But Hosea did not stop there in 1971 he founded a non-profit foundation, Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless, widely known in Atlanta for providing hot meals, haircuts, and other services to the poor. He also served as pastor of King's People's Church of Love.

But he had a surprising flashback to the sixties movement during a "Brotherhood March" planned to honor Martin Luther King Jr. on the national King holiday in Forsyth County outside of Atlanta.  His ninety marchers were assaulted with stones and other objects by several hundred counter-demonstrators led by the Nationalist Movement and Ku Klux Klan. The public outrage led to 20,000 marchers, including Coretta Scott King, Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, and Jesse Jackson, and of course Hosea to march the very next weekend. They were protected by more than 2,000 National Guardsmen and police, in what became the state's largest civil rights demonstration.

With this show of force by Williams, he gave Forsyth County a list of demands that included fair employment, the return of property lost when blacks were expelled from the county by the Klan in 1912, and a biracial council. A jury later awarded $950,000 to the marchers in a class action suit filed by Williams against the Klan.

Hosea Williams would die in 2000. In 2001 the Georgia General Assembly passed a House Resolution honoring Hosea and Juanita Williams (his wife) and directing that a portrait of them be placed in the state capitol. This battering ram for social justice is one of the many folks who were forces that help change Savannah and our country into a more ‘civil’ place.

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Hosea Williams on far left with MLK Jr. right before assassination in Memphis

Hose Williams leading march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on 'Bloody Sunday'