Hosea Williams (5 January 1926 – 16 November 2000) was an SCLC organizer and a leader of the Civil Rights movement alongside Martin Luther King, Jr..
Biography[]
Hosea Williams was born in Attapulgus, Georgia, United States in 1926, and he served in a segregated unit of the US Army during World War II, being the only survivor of a Nazi bombing and earning a Purple Heart. He was savagely beaten by a gang of angry whites while drinking from a whites-only water fountain on his return home, and he nearly died from his injuries. He earned a high school diploma at the age of 23 and became a research scientist for the US Department of Agriculture, and he became involved with the SCLC along with Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, James Bevel, Joseph Lowery, and Andrew Young, and he was tear gassed and beaten severely during the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. In 1974, Williams was elected to the Georgia State Senate as a Democratic Party politician, serving until 1985; he supported Jimmy Carter's bid for the presidency, briefly supporting Ronald Reagan before returning to supporting the Democrats under Walter Mondale. He died of cancer in 2000.