Hosea Williams, dead at 74, kept up fight for rights

Williams was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997

In this story: A runaway at 14 King's advance man RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

ATLANTA, Georgia -- Hosea Williams, who died Thursday after a long illness, was on the front lines of the civil rights struggle for four decades.

Williams, 74, died at Atlanta's Piedmont Hospital, where he was being treated for an infection since October 20, hospital spokeswoman Nina Montanaro said.

Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., Williams and John Lewis organized the "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma, Alabama, that left more than 80 people injured. The police violence that day led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

VIDEO CNN's Catherine Callaway looks back on the life of Hosea Williams Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     AUDIO Dr. Reginold S. Fowler describes Williams' final hours 245K/23 sec. AIFF or WAV sound Williams' daughter, Elisabeth Williams-Omilami says her father's accomplishments will now be recognized 230K/21 sec. AIFF or WAV sound

He would later retrace his steps across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and say afterward: "I was thinking about how we suffered, how we bled, how we were brutalized -- how Dr. King told us that the sweetest walk was to that ballot box, and we made that walk."

Williams was by King's side in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, when King was assassinated.

He served as a national executive for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; pastor of King's People's Church of Love, Inc.; Georgia state representative; Atlanta councilman and county commissioner. He also operated a chemical company that specialized in cleaning supplies and a bonding company.

Williams received national attention once again in 1987 for a march in Forsyth County, Georgia. Williams and others marching for integration were pelted with rocks from an angry crowd. Williams, undaunted, returned for a more peaceful march.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 and had a cancerous kidney removed in October 1999. After the surgery, he underwent a series of chemotherapy treatments.

A runaway at 14

Williams said in interviews that he left home about age 14 because of wanderlust and local outrage at his alleged relationship with a white girl.

Williams, left, and Lewis, now a congressman, helped lead the famous civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on March 7, 1965

He held odd jobs across north Florida and worked for a time as a shill for a gambler who plied the citrus camps.

He wound up in the Army, was badly wounded in Europe and returned to Georgia, where he was beaten bloody while trying to use a whites-only drinking fountain at a bus station in Americus.

During the next five weeks in a military hospital, he recalled, he kept thinking he had fought "on the wrong side."

Williams later finished high school and Morris Brown College and taught chemistry briefly.

He joined the civil rights movement full-time in 1962 while living in Savannah, Georgia. He recalled his children crying in a Savannah drugstore when he told them they could not join white children spinning on soda counter stools because of segregation laws.

CNN Correspondent Catherine Callaway and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Civil rights activist Hosea Williams hospitalized in Atlanta
October 24, 2000
Clinton to retrace steps of 1965 Selma march
March 3, 2000
CNN Black History Month, Bloody Sunday
1998

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
City of Atlanta's City Council
Georgia African-American History and Culture

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