Hosea Williams (January 5, 1926 – November 16, 2000) was an United States civil rights leader, ordained reverend, and later a politician.
Born in Attapulgus, Georgia, both of his parents were teenagers committed to a trade institute for the blind in Macon. His mother ran away to her hometown, where she died during his childbirth. He was raised by her parents, Lela and Turner Williams, and left home by age 14.
He served with the U.S. Army during World War II, in an all-African-American unit under General Patton. He advanced to staff sergeant, and was later 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.
He later 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 the former Atlanta University. In the early 1950s he married Juanita Terry and then worked for the USDA.
He ended up in a hospital again for over a month after being seriously beaten for using a drinking fountain marked "whites only". He was arrested for other protests more than 125 times.
He first joined the NAACP, but later became a leader in the SCLC along with Martin Luther King, Jr., Joseph Lowrey , and Andrew Young among many others. He also led the first 1965 march on Selma, Alabama, and was beaten unconscious, leaving him with a fractured skull and a severe concussion.
In politics, he later served on the Atlanta City Council and in the Georgia General Assembly.
In 1987 he led another nationally-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.
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 and Christmas each year.
He also became known in his later years for his erratic driving, at least once being cited for drunk driving.
Both his wife and his son Hosea Williams II died prior to his own death 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. King was once the pastor. His daughter Elizabeth Omilami carries on as head of the foundation.
